A Master's Degree

A Master's Degree is a novel by the American writer Margaret Hill McCarter (1860–1938), published in 1913 by A. C. McClurg & Co. of Chicago, with illustrations by W. D. Goldbeck. The story is set on the Kansas prairie at a fictional Sunrise College in the early twentieth century. At the opening, Vincent Burgess, a Greek instructor from Boston, and Vic Burleigh, a country youth raised on a farm by the Walnut River, enter the college on the same day—one from the East, one from the West—and their meeting plants the seed of rivalry and contest that runs through the book. The college president, Lloyd Fenneben (whom the students privately call "Dean Funnybone"), cherishes the ideal of building a true university on the frontier, and struggles to balance academic standards against the realities of a raw pioneer region as he tries to shape rough country boys into learned and principled men. The novel follows Vic Burleigh through four years of college, tracing his studies, labor, friendships, love, and trials, while also depicting the clash of Eastern and Western educational traditions, the mutual shaping of teachers and students, and how one young man grows from an "uncivilized" boy into an adult capable of mastering himself. The book has fifteen chapters, framed by a prologue, "The Meeting," and an epilogue, "The Parting." The language is richly lyrical and regional, with repeated descriptions of prairie sunsets, river valleys, and campus scenery. As an educational coming-of-age novel, it does not aim at complex suspense but unfolds at a slow pace to show the profound influence of education on individual lives and community life.