November 24, 1911] 



SCIENCE 



697 



president and deans to a single period of 

 four or five years. The salaries paid to exec- 

 utives should not greatly exceed that of the 

 professors, nor should more elaborate pro- 

 vision be made for the residences of presi- 

 dent and deans than for those of the 

 facvilty. 



(2) Synchronous with the limitations 

 imposed upon the authority of executives 

 there should be corresponding and equally 

 important changes in the board of trustees. 

 A joint committee, as already suggested, 

 consisting of three or five members from 

 each board, viz., trustees and faculty, 

 should act as the medium for keeping the 

 former in touch and sympathy with the 

 intellectual progress of the university. The 

 presiding officer of this joint conamittee 

 should be chosen by vote from either board 

 and it would be well to limit his tenure of 

 office to correspond with that of the presi- 

 dent and deans. The reports of this com- 

 mittee would be quite free from the per- 

 sonal coloring given to the suggestions made 

 by single executives. The establishment of 

 a more intimate relationship would be re- 

 ciprocally beneficial and would serve to 

 give the faculty a greater sense of respon- 

 sibility by introducing the discussion of 

 questions of broader academic interest, and 

 would lessen the tendency of individual 

 members of the faculty to indulge in the 

 petty recriminations and personalities 

 which are the result of conditions arising 

 from having lived too long in one place, 

 and a limited intellectual horizon. A 

 change of equally great importance would 

 be the creation of an advisory board to trus- 

 tees and faculty, composed of the members 

 of the joint executive committee, to which 

 should be added several representatives, 

 preferably from the faculties of other uni- 

 versities. This enlarged committee should 

 hold one or two meetings a year and from 

 its foreign members a perspective view of 



the university could readily be obtained. 

 The Princetonian should know how his 

 alma mater appears when viewed from 

 Cambridge, and the Harvard professor or 

 overseer could sometimes correct a tend- 

 ency to spiritual myopia by adopting sug- 

 gestions coming from a source as distant 

 from the Back Bay as is New Jersey. The 

 tyrannical domination of certain forms of 

 college spirit has become an obstacle to 

 progress in the life of the older universities. 

 Impatient of criticism and often expressing 

 itself in the form of a flabby optimism it 

 insists that the administration of the uni- 

 versity should be directed solely by those 

 alumni who possess "the requisite degree 

 of knowledge of local conditions." The 

 annual report of "outsiders" letting in 

 fresh air from without the walls would in 

 time lead the trustees to take a more intel- 

 ligent appreciation of the intellectual life 

 of the university. 



The rate of development of our higher 

 institutions of learning will be directly 

 proportional to the rapidity with which 

 trustees or regents familiarize themselves 

 with the actual progress made in the uni- 

 versity world. The majority of trustees 

 on account of lack of knowledge have the 

 tendency to look at university problems 

 from the high-school or collegiate point of 

 view. Their failure, in common with many 

 other persons, to apprehend or appreciate 

 the essential factors in the life of a great 

 university at their proper valuation was 

 referred to by the late President Gilman 

 when he more than once affirmed that "the 

 true university does not depend upon 

 'cloistered aisles' or a beautiful campus." 

 He knew how often brains are sacrificed for 

 buildings, and that institutions like indi- 

 viduals often built themselves wonderful 

 tombs. If we except what has been ac- 

 complished in a few notable instances, 

 there has been a general failure in our 



