ACADEMIC ASPECTS OF ADMINISTRATION 329 



quent result that there is imposed on the faculty by direct command of 

 the board tedious and humiliating reexaminations of a situation already 

 properly disposed of by suitable committees. The formal statement 

 that educational matters shall be in the hands of the faculty is for the 

 most part evasive or ineffective. Since most matters have both aspects 

 — financial and educational — and since the faculty can not or does not 

 determine what measures it prefers to consider, its influence in these 

 directions varies from a conceded control so long as no opposition is 

 evidenced, to something merely nominal. 



Such externalism of government more than any single influence has 

 brought about the growth of another peculiarly American institution — 

 the university president. I need not enlarge upon the heroic propor- 

 tions which this majestic figure has assumed among us. It has led a 

 professor, sympathetic with the present plea, to say that the American 

 university has a Brobdignagian president and a Liliputian faculty. 

 Professor Stratton regards the organization as derived from that of a 

 colonial corporation — the financial control reserved by an absentee 

 board in the home country, and the president representing the governor 

 sent to the colony to direct its concerns. This historical setting may 

 invest the organization with some interest, but it can not divest it of 

 its dangers, nor does it account for its continuance and emphasis. Let 

 me cite from the article to which I refer : In a country that politically 

 is most jealous of democratic rights, "university government has 

 assumed a form that we might have expected to see in a land accus- 

 tomed to kings. European universities have a constitution that might 

 have come from some American political theorist; American universi- 

 ties are as though founded and fostered in the bourne of aristocracy ." 

 " The American university president holds a place unique in the his- 

 tory of higher education. He is a ruler responsible to no one whom he 

 governs, and he holds for an indefinite term the powers of academic 

 life and death." " The polity that we might call monarchic is thus 

 not only frequent in the new-world colleges, but it is stripping away 

 the few lorn shreds of popular control which still remain among them." 



The state of mind that has entrenched this unsuitable form of gov- 

 ernment so securely may readily be analyzed. The factors contributory 

 to the result are several and diverse. There is a peculiarly democratic 

 distrust of the man who knows. To call a man an expert is almost 

 sufficient ground for a suit for libel. Conversely there is the glorifica- 

 tion of the man who does, without too close examination of the merit 

 of what he does and how he does it. Our captains shall be captains of 

 industry. Business acumen in the popular mythology is Jupiter and 

 Mars and Vulcan compositely, and properly lords it over the affairs of 

 Athena and even of Venus. The Olympian council comfortably settled 

 in revolving chairs in the lofty seclusion of a skyscraper summons 



