University of Virginia Library

XXIV. Academic Degrees—Baccalaureate

In 1904–05, the candidate for the baccalaureate degree
was required to choose ten electives, unless he had
selected, as among the number, the respective courses in
Latin and Greek,—in which event, the ten were reduced
to nine. These electives were to be picked out of the
following groups: the ancient languages, the modern
languages, history and philosophy, mathematical

seems to have been the centre of the storm that raged
so violently for a time. The question first came up in
the committee on rules and courses in the form of a
proposal to reorganize the baccalaureate studies. It was
referred in the beginning to a sub-committee. The principal
point involved in that question was: what was a
liberal education? Was any separate branch of human
knowledge indispensable to such an education? These
interrogatories had been growing more and more insistent,
as time had passed, with the broadening of all the
sciences and the increasing demand for practical information.
They had long ago shattered the fixed system
of the old curriculum colleges, and were now intruding
into the immemorial temple of the Latin and Greek languages,
and calling for the reduction of those scholastic
deities to a footing of equality with humbler studies,
by making them optional also.

The sub-committee pronounced in favor of such dethronement,
and the general committee accepted their
decision and recommended its approval by the academic
faculty. This body at once began to consider it, in
their turn, with extraordinary earnestness; they assembled
seven times to debate the subject; and at every
meeting remained in session from three and a half hours
to four. Every aspect of the question was minutely examined
and exhaustively discussed. When the final vote
was taken, seventeen professors were present, of whom,
two expressed, in vigorous language, their opposition to
the adoption of the report; one either voted "no," or
did not vote at all; while another happened to be quite
deaf and failed to catch the query when put. Among
those who voted in the affirmative was the professor of
Latin, whose action at the time was not inaptly compared
by the advocates of the change to the action of those

Frenchmen of the Revolution, who, in a moment of frenzied
patriotism, on a memorable occasion, stripped themselves
of all their honors and orders born of aristocratic
privilege. The vote stood about thirteen in favor
of the innovation and about three in opposition to it.
President Alderman counseled that this decision should
not be recommended to the Board of Visitors unless the
affirmative sentiment among the majority of the members
of the Faculty should come, after further consultation,
to be shared by all.

The Faculty, in spite of this discreet suggestion, and
in the teeth also of the continued antagonism expressed
by some of its members, drafted a report in harmony
with the general tenor of the original sub-committee's
conclusions. This report was supported by energetic
statements in writing on the part of several professors.
"Why," said one, "should Latin be given any superiority
of position over the other courses? What advantage
did it possess over history and economics, or English
literature, or history,—all of which, if the student desired,
could be passed over when he came to make a
choice among the electives? Should not the entire number
of studies be on a footing of equality?" "In preparing
to give students an option between the classics
and other things," remarked Professor R. H. Dabney,
"the Faculty are no more degrading the former than a
host degrades a saddle of mutton when he asks his
guests whether they will take that or turkey. He knows
that both are good."

In spite of the visions of their annual feasts which this
gastronomic simile must have called up in their minds,
the alumni refused to be seduced by its plausibleness.
Protests against the proposed innovation, expressed in
every key, from the sarcastic and scornful to the gravely

argumentative, soon began to pour in from them. The
chapters in Baltimore, Charleston, Lynchburg, New Orleans,
New York, Washington, and Richmond raised a
threatening, a warning, or a sadly remonstrative voice.
If there had been any doubt before, there could be none
now that the alumni of all shades of opinion and all
kinds of occupations, from the scholar in his class-room
to the banker in his counting-house, felt so deep an interest
in the study of the ancient languages, and valued so
highly their own training in those courses, that they
would consider their alma mater to be shorn of half her
strength, and much of her charm, should the baccalaureate
candidate not be required to include those tongues
in his fixed groups of studies. Eloquent alumni appeared
before the Board to impress that body with the fatality
of adopting the suggestion of the Faculty; the
Visitors were compelled to pause; and not knowing what
else to do at the moment, laid the Faculty's recommendation
on the table, with the intention of taking it up at
their next meeting.

In the meanwhile, the Board again laid off the courses
to be studied by the candidate for the baccalaureate degree.
Having met satisfactorily the different entrance
requirements, he must, at a later date, pass the regular
examination (1) in the first section of English literature
and mathematics; (2) in Latin and another language,
ancient or modern; (3) in one subject from the group
of mathematical sciences; (4) in two from the group of
natural sciences; (5) in one from the group of philosophical
sciences; (6) in one from the group of history,
literature, and economics; and (7) in certain electives
at large, the number of which was to depend upon
whether one or two ancient languages had been chosen.

By the spring of 1908, it was plainly perceived that

the degree of bachelor of arts did not cover the ground
of science satisfactorily, and this prompted many members
of the Faculty to advocate a line of studies that
would lead up to the degree of bachelor of science. At
this time, there were three large groups of collegians
who had to be considered in readjusting the degrees:
first, the group who thought that the original
courses prescribed for the old degree of master
of arts embraced all that education had to impart;
second, the group who desired to retain Latin only
of the ancient languages, and to rely upon the modern
humanistic studies chiefly for their cultural development;
and thirdly, there was the group,—and it was the
largest of the three,—who were content to look to the
sciences alone for that development, and who, discarding
the ancient languages altogether, valued the modern
only as a means of more easily learning those sciences,
and more successfully pushing their individual researches.

At their meeting in October, 1908, the Board of
Visitors, wisely recognizing the existence of these different
groups, created in the college or undergraduate department
two new degrees of great importance; namely,
the cultural degree of bachelor of science, and the vocational
degree of bachelor of science, in neither of which
was an ancient language included. This was a satisfactory
solution of the controversial problem, for Latin
or Greek was still taught in the course to be traversed by
every candidate for the degree of bachelor of arts.
Moreover, it was a more judicious arrangement than the
Faculty had proposed in recommending that all the
scientific departments should be consolidated into one
department of science. There were now three well balanced
degrees in the college department: the degree of

bachelor of arts, which would indicate in the winner the
acquisition of a liberal education in all the fundamental
branches of knowledge; the cultural degree of bachelor
of science, which was open to those who desired a general
culture, independent of the classical languages, and
with a scientific bent; and finally, the vocational degree
of bachelor of science, which was open to those who had
decided to pursue in the future a calling requiring
special training in some one of the sciences, natural or
mathematical. Such a calling was that of the practical
chemist, biologist, or geologist, or the teacher of natural
or mathematical science. The diploma of the vocational
bachelor referred to him as bachelor in chemistry,
in biology, in medicine, in architecture, and so on, according
to the particular course which he had been able to
master.