458 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



subject to the approval of the trustees. Finally, no member of the 

 teaching force should be liable to discharge except after the filing of 

 formal charges of impeachment, and a trial before the entire faculty, 

 and the concurrence of the president and two thirds of the faculty in 

 sustaining the charges alleged. Some such system as this, arranged to 

 place every responsibility on the shoulders of those best equipped to 

 meet it, and safeguarding against the misuse of power by an adequate 

 system of checks and balances, would eliminate most of the evils inci- 

 dent to the present system of American college organization. 



It may be objected that the budget would be a fruitful source of fac- 

 ulty discord. Some discord might, indeed, exist, but it is a fair ques- 

 tion whether discord is not preferable to intrigue. Were it not better 

 for a professor to go into faculty meeting and fight for the weal of his 

 department openly, than to enter a private office and lobby for it 

 secretly. In colleges, as in politics, publicity is a strong incentive to 

 decency. The present system is one of secrecy, intrigue and deceit. The 

 president, who holds the key to the situation, lacks the necessary special 

 knowledge of the departments and their needs, and the securing of funds 

 by the various professors becomes largely a competitive test in the mat- 

 ter of sycophancy. It were better to have all such matters threshed out 

 in open meeting, with the data in question before the faculty. In the 

 end its decisions would be fair and just. Here, as elsewhere, the prin- 

 ciple of democracy will work if given half a chance. 



Finally, to the charge that the proposition here offered is too radical, 

 let us make answer by advising all doubters to study carefully the organ- 

 ization of the colleges of Oxford and the universities of Germany. 



When one college shall have adopted the plan here suggested of 

 transferring to the faculty the functions that are rightfully and nat- 

 urally theirs, and limiting both trustees and president to their natural 

 functions, a new and brighter era will have begun in the history of 

 American education. The standard of collegiate instruction will at once 

 rise many degrees, the college teacher will become a more useful mem- 

 ber of society, as will also the college president, harmony instead of dis- 

 cord will reign among the three branches of the college government, and 

 all three will be in a position to make a united and effective attack on 

 the educational problems that are calling for solution. For when one 

 institution shall have changed, others will soon follow, and in time our 

 entire college system will re-form itself in accordance with the dictates 

 of true wisdom, and along the lines of true democracy. 



