912 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVIII. No. 991 



nel by which the facts can be brought 

 effectively to the notice of the president or 

 governing board, and there is no assur- 

 ance in our present form of organization 

 that the welfare of the staff or their opin- 

 ions as to the welfare of the university, 

 would receive consideration if opposed to 

 the desires of the department head. All 

 this is expressed in common university 

 parlance by saying that the head regards 

 the department as his personal property 

 and the members of staff as his hired men. 

 I believe that a truer statement of the 

 case is this. Some years ago each subject 

 was taught by a single professor. The 

 growth in the number of students made it 

 necessary to appoint new instructors to as- 

 sist the professor. At first these assistants 

 were very subordinate in years and experi- 

 ence and it was only natural that the re- 

 sponsibility for the work of the depart- 

 ment should remain with the professor. 

 With further growth of the institution the 

 department staff has come to include sev- 

 eral instructors and professors, each of 

 whom has a primary interest and respon- 

 sibility in the welfare of the department 

 and of the institution. Instead of this 

 being recognized, the full powers of the 

 department have been left in the hands of 

 the original head. These heads have in 

 consequence come into control of the 

 sources of information to the executive, 

 have jealously guarded their great powers, 

 and are able to direct departmental and 

 university policies through holding the 

 president in ignorance and their subordi- 

 nates in contempt. In other words, univer- 

 sity control has come to be vested in a 

 system of irresponsible heads of depart- 

 ments. This was what was meant in the 

 beginning by saying that the difficulty lies 

 not with the autocrat, but with the bureau- 

 crat. More than one well-meaning univer- 

 sity president has recognized the situation, 



admitted his powerlessness at critical peri- 

 ods and has sought to extricate himself and 

 his university by having recourse to private 

 interviews and by the appointment of ad- 

 visory committees. 



If the only evils of this system were that 

 it entails upon the president great difficul- 

 ties of university management and results 

 in the misdirection of department affairs 

 and the waste of material resources, it 

 would not be so intolerable. Its more seri- 

 ous effects are that it lowers the efficiency 

 and the moral and spiritual tone of the 

 whole institution, that it wastes the time 

 and energy of whole staffs in order that 

 the head may take his ease or satisfy his 

 ambitions. Moreover, taking away from 

 faculty members the responsibility for the 

 conception and execution of university 

 policies is the best possible way to break 

 down the practical efficiency of these men 

 and to reduce the college professor by a 

 process of natiiral selection to the imprac- 

 tical, inexperienced hireling that he is pop- 

 ularly supposed to be. Whether this is in 

 part the cause of the wretched teaching 

 which is done in our universities and of 

 the lack of standards of work and of char- 

 acter for the student, I leave you to judge. 



There is a second unfortunate feature 

 in our university organization to which I 

 will give only brief attention. This is the 

 prominence of the colleges and schools and 

 the sharp boundaries between them. The 

 colleges are not based upon any natural 

 subdivision of knowledge, but upon prac- 

 tical or technical grounds. Bach college 

 has in view the esteem of its own profes- 

 sion and has little sympathy with other 

 colleges which make up the university. 

 The very existence of the colleges creates 

 special interests and produces strife which 

 is in no way related to the welfare of the 

 student or the general public. Teaching 



