In an address on "American Standards of Education," given before the American Association for the Advancement of Science,1 Elmer Ellsworth Brown, United States Commissioner of Education, calls attention to the many efforts, mostly since 1900, made to standardize educational institutions in this country.
The fixing of standards is properly a state function; but no attempts were made by any state to standardize its educational institutions until 1892, when New York adopted a standard requiring that any institution to be ranked as a college (medical colleges seem to have been excepted) should have at least six professors giving their entire time to college and university work, that it should give a four-year course of studies of college grade, that it should require for admission four years of highschool work, and that it should have resources of at least $500,000, together with suitable provision for buildings, furniture, equipment and proper maintenance.