22 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVI. No. 914 



board of the state two and the board thus con- 

 stituted elect two other members from the 

 community at large. These should, with the 

 academic council in joint session, elect 

 a president and a vice-president for five 

 years. The faculty should name the aca- 

 demic council to which the questions of pol- 

 icy should be referred, presided over by the 

 president. The professors, assistant pro- 

 fessors and instructors should be assembled 

 into groups, which groups would annually 

 elect a chairman, and preferably in rotation. 

 His sole duty would be to preside at group 

 committee meetings, transmit their communi- 

 cations to the academic council and sign bills 

 and other documents where such signature 

 is necessary. In other words, the chairman 

 of the group would be executive officer of the 

 group for one year. The salaries should be 

 uniform for professors and assistant pro- 

 fessors, and of a sum sufficient for their needs 

 and proportioned according to the length of 

 active and honorable service, beginning with 

 a minimum and ending with a maximum. 

 The recommendations for advancement should 

 start in the group committees, pass through 

 the academic council and end with the corpo- 

 ration. 



It must be apparent to most sincere and ex- 

 perienced observers of academic life in Amer- 

 ica that the present deficiencies in our uni- 

 versities are not so much a consequence of 

 faults of organization as of certain funda- 

 mental defects in the dominant American 

 conceptions of what the purposes and char- 

 acteristics of university activities ought to be. 

 The form of organization prevalent in the 

 universities is an expression of the predomi- 

 nant characteristics of the men who are 

 chosen to fill the influential positions. Men 

 whose instincts are for practical life, rather 

 than for study and the advancement of in- 

 tellectual ideals and achievement, are chosen 

 far too frequently. This is the chief source 

 of weakness, since such men determine what 

 shall be taught, how it shall be taught, the de- 

 gree of freedom of research and of discussion, 

 the aims which the institution sets before 



itself, in short the whole course of university 

 policy. Such men admire the business type of 

 man and try to imitate him ; the result is that 

 they have imposed on institutions of learning 

 an organization better fitted for definite prac- 

 tical undertakings than for the diversified and 

 largely disinterested activities of an assem- 

 blage of scholars. The system, in other words, 

 favors the selection of men who lend them- 

 selves most readily to cooperative and directly 

 practical undertakings — rather than of men 

 who, like most true scholars, combine strong 

 individuality with idealism. The evil is self- 

 perpetuating, since almost all men will work 

 effectively or ineffectively, according to the in- 

 centives offered; if devotion to study and re- 

 search is self-penalizing, the number of men 

 who vigorously and whole-heartedly so devote 

 themselves is inevitably diminished. Hence, 

 many university men deliberately prefer to 

 perfect their capabilities in quite other direc- 

 tions than scholarship — even when they are 

 not forced to do so — studying the arts of man- 

 agement, control, compromise, the technique 

 of executive activity, and the like. Is it to be 

 wondered at that the intellectual life of many 

 institutions flags, that our scientific produc- 

 tivity is so far behind that of Europe, and that 

 students of marked originality so frequently 

 fail to receive the stimulus and opportunities 

 they need for their proper development? 

 Under conditions more favorable to the selec- 

 tion of superior men — like those hitherto pre- 

 vailing in Germany, France or England — the 

 tale would be a very different one. It is not 

 that we lack the ability, but that it fails to 

 realize itseK because of a radically wrong 

 basis of selection. I am well aware that there 

 are many distinguished men in the American 

 universities, but far fewer than there ought to 

 be. The present organization of the universi- 

 ties, I repeat, is rather the expression of this 

 deficiency than the cause of it. The funda- 

 mental cause lies in the prevailing temper and 

 ideals of university men in this country. 

 There are certain tendencies of American life 

 — to a certain degree of all modern life — 

 which a university should deliberately guard 

 against and oppose. These are, many of them, 



