THE COLLEGE PROFESSOR 275 



the interest of increasing its numbers every intellectual ideal has been 

 compromised, athletics have been made the determinants of college policy, 

 and college life has become a carnival of " student interests." Nothing, 

 however, has done more to depress the salaries of professors, and at the 

 same time to cheapen the type and character of men considered eligible 

 to the profession. To this, indeed, we owe the preference over the 

 scholar, the student, and the teacher, of the academic entrepreneur, or 

 "educator." It is most noteworthy that the Carnegie Foundation, in 

 its search for the obstacles to the advancement of teaching, has landed 

 upon this point first — namely, the cheapening of salaries and of men 

 which comes from reckless expansion. And it is not pleasant to reflect 

 that, while the laboring man is prepared more or less to stand for him- 

 self, the function of a trade-union for college professors is left to Mr. 

 Carnegie's foundation; or, further, that the college professor, while 

 eager to share in its benefits, has shown thus far no very hearty 

 sympathy for the purposes of its investigations. 



For, in the end, it is the college professor himself who is largely 

 responsible. I doubt if many college men fully realize the intimate 

 connection between the policy of inflation and their own economic 

 position. Most of them are as naively enthusiastic over a gain in at- 

 tendance as a student over a foot-ball victory. And when it is other- 

 wise they are content to lay the burden of responsibility upon the head 

 of " the administration." It is not my intention to absolve the admin- 

 istration; yet there must be few cases where the choice of the admin- 

 istration is not more or less determined by the faculty themselves. In 

 any case, a hostile administration could not long survive a serious and 

 well-considered opposition. As President Schurman says in his last 

 annual report, " A faculty will not be dominated or over-ridden which 

 justly asserts itself." It must always be remembered that, with the ex- 

 ception of the president, the only persons who are with the college all 

 the time, and whose interests are continuously identified with its wel- 

 fare, are the faculty. And they are the professional experts. Con- 

 sciously or unconsciously, positively or negatively, they are bound, 

 therefore, to have a large influence upon its policy. 



In the matter of inflation they have been more than negatively re- 

 sponsible. Under the opportunities for competition afforded by the 

 elective system, nearly every professor is struggling to magnify the 

 importance of his courses by increasing the attendance. He knows 

 that, under the present conditions, attendance will count for promotion, 

 and further that a large attendance is incompatible with very severe 

 standards; and he finds it easier to conform to the conditions than to 

 raise his voice in protest. Likewise every head of department is striv- 

 ing to make his department the largest, to print the longest list of 

 names upon the department letter-paper, without regard to quality or 



