556 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



THE AMEEICAN COLLEGE, AS IT LOOKS FEOM 



THE INSIDE 



By Professob CHARLES HART HANDSCHIN 



MIAMI UNITEESITY 



THE future of higher education in America depends upon the 

 position we shall grant to the college and university professor. 

 The growing conception that the faculty — not buildings, nor advertise- 

 ments, nor pyrotechnic display — but the faculty, makes the school is 

 bound eventually to be accepted. 



But before a faculty can make a school, it must be a real collegium, 

 a corporation of teachers, besides whom everything and every one in 

 the school is insignificant, their wards excepted, who, however, are 

 wards. 



On the other hand, it is all very well for professors to talk about 

 being the big part of the show, bigger than the students, the equip- 

 ment and the administration. We believe they should be, but we do 

 not believe they should be, unless they are. A weak faculty can not 

 direct the course of a school nor wisely elect additional members to 

 their own body. 



To qualify to do this, there must be, first, thorough scholarship — 

 not $800 to $2,000-a-year scholarship, but $2,500 to $5,000-a-year learn- 

 ing. A mercenary view, you say. Granted. But it is the only one 

 that has any weight with the majority of your good constituency. In 

 our day a professor, as well as any other man, is respected according to 

 the salary he can command. Gainsay it who can. 



But you say, " Where does the college professor's idealism come 

 in ? " Why, it doesn't come in ; it's gone, and you drove it out of the 

 back door. You have respected him as he has been able to have a fine 

 house, and all talk of his working for the love of learning — and poverty 

 - — is fol-de-rol. $2,500 to $5,000-a-year scholarship it must be, or be 

 held in disdain by the butcher, the baker and the candlestick-maker, 

 and any one else who can " sport " a " machine " and dress his women 

 folk in the latest creations. 



But beyond scholarship the faculty needs a sense of dignity as a 

 body. Professors, as a rule, nowadays, are not overburdened with per- 

 sonal dignity. In our democratic rage to level all classes downward, 

 we have levelled the college professor from his one-time dignified man- 

 ner and station to the niveau of the untrained and unfinished student 

 and the unmannered and illiterate townsman. Your professor slaps 

 his darky laborer on the back with the manner of a pal, he addresses 

 his students as " fellows," he puts his feet upon the table in his class- 



