STATUS OF AMERICAN COLLEGE PROFESSORS. 751 



has been said elsewhere, have they opportunity to acquire the necessary 

 familiarity after assuming office, for business matters occupy most of 

 the time at board meetings and matters affecting work by the teaching 

 board are largely incidental. It would be strange if the trustee did 

 not regard his board's responsibility as the more important. 



The change for the worse in relations of the boards is due in no 

 small degree to a change in character of the president's duties. That 

 officer is no longer primarily a teacher ; in many of the larger universi- 

 ties he does no teaching, is simply the executive officer; while in many 

 of the smaller institutions he does little teaching because efforts to 

 raise money occupy most of his attention. The chronic impecuniosity 

 of most colleges prevents trustees, when seeking a president, from 

 inquiring closely respecting a candidate's fitness to represent the educa- 

 tional side of the institution; money and more students are the crying 

 needs. The appointee is usually a man of great expectations — on the 

 board's part ; he will find money, gather students, advertise the institu- 

 tion, awaken interest everywhere and convert indifferent alumni into 

 hustling canvassers. But once appointed he is left practically to his 

 own resources, to be praised by the board if he succeed, to be blamed 

 if he fail — a rather uninviting post, whose holder deserves more sym- 

 pathy than is contained in the libel that he has every grace except that 

 of resignation. He has been appointed not to elevate the institution 

 as an educational power, but to make of it a ' big thing.' One may not 

 censure him severely for emphasizing what may be termed the non- 

 educational side or for resorting at times to odd expedients for increas- 

 ing the total of students and instructors ; but the results have been dis- 

 astrous, for thus it has come about that the vast majority of people and 

 the vast majority of prospective students measure an institution not 

 by the character of its instruction or by the fitness of its instructors, 

 but by the mass of its buildings, by the number of students and by its 

 prominence in the semi-professional athletics which so disgrace Amer- 

 ican colleges. 



The president is practically the only source whence the trustees may 

 obtain information respecting internal affairs of the institution, as, 

 with rare exceptions, the faculties have no representatives on or before 

 the corporate board. He is the responsible head, the only element 

 known to the trustees; in the nature of the case, he formulates the 

 business to be presented, so that, if he possess a fair degree of tact, the 

 board merely carries out his wishes. If successful in securing money 

 and students, he is liable to be human enough to forget that he has 

 done this work as the professors have done theirs and to think of him- 

 self as creator with consequent right to control policy and to direct 

 expenditure. Business presented to the trustees is not likely to be such 

 as to encourage great inquisitiveness respecting details of internal 



