OCTOBEE 2, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



467 



all, and even to a late date many members 

 of such were members of the faculty. The 

 boards had, in other words, delegated to 

 them administrative powera and duties 

 which they could do better than the 

 faculty — clearly a step forward in the 

 terms of efficiency. With time, however, 

 faculty representation in the board became 

 less conspicuous. Originally, the reasons 

 for this were also not bad. A university is 

 the embodiment of certain educational 

 ideals, and it was, of course, to be expected 

 that many not directly connected with a 

 faculty, but interested in the progress of 

 ■education, should seek opportunity to labor 

 for it. And why should not such labor re- 

 ceive acknowledgment in a position of 

 administrative trust on a university board ? 



There must have been much of mutual 

 help in a meeting in which men of the out- 

 side world brought to cloistered students 

 their practical suggestions, while those 

 within aided the outsiders to catch the 

 ideals of the universities, all presided over 

 by a president chosen for his first-hand 

 knowledge of educational problems. Had 

 things remained so it would have been well 

 for all concerned. But exactly as the past 

 decades found more to admire in the invest- 

 ment banker than in the builder of the 

 road, and more in the squirter of water 

 than in the engineer, so the superintendents 

 and employers of the faculty came to mean 

 more than the output of the university 

 itself. 



Excessive attention to the machinery of 

 the university has served to blind us to the 

 obvious fact that it is but a tool and that 

 what we want is more product. There is a 

 law of diminishing returns in the adminis- 

 tration of universities as in other forms 

 of activity. In too many spots in our 

 country the administrative tail has wagged 

 and wags the dog. I know the dominant 

 member of a university board who habitu- 



ally refers to the teaching staff as the hired 

 help. It seems no accident that the strong 

 men of this faculty have found more con- 

 genial fields of labor elsewhere. Even na- 

 tional bodies dedicated to the advancement 

 of university education get stung by the 

 efficiency bee. A member of such once 

 classified the engineering branches of our 

 universities on the basis of money spent 

 per student hour. Weaker than the report 

 were the backs of many university attaches 

 which bent under the weight of its fearful 

 authority; nor did stiffness flow back into 

 them until President Maclaurin kiUed the 

 hundred-and-thirty-page Goliath with a 

 two-page pebble in which he pointed out, 

 what might have been recognized before, 

 that the efficiency of a university is not to 

 be reported on in the same way as the effi- 

 ciency of "a glue factory or soap works." 

 It has been urged in extenuation of the 

 gradual acquisition of all administrative 

 powers by trustees and president that such 

 has been made necessary by the weakness 

 of our faculties. Eelatively speaking, they 

 have hardly been weaker than many of the 

 superimposed administrators, but in the 

 absolute we have not been so strong as we 

 might. And the reasons for this too are 

 not far to seek. Being so largely ignorant 

 of what really constitutes the spirit of a 

 university, it is but natural that we should 

 have pursued and still pursue a course 

 which keeps a chronically weak-kneed 

 faculty in professorial chairs. In express- 

 ing to a friend one day the opinion that the 

 Chinese would one day become a world 

 power, he retorted that he did not think 

 so, because for several hundred years they 

 had not given birth to a new idea. This 

 would, I confess, seal their fate in my eyes 

 were it not for the fact that for these same 

 centuries the Manchus holding sway over 

 them have discouraged all original think- 

 ing by the chopping off of heads. 



