Digging around the history of economics instruction at the University of Michigan, I stumbled across the fact that the first President of the University of Michigan was a huge fan of the organization of Prussian education. Henry P. Tappan‘s extended statement of his vision for American colleges and universities can be read in his 1851 book University Education. One sees his ambition to restructure the University of Michigan along Prussian lines in the excerpt below taken from the first catalogue published under Tappan’s leadership in 1852-53.
There are several things that struck me when I read the 1852-53 Michigan catalogue: counting Tappan, the University of Michigan’s faculty of science, literature and arts was all of eight professors; the entire undergraduate student body in 1852-53 was sixty students; undergraduates who passed the admissions examinations had to be at least fourteen years old to be enrolled; the B.A. and B.S. degrees both included a mandatory single term course in political economy in the junior year; reponsibility for the political economy courses at the collegiate (undergraduate) and university (graduate) levels was with the Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy (Henry P. Tappan).
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First President of the University of Michigan
HENRY PHILIP TAPPAN was born at Rhinebeck on the Hudson, New York, April 18,1805. His father’s family was of Huguenot extraction; on his mother’s side he was Dutch. He entered Union College at the age of sixteen and was graduated Bachelor of Arts in 1825. Two years later he was graduated from the Auburn Theological Seminary and became associate pastor of the Dutch Reformed church in Schenectady, New York, for one year. He was next settled as pastor of the Congregational church at Pittsfield, Massachusetts. To this charge he took with him his newly married wife, a daughter of Colonel John Livingston, of New York. At the end of three years he was obliged to seek health and made a trip to the West Indies. On his return in 1832 he was elected professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy in the University of the City of New York. He had been a critic of the American college. He felt that it was not equal to the demands of American society, and now that he had become a teacher he began to study the problem more closely. He saw the need of better libraries and apparatus, better equipped faculties, and more freedom in the choice of studies; but his superiors were not yet prepared for his advanced ideas, and he resigned his chair. This was in 1838. He now turned his attention to authorship, at the same time conducting a private school. In 1839 appeared his “Review of Edwards’s Inquiry into the Freedom of the Will”; in 1840, “The Doctrine of the Will Determined by an Appeal to Consciousness”; in 1841, “The Doctrine of the Will Applied to Moral Agency and Responsibility”; in 1844, “Elements of Logic”; in 1851, a treatise on “University Education “; and in 1852, ” A Step from the New World to the Old and Back Again.” In 1852 he was invited to resume his former chair of Philosophy in the University of the City of New York, and the same year he was elected to the presidency of the University of Michigan. He accepted the call from Michigan and became the first President of the University, and Professor of Philosophy. He believed that a university worthy of the name must arise from the successive stages of primary and secondary schools. But these could be secured in completeness and perfection only by state authority, and by state and municipal appropriations derived from public funds and public taxation. These conditions he found partially established in the State of Michigan. Hope took possession of his heart, and he proceeded to create the American university according to his idea; but he moved faster than the circumstances would warrant, and after eleven years of labor he left the work to other hands. The seed he sowed took root, and in due time his controlling idea was embodied in practice, which was the university lecture and freedom in the choice of studies. A more detailed account of his work at Ann Arbor will be found in the chapter devoted to his administration. He received the degree of Doctor of Divinity from Union College in 1845 and the degree of Doctor of Laws from Columbia in 1854. In 1856 he was elected a corresponding member of the Imperial Institute of France. On leaving Michigan in 1863 he went immediately to Europe. In Berlin, Paris, Bonn, Frankfort, Basel, and Geneva he found literary friends and cultivated circles glad to welcome him. He resided at Basel for some years, and finally purchased a beautiful villa at Vevey, on the shores of Lake Geneva, where he passed his declining years, and where he died November 15, 1881. He lies buried, with his entire family, high up on the vineclad slopes above Vevey, facing the lake, with its heavenly blue, and the glorious mountains of Savoy beyond. Thither more than one of his old Michigan boys have found their way in the after years to do homage at his tomb.
Source: Burke A. Hinsdale, History of the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, 1906), pp. 217-218.
