THE ADMINISTRATIVE PERIL IN EDUCATION 511 



wares on his counter. It is difficult to have one e) r e on popularity and 

 the other on scholarship and retain a concentrated attention. A con- 

 fessional questionnaire upon the motives operative in electing studies 

 would reveal family secrets, difficult to reconcile with the lofty pro- 

 visions and disinterested opportunities of the catalogue. 



Involved in this rivalry, friendly in appearance, deadly in effect, is 

 the intrusion of over-practical, quasi-professional interests, to the dis- 

 paragement of discipline and cultural ideals. It is as though the course 

 of the ship of education were determined by consulting the passengers. 

 Advertising looms large and boosts the bigness that brings revenues 

 and responds to administrative ambitions. The general consequence, 

 I contend, is that the policies pursued, the measures adopted, that de- 

 termine what students do at college and how they do it, and what they 

 fail to do, neither truly nor adequately reflect the intent, the wisdom, 

 the influence of those to whom they rightly look for guidance. Let me 

 concede at once that some of the above trends are within limits legiti- 

 mate and helpful, and again that in considerable measure they are not 

 wholly or predominantly due to the administrative influence. None the 

 less the administrative emphasis must be charged with a large respon- 

 sibility for the excess to which the natural derogations of youth have 

 been permitted to expand. 5 The administrators have held the balance 

 of power; they have ruled by overruling; or by yielding where resist- 

 ance was demanded. If theirs is the pride, theirs is also the shame. 



There can be no doubt that college life is generally and severely 

 criticized. The perspective of student activities seems to the casual 

 as to the close observer sadly out of joint; and this extends to more 

 than the fact that for news of the colleges one must turn to the prismatic 

 sporting pages of enterprising dailies. The query whether the col- 

 legiate side-shows have not eclipsed the business carried on in the main 

 tent, if carried further, may lead to similar revelations as to the altered 

 spirit of the performance in the academic arena. The arraignment is 

 long and severe : students have no intellectual interests, no application, 

 no knowledge of essentials, no ability to apply what they assimilate; 

 they are flabby, they dawdle, they fritter and frivol, they contemn the 

 grind, they miseducate the studious, they seek proficiency in stunts, they 

 drift to the soft and circumvent the hard ; undertrained and overtaught, 

 they are coddled and spoon-fed and served where they should be 

 serving; and they get their degree for a quality of work which in an 

 office would cost them their jobs. You may read it seriously and im- 

 pressively set down in Mr. Flexner's " The American College " ; you 

 may read it no less forcibly if more indulgently recorded in Mr. Gay- 



5 Since writing these words Mr. Owen Johnston has set forth in no uncertain 

 temper the "Shame of the Colleges" in terms of undergraduate dissipation, 

 not as ominous in its physical extravagance as in its intellectual waste. It is 

 the undergraduate distortion of perspective that is the source of despair, and for 

 which the academic authorities must accept a considerable responsibility. 



