UNIVERSITY CONTROL 391 



of the president, but in the professors he finds only material for ridicule. 

 Teachers as a rule are impractical; faculty meetings seem to be but 

 burlesques, and he clinches his description of unfitness by the broad 

 assertion that faculties can not be entrusted with the selection of pro- 

 fessors. In reading such statements one can not repress amazement 

 that men so efficient as many college professors are in executive work, 

 in political affairs, in corporations of many types, should lose all as soon 

 as they come into contact with their life's work. At the same time he 

 finds comfort in remembering that some important colleges in this 

 country exist to-day only because professors assumed the business bur- 

 den when trustees had thrown it down in despair; and he can not 

 forget that the most successful presidents, judged even from the ordi- 

 nary standpoint of success, were chosen from the faculties of the 

 colleges over which they preside. One is at least safe in asserting that 

 the training of college professors in business matters is quite equal to 

 that of men in the clerical profession, from which so many college 

 presidents have been selected. 



Both trustees and presidents act on the principle that professors 

 need guardians. The college faculties, especially, are practically 

 ignored; little by little their authority has been curtailed until now 

 it extends little beyond the class-room. In some of the larger institu- 

 tions, faculties no longer choose their officers. Faculty meetings in 

 some departments are unimportant affairs, and professors attend them 

 as they perform other unimportant things, because they are on the list 

 of duties. Certainly the meetings are characterized by pointless dis- 

 cussions, but this is due to the presiding officer, the president himself 

 or his representative, who lets go his hold on the tiller and leaves 

 the craft to wander at will. But there is no reason why the discussions 

 should be other than aimless; decisions carry no weight except in 

 matters wholly insignificant. The board of trustees in its innocence is 

 available to correct any erroneous decision. Professor Jastrow refers 

 to a case in which the faculty was informed that its action was a matter 

 of indifference, that the trustees would decide the matter as the presi- 

 dent wished. The writer has learned of another case in which the 

 faculty received no such preliminary information, but was permitted to 

 waste its energies in long and careful consideration of a proposition 

 involving an important principle. Not many days after the decision 

 was reached, the faculty was called together to receive information that 

 their action had been overslaughed by the trustees. How much interest 

 or importance should attach to faculty meetings is not difficult to 

 comprehend. 



Some newspapers have much to say respecting subordination of pro- 

 fessors to millionaires who have given large sums to colleges. The 

 writer has found none of this among professors and he has yet to find 



