UNIVERSITY CONTROL. 403 



side, because the writer is more familiar with its changes during the 

 last thirty-five years; but the condition is serious enough for incum- 

 bents of many chairs not scientific. Men in most of the American 

 colleges and universities are badly handicapped by routine work; not 

 that too many hours are spent in actual teaching, but as a rule the teach- 

 ing covers too many things, while too much is expected or required 

 outside of purely college duties. The condition is unfortunate for the 

 world, which no longer reaps the fruit of college men's work as inves- 

 tigators; but it is many times more unfortunate for the student. To 

 be a thorough educator, the college instructor must possess the instinct 

 and the experience of an investigator, otherwise he cannot train men 

 to think. The present method of utilizing professors tends to convert 

 them into superficial purveyors of second-hand knowledge; it must 

 lead to decay in our educational system which has owed its virility to 

 professors who were independent thinkers because they were thorough 

 investigators. 



The condition is serious, so serious as to inspire hope for the future. 

 Many suggestions have been presented, most of them good but almost all 

 of them premature. Changes more radical than any yet proposed must 

 be made before those suggestions can be considered. 



American colleges have still to contend with two fundamental diffi- 

 culties — poverty and an ancient method of control. 



A college professor can hardly administer the remedy for poverty, 

 but he may suggest what is on the surface. There are too many 

 colleges which ought to be merely academies, too many which should 

 be high schools, too many so-called universities which ought to be mod- 

 est colleges, and there are enough of true universities to supply the 

 country 's need for a long time. Unquestionably, coalition in some cases 

 and consolidation in others would go far toward relieving the stress ; but 

 consideration of even this matter is premature, for a radical change in 

 the method of control must be brought about before either coalition or 

 consolidation can become possible. 



Originally, in most of our institutions, the college was the only 

 school under control of the degree-granting corporation and the profes- 

 sional schools which grew up around it had but a nominal connection, 

 managing their own affairs, both educational and financial. But the 

 college is no longer the all-important portion of our universities; pro- 

 fessional, technical and scientific schools, some of them in part repla- 

 cing the college, predominate and all are actually, as well as nominally, 

 under one corporate control. The college itself is not the school of 

 thirty-five years ago; the whole system of training has been changed, 

 and there is offered not a narrow but a broad education. Yet one finds 

 in control' of the vast institution the same president as in the olden 

 time, with powers like those of an academy principal and often with 



