98 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXVIII. No. 708 



In Canada the organization is some- 

 what more democratic, the governing 

 boards in most cases being elected from 

 the alumni and containing generally mem- 

 bers of the faculty. 



The instructing staif in most institu- 

 tions, both in Ihe United States and 

 Canada, consists of professors, associate 

 professors, and assistant or adjunct pro- 

 fessors. These form the faculty or per- 

 manent body of teachers. In addition 

 there are grades of instructors, lecturers, 

 tutors and assistants whose positions are 

 in great or less measure temporary. 



Not aU of these offices appear in all in- 

 stitutions. Even in some of the larger 

 universities there are only two grades in 

 the faculty, the professor and assistant or 

 adjunct professor. In many smaller col- 

 leges the greater part of the teaching staff 

 is included in the faculty with a very 

 limited number of instructors and assist- 

 ants. The grade of preceptor is unique in 

 Princeton, where its holders are considered 

 of faculty rank. 



While this paper will deal, so far as 

 seems necessary to render clear the status 

 of the professor, with all of these grades 

 of the instructing staff, it is upon the 

 holder of the professorial title as embody- 

 ing the force and tradition of college 

 teaching that the attention wiU be prin- 

 cipally directed. 



As was pointed out in the second annual 

 report of the president of the foundation, 

 the words "college" and "university" 

 have no well settled meaning in America, 

 nor is the sphere of higher education by 

 any means carefully defined. As a result 

 the degree-giving institutions in these 

 countries present every variety of educa- 

 tional and administrative complexity. 

 Even the well-informed educator is apt to 

 speak of our colleges and universities as 

 if they fonned a homogeneous species con- 

 forming more or less clearly to some 



typical condition. Not only is this not the 

 fact, but these institutions do not even 

 fall into any definite number of such 

 species. There is no method of classifica- 

 tion which, when applied to the thousand 

 American and Canadian degree-conferring 

 institutions, wiU enable the student to di- 

 vide them into clear species. Whatever 

 criterion is chosen wiU result in placing 

 some institutions in company to which 

 they are not entitled to belong. 



The number of students, or the "big- 

 ness" of the college or university, is prob- 

 ably the most usual method of classifica- 

 tion. But in regard to the number of stu- 

 dents one finds a range continuous from 

 institutions with fifty students to institu- 

 tions with five thousand, and if in this 

 continuous series arbitrary lines are 

 drawn, the groups thus made put together 

 institutions whose consideration side by 

 side could serve no useful purpose; for 

 instance, Johns Hopkins University with 

 the University of Southern California, 

 Yale University with the Temple College, 

 and Williams College with Maryville Col- 

 lege. 



The size of the teaching staff would 

 naturally be considered a more scientific 

 method of classification, but here again 

 there is a continuous gradation from in- 

 stitutions with five to institutions with five 

 hundred teachers, and groups selected on 

 this basis would result in such incongrui- 

 ties as placing Valparaiso University with 

 Leland Stanford Junior University, Union 

 College, Nebraska, with Amherst College, 

 and Howard College at Birmingham, Ala- 

 bama, with Eipon College. 



The maintenance of professional schools 

 might be considered as a significant line of 

 cleavage, but such a means of demarca- 

 tion, which would put in the supposedly 

 less important group Princeton, Brown, 

 Wesleyan, Vassar, Brj-n Mawr, and 

 Trinity (Hartford), and in the higher 



