404 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the same sense of personal ownership ; the same board of trustees, with 

 authority and privileges as in the days when the college was the whole 

 and itself little better than an academy. In other words, we are con- 

 trolling the great university with its thousands of students in many 

 schools, with its many groups offering hundreds of courses, after the 

 fashion which prevailed when there was but one group of courses, 

 arranged expressly with reference to the needs of those looking forward 

 to the clerical profession. The method is not adapted to the condi- 

 tions; as well try to manage the New York Central of to-day by the 

 railroad methods of forty years ago. 



The time has come for a complete reorganization of the system ; the 

 educational work and the business management must be under separate 

 boards, and the boundaries of the provinces should be definite. 



The faculties, each for itself, should control appointments of pro- 

 fessors and instructors; should determine all matters concerning cur- 

 ricula ; should decide questions as to expansion or contraction of work ; 

 should have the final word respecting internal arrangement of build- 

 ings — in short should be the supreme authority in all matters directly 

 affecting the educational work. Matters affecting the work of the uni- 

 versity as a whole should be referred to a council composed of representa- 

 tives from all of the faculties whose determination should be final. In 

 very many institutions most of these powers are still vested in the board 

 of trustees, which means simply that in these matters the whole control 

 is in the hands of one or two members; since no board of trustees 

 can possibly be competent to decide respecting qualifications of candi- 

 dates for professorships or upon changes in curricula, decisions respec- 

 ting these matters are most likely to be rendered in deference to the 

 opinion of some trustee or officer who is suppposed by the rest to know 

 something about them. In other words, the individual trustees have 

 transferred their powers while nominally retaining them. 



The presiding officer of the council, the educational head of the 

 university, should be one who has studied the educational problem from 

 all sides; not necessarily a great scholar in any one department, but a 

 broad scholar, possessing tact and executive force. Such men are not 

 rare, though one may be pardoned for regretting that so many have 

 chosen other professions in preference to that of college president. The 

 faculties should select this officer. 



The trustees should have charge of the financial interests of the 

 institution. In some of our universities, those interests exceed those 

 of some western states; even in less pretentious institutions they are 

 very large. They are sufficient everywhere to require not merely close 

 attention but an amount of business skill and shrewd foresight beyond 

 that demanded by ordinary business of equal extent. The trustees can- 

 not be the architects or the builders; but their work, if confined to its 



