OOTOBEB 2, 1908] 



SCIENCE 



429 



of Hesse, at Jena the Grand Duke of Saxe- 

 Weimar and at Gottingen a prince of the 

 royal house of Prussia. 



The distinguishing characteristic of the 

 German university is the power of the full 

 professor (ordentlicher Professor). In 

 American universities the professor is sim- 

 ply the highest in rank of an ascending 

 series of teachers. Like the instructors 

 and assistants, he is appointed by a board 

 from which all teaching officials are ex- 

 cluded and he holds his office during the 

 pleasure of that board. Unless he occupies 

 an endowed chair, his salary is generally 

 the result of a bargain with the university 

 president. The professor, indeed, sits as 

 of right in the faculty, which determines 

 the number of courses in the curriculum 

 and regulates the activities of the student 

 body, but seldom is an American faculty 

 asked to propose candidates for vacant pro- 

 fessorships. 



In Germany the professors are practi- 

 cally the university. The professor, to bor- 

 row Anglo-Saxon legal terminology, holds 

 his office as a freehold. Buildings are for 

 the professors to lecture in and subordinate 

 teachers are for the relief of the professors 

 from the less important parts of instruc- 

 tion. The professor decides for himself 

 how he will best serve the students; the 

 body of professors settles such general uni- 

 versity matters as in their nature can not 

 be left to individual control. Each uni- 

 versity is subject, as are all other institu- 

 tions in the land, to the control of the sov- 

 ereign advised by the representatives of his 

 people. But no intermediate non-academic 

 board is interposed between the ultimate 

 authority of the crown and the plenary 

 academic authority of the professors, and 

 the rector, elected by the professors and 

 serving a limited term, has powers anal- 

 ogous to those of the presiding officer of a 

 legislative body; while the powers of an 



American college president resemble those 

 of the president of a railroad. It must, 

 however, be kept in mind in making any 

 such comparison that the business life of a 

 German university is conducted by the gov- 

 ernment, through the Minister of Educa- 

 tion. The problem of ways and means 

 does not confront the rector and the pro- 

 fessors. It is the ever-present demand for 

 money which has gone far to transform the 

 American university organization into a 

 business corporation, as differentiated from 

 a teaching body. 



A German university ordinarily consists 

 of the four faculties of philosophy, theol- 

 ogy, law and medicine. At the universi- 

 ties of Bonn, Breslau, Strassburg and 

 Tiibingen there are both a Roman Catholic 

 theological faculty and a Protestant theo- 

 logical faculty.^ The universities of Hei- 

 delberg and Strassburg have a separate 

 faculty of mathematical and natural sci- 

 ence and the University of Tiibingen, be- 

 sides this faculty, has also a faculty of 

 political economy. The University of 

 Munich likewise has a faculty of political 

 economy and its faculty of philosophy is 

 in two separate divisions— classical-histor- 

 ical and mathematical-scientific.^ The 

 University of Miinster is the one German 

 university having but three faculties, lack- 

 ing that of medicine. 



Each of these faculties is composed of 

 the full professors holding chairs therein. 

 The faculty confers the degrees to which 

 its courses lead, gives (except in Bavaria) 

 to promising young scholars the privilege 

 of acting as Privai-Bozenten in the uni- 

 versity, proposes candidates for vacant pro- 

 fessorships, and in general takes such ae- 

 ' In the imiversities of Freiburg, Mimicn, Miins- 

 ter and Wiirzburg the theological faculties are 

 Roman Catholic; elsewhere they are Protestant. 

 "In the universities of Freiburg, Miinster, 

 Strassburg and Wiirzburg political economy is 

 studied under the faculty of law. 



