654 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVII. No. 957 



dents may or may not be satisfactory to 

 their constituents. I do not know. 



Of the fifty-one presidents, thirty-four 

 appear to be unsatisfactory. I mean that 

 a majority of the faculty, students and 

 alumni of thirty-four institutions appear 

 to be in favor of a new president. In 

 other words, if my observations are cor- 

 rect, two college presidents out of three 

 are regarded as failures. If there is any 

 error here due to the selection of institu- 

 tions, it tends to make the proportion of 

 failures too small, inasmuch as I purposely 

 sought instances of satisfactory adminis- 

 tration, colleges generally regarded as suc- 

 cessful, those most likely to be attractive 

 to men of power. Furthermore, had I 

 taken a period of years, instead of one 

 year, the proportion of failures woidd have 

 been larger, since only those presidents 

 who have survived are included in these 

 figures. For example, one of the institu- 

 tions, now in the successful list, had dis- 

 posed of three unsatisfactory presidents in 

 ten years. 



On the other hand, it may be true that a 

 man engaged in finding teachers for a new 

 college was more likely to meet the dis- 

 gruntled than the contented members of 

 faculties. And it goes without saying that 

 my judgment may have been false, even 

 where the sentiment appeared to be almost 

 unanimously in favor of or opposed to the 

 retention of the president. It was not al- 

 ways so easy to get at the facts as it was 

 in one college where the entire faculty, 

 with one exception, had just petitioned the 

 trustees for a new president. I dare say 

 that certain complaining faculties, if 

 sobered with the responsibility of an ac- 

 tual vote, would bear with their presiden- 

 tial troubles rather than fly to ills they 

 knew not of. 



Nevertheless, after these attempts to 

 safeguard my conclusion against error, I 



am satisfied that a majority of college and 

 university presidents in the United States 

 have failed, on the whole, to perform, to 

 the satisfaction of those most intimately 

 concerned, the various duties now assigned 

 to that office. If I were to class as fail- 

 ures those who had proved unequal to one 

 or more of the obligations usually at- 

 tached to the office, there would remain in 

 the successful group scarcely a score. 

 And who knows what reduction would ap- 

 pear in this small list if it were submitted 

 for approval to a representative group of 

 university leaders — let us say, to the 

 American Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science? 



With the chances of entire success in the 

 college presidency two to one against the 

 incumbent, it is a bold college professor 

 who seeks the office. Possibly he has no 

 adequate conception of the obligations in- 

 volved. 



What are those obligations? What do 

 we expect of the American college presi- 

 dent? From my observations, I am in- 

 clined to sum it up by saying that he must 

 be all things to all men at all times and 

 under all circumstances. 



First of all he must be a scholar; he 

 must have achieved distinction in a par- 

 ticular field, and he must continue to ad- 

 vance knowledge in that field. Otherwise 

 he is not regarded as a respectable head 

 for a so-called institution of higher learn- 

 ing, and comes to be regarded with con- 

 tempt by certain scholars of the faculty. 

 This means that he must have spent most 

 of his life, before election to the presi- 

 dency, in preparation for something other 

 than the presidency ; and, after election, he 

 must spend much of his time, no matter 

 how urgent his other duties may be, in 

 work that has little to do with administra- 

 tion. 



A second obligation is that of teaching. 



