University of Virginia Library

COURSES
OF
INSTRUCTION.

In establishing the University of Virginia, Mr. Jefferson, for the first
time in America, threw open the doors of a University, providing for
thorough instruction in Independent Schools in the chief branches of
learning. The system assumes that the opportunities it presents are
privileges to be voluntarily and eagerly sought, and it therefore allows
students to elect for themselves the departments to which they are led by
their individual tastes and proposed pursuits in life. This freedom of
election commends itself particularly to those who desire to make special
attainments in some one department of knowledge. At the same time
the courses of academical study are so arranged as to provide for the
systematic prosecution of a complete plan of general education. The
wisdom of the founder has been amply vindicated by time and experience;
and of late many institutions of higher education in the United
States have, to a greater or less extent, remodeled their methods in accordance
with this example.

The Courses of Instruction are Academical and Professional. The
former are comprised in two departments, the Literary and the Scientific;
the latter, in the four Departments of Medicine, Law, Engineering, and
Agriculture. In the various Departments there are altogether nineteen
distinct Schools, each affording an independent course under a Professor,
who gives the instruction, generally by lectures, and conducts the examinations,
and who alone is responsible for its system and methods.
Among these Schools, without regard to the Departments, the student is
at liberty to elect those he may wish to attend, limited only in respect of
lectures occurring at the same hours, and by a regulation concerning
the number of Schools to be attended by academical students.