AMERICAN DRIFT TOWARD EDUCATIONAL UNITY
JAMES E. BOYLE, PH.D. Professor of Economics and Sociology, University of North Dakota
I. COMPETITION IN EDUCATION (EDUCATIONAL DIFFERENTIA- TION)
President James B. Angell, of Michigan University, in his address at the quarter-centennial celebration of Kansas Univer- sity, said:
My own conviction is that it would be better for the cause of higher education if not another college were established east of the Rocky Mountains for at least a generation to come.
He was speaking for the Middle West, that great school- ridden section of our country, where the denominational college is making the fight of its life against the state university.
Actual conditions more than justified this statement. In New England religious denominations are few, and state universities are practically unknown. Hence the church college there is a venerable, strong, and well-established institution. But in the West denominations are extremely numerous; and often, by a process of division and subdivision, they multiply their number and divide their resources. Among the commoner denominations are these: Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Cumberland Presbyterians, United Presbyterians, Christians, Swedish Lutherans, Nor- wegian Lutherans, German Lutherans, Friends, Congregation- alists, United Brethren, Catholics, Seventh-Day Adventists, Episcopalians, Mennonites, etc. Partly as a matter of denomi- national pride, and partly to secure trained leadership in its own church, each sect must have its own college. This multiplication of sectarian colleges in the face of the state university differen- tiates the West from the East. We may cite Iowa as a typical state of the Middle West. Here are twenty denominational col- leges. One sect has six. Still the state is maintaining at public
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