THE 



POPULAR SCIENCE 

 MONTHLY 



NOVEMBER, 1906 



UNIVERSITY CONTROL 1 



By Professor J. J. STEVENSON 



NEW YORK UNIVERSITY 



A MPLE justification for further consideration of problems connect- 

 -£-*- ed with university control exists in the vastness of the interests 

 concerned. The commissioner of education, in his last report, states 

 that in the United States there are 607 colleges and universities, with 

 almost 22,000 instructors and approximately 118,000 students; with 

 property, real and personal, valued at $465,000,000 and an income 

 in 1901 of $40,000,000. All recognize that the management of our 

 colleges and universities as purely business enterprises is almost beyond 

 reproach; but there is no such consensus of opinion respecting the 

 administration of the trust itself, many believing that this is wasteful 

 and inefficient, while some seem ready to assert that good faith has 

 not been kept toward donors, many of whom had no definite concep- 

 tion of the work for which their money was given, but had confidence 

 in the wisdom, integrity and qualifications of those to whom they 

 entrusted the gifts. 



The American university is a corporation managed by a board of 

 trustees, often self-perpetuating, which, according to the state law, 

 controls all details of management. The vast material interests have 

 made necessary a separation of business affairs from those of educa- 

 tional work and control over the latter has been concentrated in the 

 hands of a president, who gradually became director of the whole 

 organization, determining not only its educational policy, but also, in 



1 Articles bearing upon this subject have appeared recently by Presidents 

 Draper and Pritchett in the Atlantic Monthly, by Mr. J. B. Monroe and Pro- 

 fessor Jastrow in Science, by Professor Cattell in Science and the Independent, 

 and by Professor Stevenson in the Popular Science Monthly, all of which 

 have been utilized in preparation of this article. 



vol. lxix. — 25. 



