January 17, 1913] 



SCIENCE 



107 



a basis for pro-rating salaries to the various 

 classified functions " ; but, after supplying a 

 formidable array of blanks to be filled with 

 this end in view, he winds up with a request 

 for information concerning " Contributory 

 Activities," the giving of which is optional. 

 These include the number of hours spent on 

 " research work carried on personally by the 

 instructor," and certain other things which, 

 like this, " are of a quasi-private nature." 

 The assistant controller recognizes that the 

 variations in such data due to the personal 

 equation " would make impracticable the di- 

 rect use of these figures for the purpose of dis- 

 tributing salaries," but nevertheless he is ap- 

 parently of the opinion that they would be a 

 comfortable thing to have, and so he asks for 

 them. And quite right, too; for the optional 

 of to-day may be the compulsory of to-morrow, 

 and it is well to " get a line " on these pro- 

 fessor people, even if you can't pin them 

 down to exact facts and figures. 



In sober truth, this news from Harvard is 

 a very serious matter. It touches the very 

 vitals of the professor's calling. It ought to 

 bring out from the Harvard faculty, and espe- 

 cially from the men of light and leading in 

 that faculty, an impressive protest; and the 

 most impressive form the protest could take 

 would be that of a dignified but firm refusal 

 to comply with the demand made upon them. 

 For what is at stake at Harvard is nothing 

 less than the whole character and status of 

 the American professorate. To be a univer- 

 sity professor has hitherto meant, in this 

 country, as in all the world, to give to the uni- 

 versity yourself — your personality, your tal- 

 ent, your capacity to interest, to instruct, to 

 inspire. Many professors have, to be sure, 

 fallen woefully short of fiilfilling this ideal; 

 many have been deficient in ability, many in 

 character. But the one great thing that has 

 made the calling attractive to the best who are 

 in it has been that this was the plane on 

 which it was understood to rest. It offers 

 none of the glittering material rewards of 

 other vocations; it seldom holds forth the al- 

 lurement of fame. In this country, its dig- 

 nity has been far below that which belongs to 

 it in Europe, thanks to an exaltation of the 



idea of management and administration else- 

 where unknown; but the recognition of the 

 personal nature of the professor's work, of a 

 distinctively personal measurement of his 

 value, has never been abandoned. It is 

 Agassiz, or Child, or Martin, or Gibbs, or 

 Norton, or Gildersleeve — ^not so many hours 

 of their labor — that Harvard, or Tale, or 

 Johns Hopkins has had the good fortune to 

 possess; and every faithful and competent 

 professor has a right to feel that the same is 

 true of him in his degree. But how long 

 would that feeling siirvive under a system 

 which required each professor to make report 

 of every hour that he spent upon his work, 

 and have his pay doled out to him accord- 

 ingly? 



It is easy to accuse those who object to the 

 introduction of this efiieiency nostrum of being 

 reactionaries — upholders of the doctrine that 

 whatever is is right. But it is still easier to 

 reply to the accusation. Not because our uni- 

 versities and colleges are all that they ought 

 to be, but because the proposed remedy is a 

 crude and barbarous one, do we reject that 

 remedy. We ought to have more competent 

 teachers, we ought to have more inspiring 

 leaders of research; but we shall not get them 

 by means of time checks or card catalogues. 

 The American professor is already far more 

 subject to managerial control than his fellow 

 in Germany or France; but it is in America, 

 and not in Germany or France, that the cry 

 of incompetent professors and inefficient in- 

 struction is continually heard. What is 

 needed, above all things else, is to make the 

 professorship attractive to superior men — 

 men of originality, men of power, men of en- 

 thusiasm. When you have got all your time- 

 card and efficiency-measure mechanism going, 

 you may be able to compel every professor to 

 come up to a certain standard; but you can 

 not compel the men whom you ought to have 

 as professors to enter the calling. Tou may 

 get the same amount of " results " out of the 

 faculties for less money, or a greater amount 

 for the same money, so far as " results " 

 can be measured by your mechanical methods ; 

 but what you have lost you will never be able 

 to measure. And what shall it profit the uni- 



