George Trumbull Ladd

“ While, then, I am by no means prepared to quote with unlimited assent the following declaration taken from a pamphlet, entitled "The Demoralization of College Life": "College presidents are not willing to enforce the law or even to allow it to be enforced when it will cause them to lose students, especially rich and influential ones." I am fairly confident in the belief that the total elimination of even the appearance of one-man power or influence would greatly improve the morale of the student body. ”

“ From this it follows that all the acquisitions of the university are subordinate to the quality and force of its faculties. Such an "institution of learning" may offer fine and even luxurious dormitories, and a cheap and well-served dining-hall for its students; it may give them agreeable and even refining opportunities for social life; it may have expensive appliances and large and splendid fields for athletic sports and culture; but if it has not the sufficient number and right sort of men in its faculties, it fails just where success is most imperatively demanded of it. ”

“ Why should not a professor of business law, a professor of economics, and a professor of architecture or engineering, be useful members of such an administrative body? Even a professor of ethics, if one could be found who combined a firm grasp on moral ideals with a fair amount of practical wisdom, might sometimes serve as a valuable control in the performance of the legitimate functions of the trustees of an institution of the higher education. ”

“ If we confine our attention—as indeed our theme demands—to those obstacles which arise more strictly within the university circles themselves, we may say: On the part of the students, the chief are the vices of extravagance, lawlessness, superficiality and idleness. ”

“ The other arm of administration, which ought to be equally strong and self-respecting and independent within its own appropriate sphere, must be wielded by the faculties. But not by them as acting all together, or as all acting equally in any one faculty, or as acting in an unorganized and unrestricted way. The same process which has tended toward the degradation of the professorial office has increased the danger of something resembling mob rule, if every teacher stands on equal terms with every other, in a great university. ”

“ Nor could any real friend of the American universities feel otherwise than pleased and grateful to see them equipping themselves with buildings sufficiently commodious for calculable future needs, of good academic architecture, but above all, of the highest serviceableness. But such a friend can not in the same way approve the building of luxurious dormitories, where only the wealthy can really afford to live with any show of an honest independence. ”

“ In a large institution, the less there is of the one-man-power discipline, on the whole the better. Especially is the president tempted by favoritism, prejudice, various kinds of fears and by personal or family or friendly sympathies, to act unwisely if any power of punishing or pardoning is left in his hands alone. ”

“ And when, contrary to the good judgment of the teaching force, scores and hundreds of thousands of dollars are unnecessari spent merely or largely to glorify the administration as a notable "building era" in the life of the university, it would seem that the foundations of an argument were laid for giving the men who have the work of teaching and research in charge, a much larger share in determining such matters. ”

“ Institutions that have developed as large and old universities have, even in this comparatively new country, in fact developed, can not be subjected to radical changes, suddenly, and on grounds of theoretical significance alone. But as I have already said, so obvious and important in their power to defeat the smooth and successful working of the highest functions of a great and good university have some of these evils grown to be, that the time has fully arrived for a frank and thorough discussion of the topics suggested by them. ”

“ The vice of extravagance in administration is being distinctly fostered by the system at present prevailing in our larger and wealthier universities. Money is much too largely given to bricks rather than brains, to mortar rather than men. In other words, too large a proportion of gifts and of income is being spent on needlessly expensive buildings; too small a proportion on teachers and explorers of first-rate ability in the several faculties. ”

“ But is not the present prevailing form of university administration the only one under which the trustees, corporation or otherwise named governing board, can successfully discharge their part of the administrative functions? In these days, universities can not grow in other respects unless they grow in their finances. ”

“ The administration of a large university requires for its most effective conduct two boards or bodies of men, which have largely different functions and for the most part a different personnel, but which are bound to cooperation for the welfare of the university by regularly appointed and trustworthy means of understanding each other's views, necessities, and measures enacted, and by a system of checks that shall operate in guarded ways to make each responsible for its initiative to the other. ”

“ It is neither becoming nor necessary to the argument to follow the example of a series of articles published not long ago one of our most influential newspapers and denounce the great majority of college and university presidents as habitually guilty of falsehood and selfish intrigue. ”

“ Most important of all the improvements for which we might have a fair measure of hope, if something like the suggested changes could be inaugurated and fairly and thoroughly tested in the administration of our greater and older universities, would be the improvement in a good understanding and in reciprocal confidence and in effective cooperation, between the board of teachers and the board of business management, between the professors and the trustees. ”

“ Why should there be any president, if by this title we mean to cover the office of any one man combining within himself, even apparently, all the functions belonging to this name in the days—and, if you please, even now—of the small denominational college? A figure-head to represent the university at home or abroad on occasions of peculiar import and corresponding grandeur can easily be appointed, either with a three-years' tenure or for each special occasion. ”

“ Yet, in general, the educational policy, matters touching the curriculum, and all the discipline of the student body, as almost a matter of divine right, whether or not by custom or by statute, belong to the men whose craft and experience is in lines of education. ”

