THE NEXT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 265 



THE NEXT COLLEGE PKESIDENT 



By A NEAR-PROFESSOR 



IT was in the autumn of 1911 that the press gave wide publicity to a 

 meeting of college presidents, deans and professors convened in 

 honor of the installation of the chancellor of a metropolitan university. 

 At the dinner that closed the ceremonies one of the speakers, himself the 

 president of another great university, assured the audience that being 

 a university president was great fun since among other perquisites of 

 the position was that of being able to dine on college professors. 



The press reports of the dinner were read by a near-professor as he 

 sat in his modest study in a distant college town. The phrase used 

 by the distinguished university president seemed strangely familiar, and 

 turning to a package of notes in his desk he found among them the 

 record of a conversation with a former colleague and read in the words 

 of his friend, " Sometimes the board of trustees eats the president, 

 sometimes the president eats the board of trustees, but both always eat 

 the faculty." 



It was indeed passing strange, the near-professor pondered, to find 

 such unanimity of opinion between a great university president and a 

 humble college professor as to the part in the educational system played 

 by the college faculty, and henceforth he felt his own course was clear ; 

 if the high cost of living restricted his own daily menu, he could at least 

 serve the cause of education by cheerfully recognizing his place and be- 

 coming the baked meats for the table of his academic superior. 



But before consciously laying his head on the president's dinner 

 platter, it seemed wise to the near-professor to turn again to his bulky 

 package of notes. They were the accumulations of several years and 

 they represented the reports of presidents of colleges in nearly every 

 state in the union, anonymous articles by college professors that had 

 appeared in all of the leading reviews of the country, anonymous letters 

 on educational organization written to the press and turned over to him 

 by a journalist brother, memoranda of conversation that he had had 

 with professors from other colleges when they were separated by the 

 Atlantic from their academic dinner tables, descriptions of the organiza- 

 tion of education in nearly every country in Europe, private letters 

 from personal friends whose official heads had yielded a Barmecide feast 

 to various college presidents, and fragments from his own observation 

 and experience. 



As he examined the mass of material he was conscious of a secret 



