UNIVERSITY CONTROL 393 



quently by college presidents in their appeals to generously-inclined 

 people that the ' poor professor ' is almost a byword. In truth the 

 professor is often poor enough, but he is not guilty of exploiting his 

 poverty or of seeking praise for self-abnegation. In any event, he has 

 profited little from large gifts, which too often take the shape of 

 buildings, thereby increasing the running expenses and endangering the 

 already too small salaries. There is, indeed, sign of awakening con- 

 science, for one day last summer it was announced that a college had 

 received a considerable sum of money and that the salaries would be 

 increased at once. Harvard has received a great sum, whose income is 

 to be devoted solely to endowment; while the presidents of two other 

 great universities have announced that increase of salaries is the most 

 urgent need. It must be remembered, however, that these universities 

 are in large cities, where the salaries, though counting large in dollars, 

 have comparatively small purchasing power. Five thousand dollars in 

 New York city is actually less than two thousand in many a college 

 town, while two thousand dollars in that city means living in condi- 

 tions incredibly narrow to dwellers in villages. This matter of salary 

 is, however, relatively unimportant. The all important matter for 

 consideration is the insignificant position of the professor in the 

 organism of which he is the all-important element. These words are 

 written with due deliberation. During his almost forty years of service, 

 the writer has seen the gradual evolution of the president in American 

 colleges and the resulting decadence of the professor. 



Effect on Higher Education. — The American university is a great 

 business corporation, conducted on business principles. The sense of 

 ownership is as marked in president and trustees as though the corpora- 

 tion had been formed to make drugs or to build ships and they held all 

 the stock. Within a few months, we have seen the spectacle of two 

 educational corporations endeavoring to unite their properties under one 

 control, though the faculties were opposed to the union. Intervention 

 by the courts was necessary to prevent consummation of the deal. A 

 few years earlier, negotiations of somewhat similar character were con- 

 ducted between two other institutions, without any reference whatever 

 to the faculties' opinion — properly enough, too, if, as stated by one of 

 the trustees, the professors are merely employees of the corporation. 

 The justification for such procedure is that men outside of boards of 

 instruction see things from a higher plane than do those inside. One 

 must refrain from commenting on this plea. 



The anxiety to have the corporation do a big business makes number 

 of matriculants quite as important, to say the least, as the character of 

 instructors or instruction. Summer schools, at first mere incidents, are 

 now recognized parts of several universities, and even modest colleges 

 are not without them. They are important, affording opportunity for 



