314 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



indefinitely more complex and almost totally different conditions of the 

 modern university. Particularly inept in its character and disastrous 

 in its results — so it is claimed — is the relation which the president sus- 

 tains to the different faculties of a great university, and to its trustees 

 or corporation or other governing board. In too many instances, it is 

 claimed, this relation interferes with the perfect understanding and 

 cordial, intelligent cooperation, which should always be maintained 

 between the faculties and the governing board. There can be no doubt 

 that, among the men who know most about the secret working of the 

 present system of university administration in this country, and who 

 are best competent to pass judgment upon it, the need of some change 

 is keenly felt; and if there is as yet too little unanimity of opinion as 

 to what that change should be, there is a fairly uniform agreement that 

 the time for a franker and fuller discussion of the difficult subject has 

 fully come. 



Before saying anything in consideration of the problem itself, I wish 

 to define it — at least so far as this attempt is concerned — somewhat 

 more carefully. In the first place it is evident that the scores of small 

 denominational colleges are not to be reckoned in the same class with 

 the larger private and state institutions which have some valid claim 

 to the title "university." A constitution which worked on the whole 

 so well for them in the older days may continue to work almost equally 

 well under more modern conditions. In their case, the fundamental 

 necessities are such that they can not become anything at all — not to 

 say, anything great — without being for a considerable time under the 

 almost unlimited control of one man, with a corps of a half dozen 

 sympathetic colleagues who are subordinates. It must also be borne 

 in mind, when urging the need of greatly modifying if not totally 

 abolishing the office of president in the larger institutions, that the 

 very importance of the personal element in the successful discharge of 

 this office, can be converted into an argument which counts heavily in 

 opposite directions. Certainly, the office of president in any one of 

 these institutions, under the present system of administration, is no 

 sinecure. He who accepts or holds it may not improperly claim sympa- 

 thetic pity from his friends, and plead with them, if not with the pub- 

 lic, to help him answer the question: "Who is sufficient for these 

 things ? " The answer would have to be : Few indeed are, by natural 

 gifts or by training; and fewer — far fewer — of those who succeed by 

 the current political methods in getting chosen to the position. And as 

 in so many instances the final event makes evident, it would seem more 

 fitting to regard the music and the ribbons, the pomp and the para- 

 phernalia, of the inauguration ceremonies as consecrating a victim for 

 a free-will sacrifice than as raising a deified monarch to a sort of im- 

 perial throne. It is neither becoming nor necessary to the argument 

 to follow the example of a series of articles published not long ago by 