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Reception of Tappan’s Vision of a University
President Tappan incurred much opposition and ridicule on account of his persistent advocacy of the German
ideal. “So much was this foreign school system the burden of his discourse that it brought upon him a storm of
censure and abuse from some of the journals of the state, whose editors were alarmed for the glory of the American eagle, or, possibly, were glad of a theme so potent to rouse the stout patriotism of their American hearts. Of all the imitations of English aristocracy, German mysticism, Prussian imperiousness, and Parisian nonsensities, he is altogether the most un-Americanized, the most completely foreignized specimen of an abnormal Yankee we have ever seen. Such was the style of the attacks made upon him, worth notice only as pointing to the source from which opposition came.” — History of the University of Michigan, Elizabeth M. Farrand, Ann Arbor, 1885, pp. 112-113.
Source: Burke A. Hinsdale, History of the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, 1906) p. 86.
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Excerpts from First Catalogue of Tappan Presidency
ORGANIZATION OF THE UNIVERSITY.
THE system of Public Instruction adopted by the State of Michigan is copied from the Prussian, acknowledged to be the most perfect in the world.
Hence the Constitution ordains, first of all, that there shall be a Superintendent of Public Instruction, who “shall have a general supervision of public instruction.” This office corresponds in its general features to the Minister of Public Instruction in Prussia.
With respect to the Primary Schools, the Constitution has ordained that “a school shall be kept, without charge for tuition, at least three months in each year, in every school district in the State; and all instruction in said schools shall be conducted in the English language.” These schools it is designed to make as comprehensive and perfect as possible. To this end a system of Union Schools is going into operation, constituted by throwing together several District Schools. By this means the material of learning is increased, the course of study enlarged, and more competent teachers are provided.
The Union Schools will become the elementary classical and scientific schools preparatory to the Collegiate or Gymnastic Department of the University. This, too, is in accordance with the Prussian system, which makes the Primary Schools preparatory to the Gymnasia.
The Normal School, constituted for the education of Teachers, is an essential part of the Primary School system.
In the University, it is designed to organize all the Faculties with the exception of the Theological, which will be left to the different denominations. It is to be hoped, however, that schools of Theology will be established at Ann Arbor. In some departments of Theological science it may be possible for the different denominations to unite in establishing common professorships. In others they will naturally choose to have separate professorships. But every one will perceive, at once, the advantages to be derived from collecting all the learned Faculties in one place, where the students can enjoy the common benefit of the University library, and attend, at their pleasure, while engaged in particular professional studies, lectures on other branches of literature and science. Thus, too, a more general spirit of scholarship will be awakened, and a generous competition kept alive.
There are already organized two Faculties, that of Science, Literature and the Arts, and that of Medicine.
In the first named department, that grade of studies has been established which in our country is usually designated as the Collegiate or Undergraduate. This, in all our Colleges, corresponds in general to the course in the Gymnasia of Germany. In the University of Michigan, it is a cardinal object to make this correspondence as complete as possible. Hence, it is proposed to make the studies here pursued not only introductory to professional studies, and to studies in the higher branches of science and literature, but also to embrace such studies as are more particularly adapted to agriculture, the mechanic arts, and to the industrial arts generally. Accordingly, a distinct scientific course has been added, running parallel to the classical course, extending through the same term of four years, and embracing the same number of classes with the same designations. In this course, a more extended range of Mathematics will be substituted for the Greek and Latin languages. Students, who have in view particular branches as connected immediately with their pursuits in life, and who do not aim at general scientific or literary study, will be admitted to partial courses. The schools of Civil Engineering and Agricultural Chemistry will be among the partial courses.
The design of the Regents and Faculty is, to make the Collegiate or Gymnastic department as ample and rich as possible, and to adapt it to the wants of all classes of students that properly come within its range.
The classical and scientific courses, whether full or partial, will be conducted by the University Faculty of Science, Literature and the Arts.
But the Regents and Faculty cannot forget that a system of Public Instruction can never be complete without the highest form of education, any more than without that primary education which is the natural and necessary introduction to the whole. The Undergraduate course, after all that can be done to perfect it, is still limited to a certain term of years, and, necessarily, embraces only a limited range of studies. After this must come professional studies, and those more extended studies in Science, Literature and the Arts, which alone can lead to profound and finished scholarship. A system of education established on the Prussian principles of education, cannot discard that which forms the culmination of the whole. An institution cannot deserve the name of a University which does not aim, in all the material of learning, in the professorships which it establishes, and in the whole scope of its provisions, to make it possible for every student to study what he pleases, and to any extent he pleases. Nor can it be regarded as consistent with the spirit of a free country to deny to its citizens the possibilities of the highest knowledge.
