ACADEMIC ASPECTS OF ADMINISTRATION 337 



These earnest words of endorsement and appeal will serve at once to 

 make it plain that the issue upon which I speak is a most serious one, 

 and that I look upon it with no extreme or wholly individual obliquity 

 of vision or personal despondency. I feel, indeed, that on a small 

 canvas, but with large import, I have ventured to sketch the one 

 supreme educational problem of the immediate future. Believing it 

 also to be a practical problem, to be approached in stages of progress — 

 stages always in their essence determined by principle, though meas- 

 urably shaped by expediency — I have reserved for the last some con- 

 siderations of possible reform. 



And first, defensively, let us not dwell unduly upon the incompe- 

 tence, the conservatism, the inadequacy in practical affairs, of faculty 

 men. It is hardly consistent to ascribe these qualities indiscriminately 

 to the men of the academy, and then for the most part to find in this 

 group the very persons who develop with experience into efficient 

 administrators. As a class, professors are able to take a helpful share 

 in the shaping and carrying out of measures conducive to educational 

 welfare. Their practical insufficiency is a result, not an excuse, for 

 the present system. This has not been overlooked by other writers. 



We appear at present to be between the Scylla of presidential autocracy 

 and the Charybdis of faculty and trustee incompetence. The more incompetent 

 the faculties become, the greater is the need of executive autocracy of the presi- 

 dent, and the greater the autocracy of the president, the more incompetent do 

 the faculties become (Cattell). 



And from another: 



But was there ever a more vicious circle of argument than that which 

 defends the persistence in a system productive of such unfortunate results by 

 urging that the personnel of the profession has now been brought so low that 

 the restoration of its inherent rights would entail disastrous consequences? 

 (Dial.) 



Once given their due professional responsibility, academic men will 

 develop — as is abundantly evidenced in the conduct of laboratories and 

 departmental affairs — the qualities requisite for the service. The 

 ghetto into which externalism has driven them is admittedly the least 

 suitable habitat for the nurture of the qualities which they should 

 exhibit ; but is this an argument for the retention of the barrier ? 



Let us hopefully, though not blindly, look forward to as adequate 

 a management — doubtless a simpler and saner management, with less 

 emphasis upon managerial factors — under internal as under external 

 control. And if there are losses, as there will be, let it be borne in 

 mind that there will be gains to offset these, endlessly more important, 

 in the near future as in the long run, indefinitely more worthy. 



If we ask next, constructively, how shall this be brought about, 

 let me confess that I am somewhat fearful of a policy of gradual veer- 



vol. lxxui. — 22. 



