the bulletin of Atlanta University, 1895 no. 67

              NUMBER 67.    [entered as]    ATLANTA, GEORGIA.   [2d class matter]   OCTOBER,   1895. CHARTERED 1867.     OPENED  1869. Rev.  Horace Bumstead, D.  D., President. Thos. N. Chase, Dean and Treasurer. --------- Number of Students last year, 217.   Officers and Teachers, 17. Four Large Brick Buildings.    Sixty-five Acres of Land. Location in Atlanta, Ga., one Mile from Centre. --------- Atlanta University is a Christian Institution, unsectarian in its management and influence, governed by an independent Board of Trustees, and receiving no public or society grant. It has College, Normal, and College Preparatory courses. --------- It is chartered for " the Christian education of youth," without distinction, but present conditions limit its work almost wholly to the Negro. --------- Industrial training is given to the boys in carpentry, black-smithing, mechanical and architectural drawing, and printing ; and to the girls in cooking, sewing, dressmaking, printing, nursing the sick, and general household science. For the present, productive industry is not aimed at, but the manual training system is followed for the boys. --------- All students pay tuition, those in the College course two dollars, all others one dollar and a half, a month. These charges necessarily fall far short of meeting the actual cost of the instruction. --------- Boarding students pay ten dollars a month for their board, room, fuel, lights, and washing. They also give an hour of productive labor every day to the Institution. --------- Tuition scholarships of $40 annually are needed for all students, to meet the actual cost of instruction in excess of the tuition fees. These scholarships do not aid the student to pay his charges to the Institution, but they enable the Institution to make the charges low enough for the majority of the students to pay. --------- An endowment fund of $500,000 would provide for the present work so as to render tuition scholarships unnecessary ; and contributions to such an endowment are earnestly solicited. An income of at least $25,000 annually is needed from tuition scholarships and general subscriptions to maintain th e present unendowed work. --------- We aim to co-operate with and supplement the educational work that is done by the Southern States, by supplying well trained teachers for common schools and other training schools. We are also helping to establish an educated ministry, and are training other leaders of the people, and especially by the education of women are improving the home life of the Negro and making it wherever our influence is felt, a fountain of good to all to whom it may extend. --------- Two-thirds of all the living graduates of Atlanta University's College and Normal courses are now engaged in teaching.     Total member of Graduates, 285. --------- Hundreds of former students, in addition to the graduates, are also engaged in teaching, together with a large number of undergraduates still pursuing their studies. It is estimated that not less than 15,000 children are annually taught by the past and present students of Atlanta University. --------- A thoroughly educated class of young people is thus being trained up among the Negroes of the South, and by it the whole mass will eventually be leavened. Self-respect, ambition, hope, courage, and progress, are thus supplied to a race that, left to itself, will be largely ignorant, poor, and vicious, — a menace to public safety. --------- The religious training of the University is unsectarian but earnestly Christian. The development of individual character is made of the first importance in instruction and discipline. The thought of service for others is constantly inculcated, and the missionary spirit developed and strengthened. Two-thirds or more of all the students are members of some church, and only a very few have ever been graduated from the Institution without having begun the Christian life. --------- The principle of self-help on the part of the student is rigidly insisted on. Only in the rarest cases does any student receive beneficiary aid to an extent exceeding his own cash payments. --------- Contrary to the popular impression, the highest and most thorough educational work develops the most self help. The students of Atlanta University, by the development of superior intellectual and moral power, are doing more to meet the cost of their education than they could possibly do by any attempt to utilize their manual labor in productive industries while pursuing their studies. The proof of this is seen in the fact that the cash payments of the students have of late years amounted to about one-third of the current expenses of the year.