562" 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXIII. No. 589. 



strative provisions by the success with 

 which they further the vital ends to which 

 they are but means. Clearly the admini- 

 stration of a university is no end in itself, 

 but only a subordinate contributory meas- 

 xive for advancing the real interest of the 

 higher education. Boards of trustees, and 

 presidents, and deans, and committees 

 would be only a hindrance and not in 

 the least a help to the cause for which 

 universities exist, if these offices could not 

 justify their existence and the methods of 

 their maintenance by their furtherance of 

 worthy educational ideals. Altogether too 

 long has there prevailed alike an unques- 

 tioned assumption that such is the case, 

 and — still more unfortunately— a timid 

 suppression or impatient frowning down of 

 any questioning in regard thereto. 



It would be desirable, but may not be 

 practicable, to consider in an historical 

 temper, how American conditions have de- 

 veloped a distinctive scheme of university 

 administration— a system that departs from 

 the models of the old world in a direction 

 peculiarly incompatible with our national 

 ideals and principles. To say that the 

 government of our universities is undemo- 

 cratic may be no fatal condemnation; but 

 it indicates a singular departure from the 

 spirit that animates many of our formal 

 administrative measures even outside of 

 the political field. The situation, moreover, 

 is the more notable because foreign uni- 

 versities in pronounced aristocratic coun- 

 tries ofPer the contrast of placing the wel- 

 fare of the cultural and academic life — the 

 authority as well as the responsibility — 

 upon those whose life-work is bound up 

 with and furthered by such institutions, 

 and of thus adopting for monarchical uni- 

 versities a thoroughly democratic form of 

 government. President Pritchett's review 

 of this and allied situations- may be cor- 

 dially commended. He does not hesitate to 

 'Atlantic Monthly, September, 1905. 



say that our autocratic methods of univer- 

 sity management would be nothing less 

 than intolerable to the German scholar, 

 while emphasizing that the German method 

 is precisely what the spirit of our institu- 

 tions would presumably favor. This incon- 

 sistency of university government with the 

 national ideals which university teaching 

 is called upon to foster is certainly signifi- 

 cant. 



It needs no discernment to discover that 

 the actual and authoritative government of 

 our colleges and universities does not rest 

 with the faculties thereof; it rests with 

 the president and the board of trustees or 

 regents. In spite of the diversity of prac- 

 tise, the distribution of authority has un- 

 mistakably emphasized, and increasingly 

 so, the importance of the presidential office 

 and the regulative function of the board, 

 and has given to the faculty a less and less 

 infiuential voice in the actual direction of 

 affairs, in the initiative of educational ex- 

 pansion and in the shaping and control of 

 the academic career. The central question 

 that can not and should not be longer 

 avoided, but which should be asked in a 

 perfectly amicable, thoroughly helpful, 

 wholly impartial temper, is whether pres- 

 ent arrangements are to be approved and 

 gradually improved; or whether they are 

 to be regarded as fundamentally unfortu- 

 nate, as something of a menace to the se- 

 curity of our educational future. If any 

 profit is to come from the discussion, the 

 same frankness that approaches so serious 

 a question with honest doubt, but without 

 timidity, must be adopted both by those 

 who uphold and by those who oppose the 

 spirit and issues of actual institutions. In 

 this spirit I place myself with those who 

 look with alarm upon the further growth 

 of present-day tendencies, and who believe 

 that both logic and policy point to an ad- 

 ministration of university affairs that shall 

 be based upon a different emphasis of 



