II.

Academic Career

Wilson forsook law in 1883 to study political science at Johns Hopkins University and received a Ph.D. in 1886. After teaching at Bryn Mawr College, near Philadelphia, and at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, he joined the Princeton faculty in 1890. His first book, Congressional Government (1885), became a classic political analysis and was followed by six other works. Chosen president of Princeton in 1902, Wilson tried to establish a tutorial system that would provide individual instruction for students in addition to lecture courses and to divide the university into colleges modelled on those at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge in England. He also tried to limit the role of Princeton's undergraduate clubs. His forceful approach and the reforms he proposed aroused alumni opposition.