266 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



fear lest its very presence in his desk should betray him into the hands 

 of his official superiors. He could indeed justify its presence there on 

 the ground that the accumulation was in large part accidental, that " he 

 had not meant to do it," that the small field of knowledge in which he 

 had been permitted to work had been so intimately connected with all 

 questions of organization that he could not well avoid an interest in 

 the by-product of educational organization — still and all, he had to 

 admit that he was a victim of abject, craven fear. Yet in his early 

 youth he had fortified himself against the oncoming of age by com- 

 mitting to memory Longfellow's " Morituri Salutamus," and now its 

 appeal to banish fear, doubt and indecision stood him in good stead, 

 not so much against old age, for that seemed farther away than it had 

 at twenty, as against the spectre of a frowning chief and a possible 

 official decapitation. The material in his desk, he reasoned, might be 

 of some slight service in the discussion of a question that was filling 

 every year a larger and ever increasingly larger place in the minds of all 

 engaged in educational work, whether as college professors or as teachers 

 in the public schools. He was as much in honor bound, he reasoned 

 again, to make his contribution to the cause of education as he was to 

 pay his pew rent in church and to give of his wife's substance to the 

 foreign missionary cause. 



Turning his attention first to the organization of the so-called 

 " higher institutions of learning," the near-professor found that the 

 factors directly and indirectly concerned are eight. 



The factor least immediately involved is the public at large and it 

 may be called collectively the state. It has no direct part in the gov- 

 ernment of higher educational institutions except in those states where 

 members of the boards of regents are elected by popular vote. The 

 state has, however, a direct financial interest in the subject since the 

 property of educational institutions on private foundations is exempt 

 from taxation, and on the other hand public educational institutions 

 are supported by state taxation. 



The parents of students have as such no part either direct or indirect 

 in the management of a college, nor do they consciously to themselves 

 exert the most remote influence on the conduct of its affairs. Never- 

 theless, the parent is a potent factor in shaping the policy of a college, 

 through serving as a foil against proposed innovations. Do the students 

 desire a larger measure of self government, the parent " who would not 

 approve " prevents its realization. Do the alumni favor a radical depar- 

 ture from the curriculum that has been in force, the parent " likes what 

 we have and sends his son here to get it," and hence no change is made. 

 Does some one suggest dropping the Latin salutatory and the valedictory 

 from the commencement exercises, the parent "likes the present plan" 

 and therefore the Latin salutatory and the valedictory are retained. If 



