The State Schools

The bilí appropriating $18,000 for the construction of a new building for the State Agricultural College, excited an earnest discussion in the lower house of the legislature yesterday afternoon. The state has established three institutions of learning of the higher grade- the University at Boulder, the School of Mines at Golden, and the Agricultural College at Fort Collins. Having called these in8titutions into existence, the state should care for them, to the best of her ability and her means. Appropriations for them should be made for a purpose and in accordance with a syBtematic plan. The purpose should be to build up great institutions. And the plan ehould be intelligently adapted to that end. Haphazard appropriations will amount to nothing. No member should vote a dollar for any of these in8titutions unless the appropriation is made upon a plan that promises some resulta for the state at large. There is a good deal to be learned upon this subject from the experience of other states. The states of the Union, in their efforts to bui ld up institutions of learning, with the one exeeption of Michigan, have miserably failed. The great institution at Ann Arbor is the only state university tliat takes hrst rank among the universities of the country. The great, slates of Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin and Indiana, have suc-, cessfully prosecuted many Rreat enterprises. But they have none of them made a first-class university or college. The other states, west of the Mississippi, are not yet old enough to have achieved great resultH in this respect, unlessit may be Missouri, and not much is expected from her. The state universities of the West are indeed very good institutions. They afford fair instruction and turn out many good scholars. But none of them rise much above the grade of high schools for the towns in which they are located. Colorado cannot afford to pay out thousands of dollars year after year merely to establish three high schools. Would it notbe well tostudy the causes of these mournful educational failures in the West, that they may be avoided? Would it not also be well to investígate the causes of Miehigan's magnificent success, that possibly examples for imit ilion may be found? The first state legislature of Colorado decreed that the new commonweallh should never have a university. It did so when it adopted the distributive policy. The term university applied to the institution at Boulder is a ïnisnomer. It is only a college and can never be anything else. But if possible it should be put on a basis to develop into a tirst-class college.