THE NEXT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 271 



board of control is to-day that of appointing the college president, and 

 that the great power in the educational world thereby becomes the 

 college or university president. 



The position of the American college president is absolutely unique 

 in the educational world, yet the evolution of the office has been a simple 

 one and it is easily traced. The great majority of the older colleges in 

 America were founded either by ecclesiastical organizations or, in com- 

 munities where the civil and the ecclesiastical power, were identical, by 

 the state, and the function of its college was to educate young men for 

 the ministry. Thus it followed that at first the college president 

 sustained much the same relation to the student body that the pastor of 

 a church sustained to the members of his congregation — he was the 

 spiritual teacher and adviser, the religious head of an institution founded 

 for religious purposes. The first and the final test of his qualification 

 for the position was that of orthodoxy, and when this was called in 

 question his position as president of a college was no longer tenable. 

 But as the ecclesiastical rigor that bound both church and state grad- 

 ually relaxed, a change took place in the qualifications demanded of a 

 college president. Education as a process came to be more emphasized 

 and it became necessary for the college president to be not only a clergy- 

 man, but also to have a strong and commanding personality. The col- 

 lege president became the great teacher — a class of which Mark Hopkins 

 will always stand as the type — and his chief financial duty was to raise 

 funds for scholarships for the education of " worthy young men." 



The next step in the evolution of the college president came when 

 the college was frequented by young men whose career in life was to be, 

 not the ministr}', but one of the other learned professions, or business, 

 or some branch of applied science. This necessitated the development 

 of the secular side of education, and with this development came the 

 demand for increased appliances, for laboratories, for large additions to 

 libraries and museums, for the enlargement in every direction of the 

 educational plant. Funds must be raised to provide this equipment 

 and on the shoulders of the college president was laid the burden of 

 securing them. Thus the college president became not only the religious 

 head and the educational head of the institution, but its financial agent. 



But it followed naturally that if large endowments were to be 

 secured by the college president, he must be " a good mixer " with those 

 who might be persuaded to contribute to the college. A clergjTuan, a 

 scholar, a recluse, might possibly teach, but other qualifications for 

 raising funds were imperative. He must be a man of fine presence, 

 genial manner, consummate tact, a ready and acceptable public speaker 

 — he must be in the best sense of the work, " a man of the world." The 

 college president thus added to his previous qualifications of clergjonan. 



