1925, the admission of freshmen was placed in the hands of the registrar of the University, subject, of course, to the regulations of the faculty of the College.
In the last years of President Burton's administration, new opportunities were made available for superior students. At the May meeting of the faculty in 1924, the Department of English and the Department of History presented plans of honors courses which would permit students of unusual capacity and ability to carry on independent work during the last year or two. During 1924-25 the interest of the faculty in honors courses was stimulated by the report of the dean on the conference on honors courses which was held at the University of Iowa. A reading course in economics for seniors was also proposed, to permit a small group to correlate their study and reading in economics and its allied fields. During the next year, a similar reading course in sociology was authorized for selected students.
The privilege of condensing the work for the bachelor of arts degree by means of a combined course of study was extended (1924) to students preparing for postgraduate study in the School of Business Administration.
The proliferation of departments of the College continued throughout the administrations of President Burton and of President Little (see Part I: Little Administration) . In 1923-24 the Department of Geology was divided into the separate units of geology and geography. During the next year a new department of instruction, the Department of Library Science, which had been authorized by the Regents, was included in the scope of the College by unanimous vote of the faculty. Students entering this curriculum were required to have ninety hours of college work with an average of 1.33 honor points per credit hour and a reading knowledge of two foreign languages.
From the foregoing description of the development of the instructional facilities of the University it should be evident that most of the separate professional schools and colleges began as chairs of instruction within the Literary Department, and that, as their subject matter became more complex and as they became of greater importance to the development of the commonwealth, they finally were established as independent units of the University. Classes in pharmaceutical chemistry were added to the curriculum of the Department of Chemistry in 1868. The demand for this instruction in the training of prospective pharmacists increased rapidly until the School of Pharmacy was established as a separate unit of the University in 1876 under Albert B. Prescott, the Dean. The School improved the quality of its instruction in this very essential professional field until it was recognized as one of the foremost in the country.
Postgraduate education at the University has, since its inception, been intimately associated with instruction in the undergraduate college. This relationship between the two types of instruction is one which must be expected to continue, inasmuch as the same professor will give courses in elementary physics and in research and electronics. There was very little graduate study carried on at the University prior to 1878, except in the Departments of Chemistry and Astronomy. In 1892 graduate instruction was placed under the control of an administrative council, chosen from the faculty of liberal arts. Training for advanced degrees was thus included as a part of the instructional program of this department until 1912, when the Graduate School was established, and Professor Karl E. Guthe, who had been Professor of Physics, was appointed the first Dean. This separate existence of the Graduate School recognized the increase in graduate work
