PROGRESS AND WANTS OF THE UNIVERSITY.

order that the progress of the University since its reorganization may be distinctly seen, I append here a statement of the attendance of students during the Fall terms of each year, as also the aggregate attendance during the same years, to-wit:

The aggregate for 1869-70 will be much larger than ever before. The difference in the attendance at the Fall terms, and the total attendance for the year, arises mainly from the fact that a large number of students are not able pecuniarily to attend the whole year. Some portion of the year must be devoted to earning the means of attendance, and thus, with many, it requires a course of five or more years, in place of four, to reach the graduating standard.

It will be seen from the foregoing table that the University has steadily grown in usefulness, until now it is attracting attention from other states than our own, and has taken a high stand among the educational institutions of the country.

With increased accommodations that will attract students by reason of moderate expenses and other aids to college education, the University will continue to grow until it shall stand alongside the greatest and best of American colleges.

While the Regents have received this growth in prosperity with feelings of the utmost pride and pleasure, and have labored

with singular unanimity to this end, they yet feel that it is almost entirely due to the energy and wisdom of President Chadbourne, and the zealous co-operation of the College Faculty.

I do not think that in any College of the land there can be found a more devoted body of teachers. Their labors, from the President down, have been incessant, and far beyond the measure of labor ordinarily allotted to instructors in other institutions.

But I now beg your attention to this fact, to wit: That with the present buildings and accommodations, the University has reached the verge of its usefulness.

To make this apparent, I will state our immediate necessities.

room.

First-A FEMALE COLLEGE.-At the date of writing this report, there are in attendance at the University 245 young men, while the total number that can be accommodated in the College buildings is 90, and that only by putting, in some cases, four men in the same It is true a portion of these young men are in the Preparatory Department, but nearly 200 of this number would be entitled to rooms were that department abolished; and they are a class of young men who are in a large measure educating themselves, and who as a rule make the best scholars. They seek education for its own sake, and they are the men who leave behind them in the College an example of energy, and who, as they go forth into the world, are those from whom are drawn the men of mark and distinction. It is to such young men that we ought to extend every aid to college education.

rent.

The great items of expense in College life, are board and roomThe University ought to be able to furnish the room rent at very low rates, and in such manner as to enable the students to live by themselves, or at commons. If we could do this, our young men would not be driven to looking through the city for boarding places. Madison is not proverbially a cheap place in which to live, and there, as elsewhere, the price is according to the demand.

As the number of students increases, so does the cost of weekly board, until many of the best young men have either to shorten their stay at college, or find cheaper colleges.

We need for the young men every particle of the room occupied

by the young ladies, and to this end, we are in immediate want of a building to be used as a Female College.

The subject of educating young men and young women together, has been urged upon the consideration of the Regents, but I do not deem it necessary now to say more on that topic than this, that this building is needed whatever system is adopted, and that some of the classes are now so large that they have to be divided for recitation, and others ought to be divided; and that with the future growth of the University, as it has grown in the past, all regular classes in both Colleges will ere long have to be divided into sections for recitation.

This want of room for young men is keeping away from us many who would be glad to come, and the result must continue to injure us until we can provide for them. The room in the University Hall, now occupied exclusively by the young ladies, is greatly needed for a lecture room. It is the only room in the University, except the chapel, large enough to accommodate some of the classes for lectures, if the young ladies attend as they now do.

Second. We need a PUBLIC HALL for the use of the College Societies, for declamation and for chapel exercises. There is not in any of our present buildings a room large enough to accommodate the young men of the University. Rooms for public meetings of the College Societies we have not, and the young men are driven into town to hold their meetings. All this is wrong, and works as a draw back to the University, and will do so until remedied.

Third-WE NEED AN OBSERVATORY.-With the munificent grant of lands by Congress for the purposes of an University, it was the design to have a school where education in literature and practical science might be had by all who desired it; but even to this day, the University of a great State, with a million of people, has not the instruments for teaching practical astronomy, nor the means of buying them. We bave not even a transit instrument for the determination of local time, and in all the State there is not a good telescope.

The grounds of the University furnish a site for an observatory equal to any in the United States. Without this indispensable aid

in teaching astronomy, our institution is hardly worthy to be called a University.

If there is any legacy which a properous people ought to leave to posterity, it is to place within the reach of our sons and daughters the means of education in its highest and most beneficent forms. An appropriation which shall not exceed in amount a per capita assessment of ten cents, will place our University in the van of all colleges west of the great lakes. With such aid from the State as our immediate wants require, with a location of unsurpassed beauty and salubrity, with a President whose practical wisdom and every energy is in the interest of the students, and with an able faculty, complete in identity with the reputation of the school, there shall result an institution to which future statesmen and patriots shall turn with reverence as the Alma Mater where they were taught all that is good and noble for which man can strive.

Much has been done, and is still doing in other State schools to place the means of good, though limited, education within the reach of all. Our normal schools are sending out teachers, and our high schools, though limited in number and influence, are doing something each year as preparatory schools. All these are productive of great good, but to make the system complete, they should culminate in that higher standard which can only be reached by an University education. This is no fanciful theory-it is what every practical man can plainly see will result in the greatest possible good to the coming generations of our noble State.

WHAT THE STATE HAS DONE.

It seems appropriate here to call attention to what the state has done in support of its university, and to compare it with what has been and is being done by our sister state of Michigan.

The grants of land for university purposes to each of these states were equal. In Michigan, the legislature, as a first step, advanced to its university the sum of $100,000 for buildings, which has since become a gift. In addition to this sum, that state gives annually, from its treasury, the sum of $15,000, to be added to the large income of its university fund. At the same time it has been giving $20,000 yearly for the running expenses of its Agricultural Col

lege, besides other liberal appropriations. The legislature, at its last session, gave to this college $70,000 for two years expenses and to erect a building. Under the liberal encouragement of the state, an institution has grown up at Ann Arbor, which in some respects is at the head of all colleges in the country, and is a just source of pride, not only to the citizens of the state, but of the country.

In comparison with this, let us see what our own state has done, or rather has not done for its own university.

Section 6, of article 10, of our state constitution, ordains as follows:

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The proceeds of all lands that have been or hereafter may be granted by the United States to the state for the support of a university, shall be and remain a perpetual fund, to be called the 'university fund,' the interest of which shall be appropriated to the support of the State University."

It is clear that the framers of our State constitution held it to be the duty of the State to provide not only a site but buildings for a University; but in direct violation of the above constitutional provision, the legislatures of 1857, '59 and '61, took from the University fund a sum exceeding $100,000, and erected therewith the present College buildings.

The University has also been charged by the State for the management of its funds, an aggregate sum of $11,909 83, which has been taken from its funds and paid into the treasury of the State.

For two years past the State has paid annually to the University the sum of $7,303 76, as interest on the money taken ten years ago for erecting the buildings, making altogether $14,607 52.

The difference between this last sum and the amount paid to the State for clerk hire is $2,697 69, and is the total amount that the State has ever given to the University.

It is almost a matter of wonder that, under this illiberality on the part of the state towards its chief educational institution, that we have even a creditable university in existence; and if to-day we have such an institution, what may it not become in a few years under such fostering care as other states show to their universities?