320 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



to do so. Of all men, too, they are least likely to run to the president 

 with either complaints or defences, or to take any measures to " make 

 themselves solid " with him. If they are being undermined or traduced 

 by any one, whether on the outside or among their younger and more 

 ambitious and place-seeking colleagues, they are even unlikely to know 

 anything about it, so busy are they in their own work; or if they do 

 know about it, they are not unlikely to scorn to pay any attention 

 to it. But if no action touching the professional standing of any mem- 

 ber of the faculties could be taken on the initiative or recommendation 

 of the president alone, there is little doubt that this kind of maladminis- 

 tration would occur much more infrequently. 



Indeed, it would seem as though this one contention did not require 

 prolonged or subtle argumentation. Granted even that " the cotton- 

 mill policy " is suitable for the administration of a great university : yet 

 the head of this form of industrial enterprise ought to be, as a " boss," 

 no lest strictly limited than the bosses in other no more important or 

 intricate industrial enterprises. This is the one thing that the labor 

 unions are most vigorously and most righteously insisting upon — 

 namely, that there shall be some adequate and trustworthy means of 

 employers and employees coming near, in a frank and friendly way, 

 to each other. 



But of all the objections to the continuance without change of the 

 present system of administration in the great universities, the most 

 weighty and imperative is this : it is one of the most productive of the 

 several causes which are working together to bring about " the degrada- 

 tion of the professorial office." That this process of degradation is 

 really going on, I ventured to assert in one of the series of articles to 

 which reference has just been made. The response which the assertion 

 called forth at the time went a long way toward confirming the opinion. 

 Careful inquiry into the history of the last decade of collegiate and uni- 

 versity moveihents would, I am sure, show that the process has in the 

 meantime not been checked. It is the rather to be feared that it has 

 gone forward with a quickened pace. The causes of this process do 

 indeed chiefly lie beyond and below the power of any form of manage- 

 ment largely to control. 



Let us briefly consider the case of the young man who decides to 

 devote his life to a university career. The more intelligent and deliber- 

 ate the decision is, the later it is likely to have come in the course of 

 his secondary education. But under the working of the system of 

 almost unlimited electives which has prevailed in our higher institu- 

 tions of learning during the past half -generation or more, the candidate 

 for a future professorship is almost certain to discover that he has 

 neglected to lay the foundations of any particular subject solidly and 

 thoroughly well. He knows no elements, as the elements of every 

 species of science and scholarship must be known, in order to proceed 