It is proposed, therefore, at as early a day as practicable, to open courses of lectures for those who have graduated at this or other institutions, and for those who in other ways have made such preparation as may enable them to attend upon them with advantage. These lectures, in accordance with the educational systems of Germany and France, will form the proper development of the University, in distinction from the College or Gymnasium now in operation.
Such a scheme will require the erection of an observatory, a large increase of our library and our philosophical apparatus, and additional Professors. A great work, it will require great means: but when once accomplished, it will constitute the glory of our State, and give us an indisputable pre-eminence.
The Medical Department already established belongs to the University proper. Here instruction is carried on by lectures, and it is presumed that students, by the aid of these lectures the design of which is to present them a complete outline of medical science, and to direct them in their studies-by the study of learned works, and, availing themselves of all the preparations made for the thorough study of their profession, shall be enabled to compose the Theses and pass the examinations which are to test their scholarship and prove them worthy of being admitted as Doctors of Medicine.
Source: Catalogue of the Corporation, Officers and Students in the Departments of Medicine, Arts and Sciences, in the University of Michigan 1852-53 (Detroit, 1853), pp. 19-22.
DEPARTMENT OF SCIENCE, LITERATURE AND THE ARTS.
FACULTY.
REV. HENRY P. TAPPAN, D.D.,
CHANCELLOR,
And Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy.
REV. GEORGE P. WILLIAMS, LL.D.,
Professor of Natural Philosophy and Mathematics.
ABRAM SAGER, A.M., M.D.,
Professor of Zoology and Botany.
SILAS H. DOUGLASS, A.M., M.D.,
Professor of Chemistry, Mineralogy and Geology.
LOUIS FASQUELLE, LL.D.,
Professor of Modern Languages.
JAMES R. BOISE, A.M.,
Professor of the Greek Language and Literature.
ALVAH BRADISH, A.M.,
Professor of Fine Arts.
REV. E. O. HAVEN, A.M.,
Professor of Latin Language and Literature.
[…]
[In the Department of Literature, Science and Arts there were a total of 60 undergraduates (10 Seniors, 21 Juniors, 18 Sophomores and 11 Freshmen)]
[…]
TERMS OF ADMISSION.
DEPARTMENT OF SCIENCE, LITERATURE AND THE ARTS.—UNDERGRADUATE COURSE
- CLASSICAL COURSE. — No person will be admitted to this course unless he sustain a satisfactory examination in the following studies, namely: In English Grammar, Geography, Arithmetic and Algebra through equations of the first degree; in the Latin Grammar, Caesar’s Commentaries, Cicero’s Select Orations, and six books of the Æneid of Virgil, or in some equivalent amount of classical Latin; in the Greek Grammar and the Greek Reader, or in some equivalent amount of classical Greek; in the writing of the Latin and Greek (with the accents); and in Grecian and Roman Geography.
- SCIENTIFIC COURSE. — The examinations for admission to this course will be particularly rigid in the following studies, namely: English Grammar, Geography, Arithmetic, and Algebra through equations of the first degree.
- PARTIAL COURSE. — Those who do not desire to become candidates for a degree, may be admitted to any part of the classical or scientific course, for such length of time as they may choose, in case they exhibit satisfactory evidence of such proficiency as will enable them to proceed advantageously with the studies of the class which they propose to enter.
No person shall become a candidate for admission to any of the above courses until he have completed his fourteenth year, nor without presenting satisfactory evidence of unexceptionable moral character.
[…]
COURSE OF INSTRUCTION.
DEPARTMENT OF ARTS AND SCIENCES.—UNDERGRADUATES.
