Woodrow Wilson's ’79 Preceptorial Experiment

President Woodrow Wilson denies the report of the immediate acquisition of a very large endowment for Princeton University, but the report has recalled attention to the most important educational undertaking that has been made in this country for many years. Two or three years ago Dr. Wilson began his experiment at Princeton – an experiment which President Eliot characterized as interesting but expensive. In brief, this experiment had for its object the improvement of scholarship in Princeton by the promotion of an intellectual comradeship between those who studied and those who taught. The plan involved the employment of a very large number of new instructors and a radical change in the methods of the old teaching force. Lectures were not to be discontinued, but they were to be minimized. The members of the faculty were to become preceptors. The students were to be divided into small groups for other purposes than lectures, and to each group was to be assigned a preceptor. This was the adoption of a modified Oxford method. The preceptor and his group were to dwell together at certain hours in order to talk over the studies and the reading of the students. The meetings are held in classroom and seminar rooms, but chiefly in the rooms or at the house of the preceptor, who tries to make himself one of the group, his object being mainly to interest these young minds in the subject which he is teaching them. This teaching is intensive cultivation.

It has helped the University.

As an experiment in teaching, Mr. Wilson’s effort has been a distinct success and educators throughout the country recognize the immense value that his administration has already been to Princeton. The University stands much higher among its kindred institutions than it has ever stood before, and as one of the more prominent of the university men has well said, it is because Woodrow Wilson has shown himself to be an “educational statesman.” The demonstration that the plan would work came quickly. The problem of all higher education in this country is to interest the students in intellectual things, and those who are familiar with Princeton of today and are able to compare its young men with their predecessor realize that the close companionship established between preceptors and students has done more for the arousing of this interest than any other plan that has been attempted in this country. For some time the only question has been one of money. The great expenses of the scheme have been met by annual subscriptions, which Mr. Wilson has hoped would be capitalized.

This was originally published in the March 9, 1907 issue of PAW.