39 o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



have had thorough training as a college professor, it is possible for him 

 to retain some touch with the educational side ; but if, as is usually the 

 case, he have had no such training, his interest in educational matters 

 is apt to become purely academic. And such a condition is fully in 

 accord with the popular notion respecting the president's duties; the 

 position needs a man of great executive capacity, great energy, magnetic 

 personality, capable of keeping himself in public view, so as to adver- 

 tise the university, to attract students and to increase the resources. 

 Recently a new president was chosen for a promising young college. 

 Interviews with trustees and others appeared promptly in the news- 

 papers stating that with this man's magnetism, the institution will have 

 a million dollars and a thousand students within ten years — not a word 

 about education or elevation of grade. A notable illustration is the fre- 

 quent reference to President Roosevelt as the proper successor to 

 President Eliot of Harvard — though every thoughtful man at all 

 familiar with university needs and objects must recognize that Presi- 

 dent Eoosevelt, with all his remarkable ability, has not the qualifications 

 required for control of a university, large or small. 



Yet this officer, becoming every year less and less fitted to preside 

 over educational affairs, becomes each year more firmly fixed as auto- 

 crat, for, if at all successful in raising money, he. soon develops into the 

 administration. The trustees may be restless, when ignored, but that 

 is unimportant, for they know very little about the institution, while 

 ordinarily the trespass upon their prerogative is so gradual that no 

 new advance is sufficient to justify decisive action. The president, 

 originally a lawyer, clergyman or business man, has sole power over 

 appointments of professors, over the fixing of their salaries and over 

 the curriculum itself, for he may establish a new chair at any time. It 

 is not too much to say that the office of college president, as it exists 

 in most of our colleges and universities, is the great menace to higher 

 education in America. 



Effect on the professors. — The all-essential portion of the univer- 

 sity is the teaching staff; it does the work for which the college or 

 university was founded ; all other portions of the organization, trustees, 

 president and ' what not ' were intended for the encouragement and 

 strengthening of this staff. Under the American system, the relations 

 have been reversed. 



There seems to be a deliberate attempt to convince the community 

 that college professors are singularly child-like in simplicity and in 

 lack of business capacity. One president has dilated on the unworld- 

 liness of college professors, and has left the impression that he thinks 

 low salaries not altogether bad as they tend to encourage high thinking 

 and indifference to worldly affairs. Another describes the ideal trustee 

 in glowing terms, he stands transfixed while contemplating the majesty 