“ It is a misfortune for him and for the institution even to seem to have any such power. Too often has the professor, on bringing forward the name of some member of his classes who had failed in his studies or cheated in an examination, been made by the presiding officer, through the latter's anxiety to save some notable athlete or the scion of some family of wealth or high social standing, himself to appear the delinquent, either in the artifice of detecting cheats or in the art of teaching those that will not to learn if they can possibly help it. ”

“ All the other officers are the servants of the teachers. Good health is indeed of vital importance; but in securing it, to refrain from dissipation and to take an abundance of open air in unexhausting exercise, is vastly more profitable than the existing extravagances and absurdities of college athletics. Social life is indispensable for the best development of the human individual; but it is not best obtained in the saloons, or clubs, or even in most of the sodalities popular with university students. ”

“ And so long as such a large proportion of these "friends" (?) look leniently upon, if they do not largely indulge themselves in, the practise of these same vices, how can any one lonely man stand against the multitude for firmness and due severity in discipline? But a body of men like the faculties, or their selected committees, in a great institution, is much more likely than any one man can be, to administer even-handed justice, tempered with reasonable mercy. ”

“ So long as these relations are chiefly—not to say wholly—through any one man, there are almost sure to be misunderstandings, heartburnings over real or fancied wrongs, jealousies and suspicion of favoritism and of intrigues, even if this one man is equipped with an inconceivable breadth of culture and of variegated scholastic interests, mingled in due proportions with the wisdom of a Solomon, the self-sacrifice of an apostle, and the temper of an angel. ”

“ And there is something appalling, even to the multimillionaire, in the remorseless appetite of the American university for an ever larger expenditure of money. The trustees by advising and assisting the president, and by answering generously to a certain obligation put upon, or gently hinted to them, when they are chosen to the position of trustees, are supposed to be under obligation to oversee the getting and the expenditure of the required money. ”

“ When all the preliminary stages are passed through, and the candidate has really the right to call himself professor—although the young ladies whom he used to meet at the summer resorts were wont to call him "professor" when he was in fact only a tutor or an instructor—unless he has a most self-sacrificing intellectual interest in his calling and a thoroughly ethical love for the work of the teacher, he finds that his position and its rewards are not at all what he fondly imagined they would be. ”

“ It is unnecessary to emphasize the fact that the business administration of a large educational corporation requires the same trained staff of competent and responsible assistants—treasurer, cashier, clerks, etc.—which are required by any other business corporation of equal magnitude ”

“ From the point of view which regards its morally deteriorating influence on the faculties, the present arrangement is equally unsatisfactory. The men of standing in the world of science and scholarship, and of a high sense of honor, will not willingly resort to the trustees, either as individuals or as a body, unless they are officially authorized or requested to do so. Of all men, too, they are least likely to run to the president with either complaints or defences, or to take any measures to "make themselves solid" with him. ”

“ They are, for the most part, fine, manly fellows, earnest in work and anxious to pick up whatever might seem fit for their advantage, but superficial in their attainments, eager to specialize minutely while as yet they know little or nothing thoroughly as to elementary matters in their chosen specialty, and restive under all manner of control, whether as touching manners, petty morals, the prompt keeping of appointments, or conformity to university regulations. ”

“ And no amount of painstaking or system of discipline can keep life in the university free from infection by its public environment. It is not at all clear for what proportion of the extravagance, lawlessness, superficiality and indolence of the students the university may justly be held responsible. ”

“ But our intending professor can not go back into the fitting-school or into freshman year, and begin over again. He enters the graduate department. Here he has, with few exceptions, as colleagues in study, men who, like himself, are not well-grounded and who are unable or unwilling to submit to the prolonged and severe discipline which is necessary for the training of the intellectual athlete. ”

“ Once fixed, the advice and cooperation of the entire body of officers, of every sort and grade, might be invited or commanded, but the final control of educational matters would rest in the authority of this aristocracy, with the aid of those to whom they might see fit to delegate any portion of it. And, finally, for matters affecting immediately the scholastic interests of the whole university, and for adjusting differences and conflicts touching educational interests between the different departments, a university council is a most feasible expedient. ”

“ If they are being undermined or traduced by any one, whether on the outside or among their younger and more ambitious and place-seeking colleagues, they are even unlikely to know anything about it, so busy are they in their own work; or if they do know about it, they are not unlikely to scorn to pay any attention to it. But if no action touching the professional standing of any member of the faculties could be taken on the initiative or recommendation of the president alone, there is little doubt that this kind of maladministration would occur much more infrequently. ”

“ In treating these questions it scarcely needs to be said that, as a matter of course, no system of administration, to whatever purpose that system may be applied, can avoid encountering and in all probability collecting about itself, a host of embarrassments and of obstacles to its perfect working. ”

“ It can be raised, and that without any very severe difficulties; and it would, in no very long time, be raised, if the men in the university faculties who sincerely want to see it raised, were given a free hand. Perhaps they might not have the "nerve" at once so to check the extravagance of college athletics as to make it no longer possible to spend a half-million dollars on a single game of bootball ”