March 24, 1911] 



SCIENCE 



459 



THE STATUS OF THE PROFESSOR 



That the American college president fulfils 

 a function and exercises a degree of power 

 that has no parallel in the institutions of 

 learning of the old world has been asserted so 

 often and, so far as we know, has met with so 

 little contradiction, that it is pleasing to find 

 two leading representatives of the college 

 presidency not so much justifying this peculi- 

 arity, but rather denying its existence. In the 

 Popular Science Monthly for March the editor, 

 in an article under the title " About Dismis- 

 sing Professors," quotes a comment of Presi- 

 dent Butler's upon the following remark made 

 in this paper some months ago, in reference to 

 the plans of Keed College, the promising new 

 institution about to be established in Oregon: 



There is a fine opening for a new institution 

 to show what a college can be wherein the personal 

 domination by the president is abandoned, and in 

 its stead we have a company of gentlemen and 

 scholars working together with the president 

 simply as the efficient center of inspiration and 

 cooperation. 



" The condition described in the last four 

 lines," says President Butler, " is precisely 

 what is to be found at every American col- 

 lege and university that is worthy of the 

 name, and no evidence to the contrary has eve^ 

 been produced by anybody." 



The other utterance to which we have refer- 

 ence is the address delivered by President Van 

 Hise at the recent meeting of the Association 

 of American Universities at Charlottesville, 

 which appears in Science for February 11. 

 Doctor Van Plise maltes out a very good case 

 for the necessity of the presidential functions, 

 a not inconsiderable part of which ease con- 

 sists in pointing out the extent to which, in 

 many of our colleges and universities, those 

 functions, so far as appointment and promo- 

 tion are concerned, are exercised only in co- 

 operation with the faculty. If anybody was 

 under the impression that the American col- 

 lege president exercised his powers in the 

 spirit of an oriental monarch habitually put- 

 ting this man up and that man dovm, as 

 suited his pleasure or whim, certainly the facts 



stated by Doctor Van Hise must show him 

 that he was in error. 



The fact remains, however, that in our 

 American colleges the president is not " simply 

 the efiicient center of inspiration and coopera- 

 tion," but is in large measure thought of, and 

 thinks of himself, as the master, or the fore- 

 man, or the captain, of a body of men working 

 under his direction ; and this fact has a potent 

 influence on the whole character and spirit of 

 academic life in America. The idea of ad- 

 ministration, of coordination, of " harmony," 

 plays a part in most of our colleges and uni- 

 versities altogether disproportionate to its 

 value. Nor is the objection to this state of 

 things merely negative. There is positive 

 harm of the most serious kind in that sub- 

 mergence of self-assertive personality on the 

 part of the professors which inevitably goes 

 with it. It is not an accident that President 

 Van Hise habitually speaks of " the instruc- 

 tional force of the university " ; he instinc- 

 tively thinks of the professors not as an 

 assemblage of individuals, each expected pri- 

 marily to do his own work in his own way, but 

 as a " force " of employees jointly engaged in 

 the production of a certain output. Nor is it 

 easy to imagine a man who regards himself as 

 " simply the efiicient center of inspiration and 

 cooperation " of the faculty using this lan- 

 guage, which appears in an editorial article in 

 the Educational Review: 



Truly the academic animal is a queer beast. If 

 he can not have something at which to growl and 

 snarl, he will growl and snarl at nothing at all. 



Whether or not a bill of particulars could 

 be made out, such as would satisfy a judge and 

 jury, in support of the proposition that the 

 presidents of most American colleges dominate 

 them in the way that is generally asserted, we 

 can not undertake to say. Evidences of a less 

 definite nature, but to our mind quite con- 

 vincing, are sufficiently abundant. We do not 

 say that it is personally the fault of the presi- 

 dents ; it may be quite as much the fault of the 

 professors, or the fault of something in the 

 national make-up. It may in part be due to 

 the same traits of national character which re- 

 sult in the extraordinary power of the political 