Classical Course |
Scientific Course |
|
FIRST YEAR |
|
|
First term |
|
| Latin, | English Language and Literature, |
| Greek, | History, |
| Algebra. | Algebra. |
|
Second term |
|
| Algebra and Geometry, | Algebra and Geometry, |
| Latin, | History, |
| Greek. | English Language and Literature |
|
Third term |
|
| Geometry, | Geometry, |
| Greek, | French, |
| Latin. | History. |
|
SECOND YEAR |
|
|
First term |
|
| Rhetoric, | Rhetoric, |
| Trigonometry and Conic Sec., | Trigonometry and Conic Sec., |
| Latin or Greek. | French. |
|
Second term |
|
| Latin, | German, |
| Rhetoric, | French, |
|
Greek. |
Mensuration, Navigation,[and Surveying]. |
|
Third term |
|
| Latin or Greek, | German, |
| French, | Descriptive and Analytical Geometry, |
| Natural Philosophy. | Natural Philosophy. |
|
THIRD YEAR |
|
|
First term |
|
| Political Economy, | Political Economy, |
| Natural Philosophy, | Natural Philosophy, |
| French. | German |
|
Second term |
|
| German, | Drawing, Perspective and Architecture, |
| Latin or Greek, | Calculus, |
| French. | Rhetoric. |
|
Third term |
|
| German, | Civil Engineering, |
| Astronomy, | Mental Philosophy, |
| Latin or Greek. | Chemistry. |
|
FOURTH YEAR |
|
|
First term |
|
| German, | Civil Engineering, |
| Mental Philosophy, | Mental Philosophy, |
| Chemistry. | Chemistry. |
|
Second term |
|
| Moral Science. | Moral Science, |
| Mental Philosophy and Logic, | Mental Philosophy and Logic, |
| Chemistry. | Chemistry. |
|
Third term |
|
| Moral Science, | Moral Science, |
| Animal and Vegetable Physiology | Animal and Vegetable Physiology, |
| Geology. | Geology. |
Lectures through the year, once each week, on Natural Theology and Evidences of Christianity, to all the classes.
Exercises in declamation and English composition, for each class, weekly, through both courses. Original declamations through the last two years.
[…]
UNIVERSITY COURSE.
This Course is designed for those who have taken the degree of Bachelor of Arts or the degree of Bachelor of Sciences, and for those generally who, by previous study, have attained a preparation and discipline to qualify them for pursuing it.
The Course will be conducted exclusively by lectures. Besides attending these the student will have full opportunity of availing himself of the library and all other means that can aid him in literary cultivation and scientific researches.
This Course, when completely furnished with able professors and the material of learning, will correspond to that pursued in the Universities of France and Germany.
The following scheme will present, in general, the subjects proper to such a course:
- Systematic Philosophy.
- History of Philosophy.
- History and Political Economy.
- Logic.
- Ethics and Evidences of Christianity.
- The Law of Nature — The Law of Nations — Constitutional Law.
- The Higher Mathematics.
- Astronomy.
- General Physics.
- Chemistry.
- Natural History.
- Philosophy.
- Greek Language and Literature.
- Latin Language and Literature.
- Oriental Languages.
- English Language and Literature.
- Modern Literature.
- Rhetoric and Criticism.
- The History of the Fine Arts.
- The Arts of Design.
[…]
OF DEGREES
DEPARTMENT OF SCIENCE, LITERATURE AND THE ARTS.
The degree of Bachelor of Arts, in accordance with general usage, will be conferred on students who complete the Classical Course and pass the examinations in the same.
The degree of Bachelor of Sciences will be conferred on students who complete the Scientific Course and pass the examinations in the same. This title, borrowed from the French Colleges, has already been introduced into the Lawrence Scientific School, of Harvard, and into the University of Rochester, to mark the graduation of a similar class of students.
The degree of Master of Arts will not be conferred in course upon graduates of three years standing, but only upon such graduates as have pursued professional or general scientific studies during that period. The candidate for the degree must pass an examination before one of the Faculties. He must also read a Thesis before the Faculties of the University at the time of taking the degree.
[…]
OBSERVATIONS ON THE COURSES OF STUDY PURSUED IN THE UNIVERSITY
[…]
INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL PHILOSOPHY.
This study is conducted by the use of text books, accompanied with lectures. Essays on subjects connected with the course are read by the students and criticised by the professor. One is read at each recitation. Reference is made to the standard works of ancient and modern writers on philosophy.
A complete development of this branch of knowledge must necessarily be reserved for the University Course.
HISTORY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY
History, particularly that of the Greeks and Romans, is connected with the study of the ancient languages.
Political Economy is, at present, assigned to the Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy [Chancellor Rev. Henry P. Tappan, D.D.]. Instruction is here given, as in Intellectual and Moral Philosophy, by the use of text books, accompanied with lectures and by references to the standard works on Political Economy. The students are here also required to read original essays on subjects connected with the course.
Source: Catalogue of the Corporation, Officers and Students in the Departments of Medicine, Arts and Sciences, in the University of Michigan 1852-53 (Detroit, 1853), pp. 13, 23-26, 28, 30.
Image Source: Web transcription of Elizabeth S. Adams, “Henry Philip Tappan Administration” in The University of Michigan, An Encyclopedic Survey in Four Volumes, Wilfred B. Shaw, editor, Volume 1, Part 1 (Ann Arbor, 1942), pp. 39-52.