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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXII. No. 574. 



of the great machine, through committees, 

 sub-committees, labor-saving devices and 

 automatic methods of reporting, is as 

 smooth-running (and sometimes, I fear, 

 almost as impersonal) as a well-developed 

 mercantile establishment. We have here a 

 conspicuous example of the current tend- 

 ency towards one-man power, towards that 

 concentration of authority which makes, of 

 course, for ease, rapidity and sureness of 

 administration; but which, in politics, un- 

 dermines manhood; in industrialism, de- 

 stroys initiative ; and in education tends 

 to defeat the very object of teaching, which 

 should be to develop and make the most of 

 every man's individuality. If the goal of 

 a college were the giving of mere instruc- 

 tion, nothing could be better than the pres- 

 ent system of administration; but colleges 

 should be fountains of true education, and 

 the best part of education comes through 

 the personal influence of the older gov- 

 ernors and teachers upon adolescent, and 

 therefore highly impressionable, youth. 



Most modern colleges have expensive and 

 excellent material plants utilized substan- 

 tially to their full capacity. They possess, 

 also, admirable executives who, as I have 

 said, are used away beyond their limits of 

 endurance. But those colleges have also 

 other educational forces which are not 

 availed of, in my opinion, to anything like 

 their normal maximum. Those less used 

 forces are: (1) The personal influence, as 

 teachers and men (not as mere administra- 

 tors) of the leaders of the faculty — an in- 

 fluence which should be exerted upon both 

 students and trustees; (2) the personal 

 influence, as men of power and broad 

 human experience (not as mere money- 

 holders) of the trustees — an influence 

 which should extend to students as well as 

 faculty; and (3) the perennial and un- 

 selfish loyalty of the alumni, together with 

 the unique experience given to those gradu- 

 ates in gauging their collegiate training by 



the tests of life. The third force is beyond 

 the scope of the present paper; but let it 

 not be inferred, therefore, that I regard it 

 as any less potent than the other two. 

 Indeed, in the last analysis, the moral as 

 well as the financial strength of a college 

 must come from its own sons. 



As has already been suggested, the com- 

 plexity and autocracy of the American 

 university have converted the strongest 

 men of the faculty — the men, therefore, 

 whose personal influence upon the students 

 would be of the highest value — into sub- 

 ordinate administrators harassed with de- 

 tails of department maintenance and com- 

 mittee attendance. As a necessary result, 

 the teaching is put largely into the hands 

 of recently graduated yputh, zealous but 

 not always wise, untrained in the science 

 and art of teaching, and quite incapable, 

 of course, of giving to their classes the in- 

 spiration which comes from contact with 

 men of wide experience. This throws the 

 severest strain of the college upon the 

 weakest part, and from it arises much 

 of our educational ineffectiveness. Mere 

 information, lesson-hearing, examinations, 

 become paramount; scholarship and char- 

 acter are well-nigh forgotten, being impos- 

 sible to register by even the most elaborate 

 machinery. 



The trustees, on the other hand — except- 

 ing those who constitute the president's 

 cabinet — find less and less opportunity for 

 usefulness in a machine so elaborate that 

 any incursion into it, by those unfamiliar, 

 may do infinite harm. Therefore most of 

 them drift into the belief that their trust 

 is discharged by attendance upon stated 

 meetings and by, perhaps, an annual visit 

 to that department which, nominally, is 

 their especial care. Yet the personal influ- 

 ence upon the students of men like college 

 trustees would be second only, in educa- 

 tional value, to that of the leading members 

 of the faculty. I am not prepared to sug- 



