5i2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



ley's " Idols " ; you may find it undisguised in Mr. Dooley's satire, and 

 dramatically staged in " Stover at Yale." Parents are uneasy about 

 the value of it all when their sons are in college (parenthetically with 

 some one's else daughters) ; their worldly employers question it more 

 pragmatically when college days are over. Alumni are divided be- 

 tween an indulgent retrospective loyalty and the enlightenment of 

 maturer wisdom. All this smoke points to a constantly smouldering 

 dissatisfaction, bursting occasionally into a flame of protest. Doubtless 

 the causes of the situation so variously complained of, like the causes 

 of the high rate of living, are both deep and wide. Yet it seems clear 

 that things would not have drifted so rapidly nor so far, if the machin- 

 ery of the university had been made more directly responsive to the 

 educational sentiment. It is not so much a question of conservative 

 or liberal, of standpatter or progressive. It is a question of a proper 

 perspective and of the power to enforce it — of foreground and back- 

 ground, of what shall be put first and what second and what last. 



Further illustration would encroach upon complex scholastic matters. 

 One group of issues centers about the manner in which the university 

 ideal is to be maintained while meeting and yet resisting the public 

 pressure, or directing it to fruitful channels; for the university should 

 be at once responsive and responsible. The several legitimate influ- 

 ences bearing upon educational provisions, whether publicly or privately 

 supported, should have avenues of expression and of enforcement. 

 Their adjustment is a delicate matter in which the representation of 

 opinion and the disposition of authority will be both just and wise if 

 the several factors are given due order of precedence. It is a question 

 requiring argument, but must here be dismissed with the conviction 

 that the academic representation is far too slight and unauthoritative, 

 that the evils developed and others in the making are largely due to 

 the overshadowing of academic by administrative interests. All this is 

 but natural. Let any one of a group of interacting factors gain a head- 

 way, and the acquired momentum accumulates about it further ag- 

 grandizement unless opposed by rival forces. This type of greatness 

 comes both by birthright of office, is achieved by set purpose, and is 

 thrust upon the conspicuous recipient. Add to this the natural heed- 

 lessness exemplified in a prosperous and expanding environment — so 

 pointedly shown in the exploitation of natural resources, now checked 

 by the movement for conservation — and it becomes clear how sound 

 policy has been sacrificed to temporary expediency, to the desire to get 

 things done, to the neglect of the criterion of quality that in the end 

 makes or mars. Think of the superfluous ease with which colleges and 

 universities have been sprinkled over the land, and the misguided zeal 

 of local ambition, and the passion for quick returns ; and how inevitably 

 must academic interests suffer under such pressure, how inevitable that 

 administrators should seize and hold the reign of government to the 



