During the early 1820’s many students unqualified for the course took preparatory work elsewhere, often at the Hamilton Academy, and then entered a two-year program from which the classics were omitted. In most cases the shorter curriculum was advised only for older students who felt they could not spend the extra year in school.
By 1827 the Executive Committee was considering setting up a special preparatory department, probably because they found that many students with indifferent preparation were greatly handicapped for either the regular or the shorter course. They had in view a non-sectarian academy, open to any young men, but before they took any definite steps they wanted the approval of the Board of the New York Baptist Theological Seminary. The Board vetoed the project on the ground that such an auxiliary to the Seminary, secular in character, might alienate its friends. Accordingly, since concurrence of the New York City Board had been made a requisite for inaugurating the project, the idea was give up.
To meet the actual situation on the campus, however, the Executive Committee in 1829 did provide for a year’s preparatory work and thus expanded the regular course from three to four years. The two-year shorter English course they retained for “those whose age and circumstances” prohibited the longer one. The preparatory work consisted of English grammar, arithmetic, geography, history, and beginning Latin and Greek. In the first year of the regular course, the classics were continued and rhetoric, geometry, natural philosophy, astronomy, and church history added. In the second, Greek was continued and Hebrew and Biblical criticism begun. The third year was devoted to Biblical criticism, exegesis, logic, and intellectual and moral philosophy; the last entirely to systematic and pastoral theology and homiletics. Throughout the course the students had exercises in composition and declamation.
Because of “the demands both on the part of the community and of the students resorting to this Seminary for a more sound and thorough education” the courses offered in 1830 were enriched and in 1833 a college course introduced. The latter change was a momentous departure since it meant the Institution ceased being solely a seminary and was ready to adapt itself to the patterns of a liberal arts program. Five of the most promising students had already left in order to take a full college course elsewhere and ten more were preparing to follow them.
