Apeil 3, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



495 



no wonder if we can not decide categorically 

 whether or not it is well to have in the uni- 

 versity one leader whom the rest of us will 

 follow. But it is probably undesirable, as it 

 is certainly undemocratic, to have a boss who 

 drives us. This is the fundamental difficulty 

 in our present university organization. The 

 president is responsible to the trustees who in 

 the private corporations are responsible to no 

 one. The deans and heads of departments 

 are responsible to the president who names 

 them, and their subordinates are responsible 

 to them. This department-store system re- 

 verses the correct or, at all events, the demo- 

 cratic direction of responsibility. The de- 

 partment or group should name its head and 

 those to be added to it. The teachers or pro- 

 fessors should name their deans and their 

 president who should be responsible to them. 

 The trustees should be trustees, not regents 

 or directors. Their relations should be with 

 representatives of the faculties, not exclu- 

 sively with a president whom they appoint 

 and who in practise is likely to select them. 



It may be that the high-tide of presidential 

 autocracy in our universities is now ebbing. 

 At any rate we are discussing the problem 

 more freely than in the past. I have obtained 

 and published opinions of some three hundred 

 professors who have done scientific work of 

 distinction. These exhibit a very wide-spread 

 dissatisfaction with the existing system. 

 There is naturally much difference of opinion 

 as to the remedies, but five sixths of them 

 favor reforms in the direction of greater fac- 

 ulty control and less presidential autocracy. 

 The remaining one sixth are mostly executive 

 officers or men in institutions where the fac- 

 ulties have more than average influence. 

 Thus the great university now entertaining 

 this conference has maintained the better tra- 

 ditions. It has been said that if the faculties 

 name the professors, there will be inbreeding 

 and deterioration. To this it may be replied 

 that Yale is represented in the National 

 Academy of Sciences by eleven members ; Cor- 

 nell and Pennsylvania, with twice as many 

 students, each by one member. 



Harvard, like Tale, has maintained a meas- 



ure of faculty and alumni control. President 

 Eliot, whose masterful personality has been 

 influential in exalting the presidential office, 

 has at home deferred more to the corporation 

 and overseers on the one side and the faculty 

 on the other than lesser presidents. The plan 

 adopted at Harvard of promotion after a fixed 

 term of service with uniform increments of 

 salary and permanence of tenure for the full 

 professor removes him from the most humili- 

 ating relation to the president. At Cornell 

 the faculties have been granted the right to 

 elect their deans, and President Schurman 

 advocates faculty representation on the board 

 of trustees. At Princeton the departments 

 have been authorized to recommend appoint- 

 ments and promotions, and a committee 

 elected by the faculties meets with a com- 

 mittee of the trustees, this latter plan being 

 in my opinion the most feasible method of im- 

 proving the academic situation. Other re- 

 forms at various institutions in the direction 

 of greater faculty control might be cited, the 

 most striking and recent being the referendum 

 vote of confidence obtained from the faculties 

 by the president of the University of Illinois. 

 Whoever or whatever may be the occasion 

 of reforms in academic control, the real cause 

 must be the sentiment of the professors, and 

 this can only be developed and expressed by 

 proper organization. I am proud to belong to 

 an association that at two consecutive meet- 

 ings has taken action exhibiting a group con- 

 sciousness of this kind. A year ago the Amer- 

 ican Psychological Association unanimously 

 passed a resolution proposed by me to the ef- 

 fect that it is undesirable for its members to 

 accept work in summer-schools or extension 

 courses in which the pro rata payment is less 

 than their regular salaries. Last Christmas 

 at New Haven the association took the action 

 to which reference has been made on the dis- 

 missal of the professor of philosophy and psy- 

 chology from Lafayette College. An influen- 

 tial committee of one hundred on research has 

 been formed by the American Association for 

 thfi Advancement of Science. It may be that 

 the time has now come when an association of 

 American university professors might be or- 



