682 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVI. No. 409. 



European counterparts in a very striking 

 way is the form of government— the non- 

 professional, non-expert board of trustees. 

 English institutions of higher learning are 

 in the control of their faculties or their 

 alumni or both with now and then in cer- 

 tain cases a cooperation in appointments 

 by the government. On the continent they 

 are nearly universally under the control in 

 many important respects of the govern- 

 mental departments of education with cer- 

 tain cooperation on the part of the faculty. 



With us they are nearly all, legally at 

 any rate, entirely under the control of a 

 body outside of the faculty, outside of the 

 alumni and outside of the state depart- 

 ments of education. Even the state uni- 

 versities are usually directly under the 

 control of a special board appointed for 

 this particular purpose and not subject in 

 any other way to the regularly constituted 

 state authorities. These boards are either 

 — as in the case of state universities — 

 appointed by the governor or elected by 

 the legislature or the people, or appointed 

 by the church, or more often are self- 

 elective, filling vacancies in the board by 

 the votes of the board itself. These trus- 

 tees are often business men, sometimes not 

 college graduates themselves; often profes- 

 sional men— nearly always men who have 

 had no other connection with educational 

 work than that involved in their duties as 

 trustees. 



To these boards is entrusted by law full 

 authority to prescribe courses of study, to 

 appoint and dismiss professors at pleasure 

 and to prescribe their duties in detail if 

 they so desire. The foreign student looks 

 at this delegation of one of the most im- 

 portant functions of society to a set of 

 busy men who cannot be expected to have 

 expett knowledge of the subject with 

 amazement not unmixed with amusement. 



Does it not often happen he says that an 



ignorant trustee, imagining that he knows 

 more about the business than the faculty, 

 interferes like a bull in a china shop, dis- 

 arranging the machinery, bringing every- 

 thing to naught by his ignorance, his 

 officiousness and his obstinacy? '\¥liat 

 good do they do anyhow? How can you 

 cheek their pernicious activity? 



Well, we have all heard of such trustees 

 — perhaps we have known such individuals 

 personally, not in our own institutions, of 

 course, but in others. The trustee who 

 thinks the faculty is made up of men try- 

 ing to get the largest possible salary for 

 doing the least possible work, and who re- 

 gards it as his duty to see that they do the 

 largest possible amount of work for the 

 least possible remuneration; the trustee 

 who undertakes to pass upon each individ- 

 ual item of college business as if he were 

 the expert and the faculty the mere em- 

 ployee to cany out his plans. The exist- 

 ence of such a person I shall not undertake 

 to deny; the existence of whole boards of 

 such trustees is at least possible logically 

 speaking and certainly the fancied knowl- 

 edge of the practical man can assume most 

 offensive and irritating forms— dangerous 

 in proportion to the ignorance and obsti- 

 nacy wliich lie behind it. I think it is 

 highly probably that if we were blocking 

 out anew in an old civilization a method of 

 government for higher institiitions of learn- 

 ing no one would think of resorting to such 

 a device as that of a non-expert board of 

 trustees as the chief organ of control. 



But to-day through the evolution of 

 Anierican conditions we have elaborated 

 such an organ and to my mind this fact has 

 had a profound significance for our educa- 

 tional life. 



Universities tend to become caste and 

 class institutions. They tend to become 

 Pharisaic in sentiment and action. As self- 

 governing bodies, if they have great endow- 



