2 76 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



from undue burdens has led him to assume tasks that his colleagues 

 needed to perform for the sake of their own educational growth ; a belief 

 in his own divine right to rule — a belief born of his ecclesiastical an- 

 cestry — has carried with it the corresponding belief in the right of 

 others to be ruled ; a conviction that if it is his duty " to break in " an 

 unruly team, it is the duty of the team to be broken in ; all of these and 

 still other inherited and accumulated beliefs explain the origin of con- 

 ditions that in the great majority of colleges to-day result in probably 

 more or less friction between the president of the college and the faculty. 

 If there is little friction evident, it is because of strong personal attach- 

 ment between the president and the members of the faculty individually 

 — there is occasional lack of friction in spite of the system, not be- 

 cause of it. 



But explanations, however reasonable and satisfactory they may be, 

 do not alter the fact that the college president has not only freely 

 expressed his opinion in regard to his own place in the educational 

 system, but he has also on occasions shown why the present arrange- 

 ment has been foreordained to perpetuity. 



The first reason alleged for the continuance of the present system 

 of external legislation and autocratic administration is that college 

 faculties are unable to do business. " It goes without saying, and prop- 

 erly and without adverse criticism, that the temper of mind which 

 turns a man to the higher forms of scholarship and to investigation and 

 research is not the temper which fits him for executive work," is the 

 statement of a former university president, but it was made before the 

 election of President Wilson. Another president finds that " a faculty 

 is made up chiefly of specialists, for the most part untrained in the 

 business of administration and without special responsibility for the 

 college and the larger relationships." Still a third finds " that a faculty 

 that governs itself in an extreme degree is likely to be extremely con- 

 servative; it is likely to perpetuate traditions; it is likely not to be in 

 touch with progressive thought," though the danger to be anticipated 

 from faculty government is, in the opinion of a fourth, "its radical 

 tendencies." This difference in point of view may, however, be ex- 

 plained by the geographical location of the two institutions whose 

 presidents have given these judgments — one is east and one is west. 

 And yet another emphatic, unqualified statement is made that " the very 

 worst form of government for college or university is that of a faculty." 



This very insistence on the inability of the corporate faculty thereby 

 tends to make a faculty incompetent. That a man quickly becomes 

 what he is thought to be has been learned in nearly every other field but 

 that of normal education. Even those who deal with criminals are 

 learning that the quickest way to make a man guilty of crime is to 

 believe him capable of committing a crime, that trust and confidence 



