THE CASE OF HARVARD COLLEGE 613 



work. But if the points for the degree are weighted as well as counted, 

 the able student or the diligent student will make more rapid progress. 

 If he can do in two or three years the work for which the poorer student 

 requires four years, there is no reason why he should not go forward to 

 the professional or graduate school. It would also be just and a proper 

 stimulus to let good students pay lower and poor students higher fees 

 in proportion to the quality of their work. The good students who 

 profit themselves and contribute to a better spirit in the institution 

 should receive a larger part of the subsidy contributed for college educa- 

 tion, while the students who learn but little and may be a public 

 nuisance should not be supported at college at public expense. 



But the best reward for scholarly work is adequate recognition of 

 the work as preparation for a career in life. At Columbia University 

 a man takes his doctor's degree at the average age of 27 years. He is 

 fortunate if he receives immediately an instructorship at $1,000 a year ; 

 the increments of salary are $100 a year for ten years, so that at the 

 age of 37 he receives a salary of $2,000. In a commercial community 

 the imagination is not stirred by such figures. The university is a 

 parasite on the scholarly impulse instead of a stimulus to it. 



The first need of our universities and colleges is great men for 

 teachers. In order that the best men may be drawn to the academic 

 career, it must be attractive and honorable. The professorship was 

 inherited by us as a high office which is now being lowered. Professors 

 and scholars are not sufficiently free or sufficiently well paid, so there 

 is a lack of men who deserve to be highly rewarded, and we are in 

 danger of sliding down the lines of a vicious spiral, until we reach the 

 stage where the professor and his scholarship are not respected because 

 they are not respectable. 



I should myself prefer to see the salaries, earnings and conveyings 

 of others cut down rather than to have the salaries of professors 

 greatly increased. When a criminal lawyer — to use the more inclusive 

 term for corporation lawyer — receives a single fee of $800,000, our 

 civilization is obviously complicated. Every professor who is as able 

 as this lawyer and who does work more important for society can not 

 be paid a million dollars a year. But neither is it necessary to pay 

 him so little that he can not do his work or educate his children. I 

 recently excused myself somewhat awkwardly for not greeting promptly 

 the wife of a colleague by saying that men could not be expected to 

 recognize women because they changed their frocks. She replied: 

 " The wives of professors don't." It is better to have wit than frocks ; 

 but in the long run they are likely to be found together. 



The first step of a really great university president would be to 

 refuse to accept a larger salary than is paid to the professors. The 

 second step would be to make himself responsible to the faculty in- 



