UNIVERSITY EXTENSION

a development of higher education through lectures and. cla es conducted by profe ors outside a university. Cambridge (Eng.) began the practice in 1873 of sending her profe ors out to give popular instruction on university themes at the suggestion of mechanics’ institutes, which sought university aid in manufacturing towns for the higher education of workers. University extension lectures and cla es thereafter became highly popular. Leading institutions followed the initiative of Cambridge, but it required some years’ experimenting before a well-defined method was shaped and established. In 1890 the movement became established in the United States, when the American Society for the Extension of University Teaching was formed in Philadelphia. This body formed a channel through which college or university profe ors lecture on most subjects included in a regular curriculum. The university extension department of the University of Chicago, opened in 1892, really inaugurated the method in the United States, utilizing lecturers who devoted all their time to extension work beyond the university walls. Extension work later became a feature of numerous educational ins tutu tions. It has set a high standard for literary and scientific lecturers, and has brought a large public jn to more intimate sympathy with universities and colleges with a consequent stimulation of interest in higher education among those the movement sought to reach.