University professor

“ The active duties of a college professor leave little time for continued systematic investigation. A new era, however, is dawning in university education in America, and the college professor who shows ability for scientific investigation will undoubtedly be relieved of the yearly teaching of immature minds and be left free to devote himself to graduate students, to research, and to the general supervision of his department, rather than to the daily drill which should be left to trained assistants. ”

“ I said. “We have professors, but they are not divided into faculties, and they certainly do not form the Senatus Academicus, or the highest authority in the University.”
It seems very strange, but it is nevertheless a fact, that as soon as a good tutor is made a professor, he is considered of no good for the real teaching work of the colleges. His lectures are generally deserted; and I could quote the names of certain professors who afterwards rose to great eminence, but who at Oxford were simply ignored and their lecture-rooms deserted. ”

“ I know that the doors of the University are being opened to all the newer studies, and that many a student spends most of his time in acquiring the useful knowledge that is to equip him for his profession and for the direct purpose of that profession; knowledge which is to fit him to become lawyer, doctor, minister, engineer, or teacher; yet an Oxford Professor may always maintain the pursuit of Learning for its own sake and keep this purpose before his students even in their most technical work. ”

“ Yet thanks to common sense and an appreciation of the importance of individual freedom, the university professor has in America a reasonably satisfactory status. There is little or no interference with the conduct of his department; his ment depends chiefly on efficiency rather than on favor; his position is permanent; he has complete freedom of research and reasonable freedom of speech and conduct. Those who are dissatisfied with the conditions here should make themselves familiar with what is happening abroad. ”

“ They are, however, of opinion that such an arrangement cannot be made at the present time, and that the exigencies of the case may be best met by founding a new professorship which shall terminate with the tenure of office of the Professor first elected. The services of a man of the highest attainments in science, devoting his life to public teaching as such Professor, and engaged in original research, would be of incalculable benefit to the University. ”

“ I do not believe that the most careful student of professional mannerisms could detect an American professor out of his lecture room. It is possible that this note of ordinary worldliness in the members of the staff of the American university has a beneficial effect upon the students. It may help to suggest the thought that a university course is no more than a preparation for life, is not, as most of us thought once, a thing complete in itself. ”

“ Each College has its own teaching staff of Tutors and Lecturers. It is, of course, impossible for the ordinary College Tutor to supply instruction in all the various fields of knowledge. The difficulty has been met by appointing members of the instructional force of other Colleges, and very frequently also University Professors and Lecturers as College instructors, who in this way become responsible for some part of the ordinary College tuition. Thus it happens that an instructor may be lecturing as University Professor or Reader on one day, and on the next in his capacity as College Lecturer. ”

“ Here comes not only the opportunity but the obligation of those whose vocation is in research institutions. The university teacher may generally be considered to have done his share when in addition to his research work he has instructed his regular classes. Those, on the other hand, whose lots are cast in institutions of research, being relieved of the round of duties incident to the university professorship, would seem to be marked as the ones to use such instruments of general education as are most suitable for reaching the great public outside the schools and colleges. ”

“ A professor in a university where the studies are elective has no more superfluous time than a busy lawyer, or doctor, or business man. Merely to keep up with the literature of a subject, to 119 say nothing of that research and writing which should enlarge its limits, is an enormous task. Teaching too is no longer an affair of text-books and recitations. Leisurely days of routine ease belong to the past. A professor nowadays must prepare lectures incessantly; must perpetually revise them; must arrange examinations; direct the reading of his students ”

“ This great University forms a part of the great commonwealth of letters, and its professors should feel themselves bound to promote literary comity, and be a connecting link between fellow-workers wherever they may be. Many a retiring student labours on in ignorance of what is being done by others, and is glad of information about books or manuscripts, which it should be a professor's task to acquire and disseminate. ”

“ It may be argued, of course, that University professors provide a good deal of amusement for their students, that their personal peculiarities, carefully observed through four years of class-room work, often furnish rich entertainment at convivial gatherings. Or, again, it may be urged that the study of professors (in so far as professors can be regarded as human) is the study of human nature, and that students who observe their professors carefully are gaining an acquaintance with a practical branch of the science of anthropology. ”

“ It is never, however, a matter of so much moment to procure a professor, who is pre-eminently informed upon the subject of his department, as one that is capable of communicating the knowledge he possesses, is systematic, has a mind that can enable him to improve and to take part as a member of the faculty in the management of the university, in which the greatest firmness, good sense, and ability are occasionally [Pg 288] demanded. "A man," says the illustrious Jefferson, "is not qualified for a professor, knowing nothing but merely his own profession. ”

“ A professor, and especially a professor of any science, should be elected because of his ability as a teacher, his knowledge, and his moral worth; not for his opinions upon some abstract theological dogma. A man may believe in sprinkling, and yet be competent to teach the chemistry of water even in a Baptist university. ”

“ The real teaching or coaching or cramming for examination is left to the tutors and Fellows of each college, and the examinations also are chiefly in their hands. Many undergraduates never see a professor, and, as far as the teaching work of the University is concerned, the professorships might safely be abolished. And yet, as I could honestly assure my foreign friends, the best men who take honour degrees at Oxford are quite the equals of the best men at Paris or Berlin. ”

“ The position and work of a professor is by no means easy to define. It is his first duty to represent his subject, to urge its claims on attention, to do what he can to promote its study. But the method by which this result is best to be attained must depend on the relations of that subject to the examinations of the university, and on the relation of the professor to other teachers in the same subject. Ecclesiastical history is recognised in the examinations for the theological and the historical triposes. ”

“ It is obvious that in addition to the qualifications above mentioned, regard has always been paid to those personal characteristics which cannot be rigorously defined, but which cannot be overlooked if the ethical as well as the intellectual character of a professorial station is considered, and if the social relations of a teacher to his colleagues, his pupils, and their friends, are to be harmoniously maintained. The professor in a university teaches as much by his example as by his precepts. ”

“ Primarily, instruction is the duty of the professor in a university as it is in a college; but university students should be so mature and so well trained as to exact from their teachers the most advanced instruction, and even to quicken and inspire by their appreciative responses the new investigations which their professors undertake. Such work is costly and complex; it varies with time, place, and teacher; it is always somewhat remote from popular sympathy, and liable to be depreciated by the ignorant and thoughtless. ”

“ The advice of a skilful professor will adapt a course of reading to every mind and every situation; his authority will discover, admonish, and at last chastise the negligence of his disciples; and his vigilant inquiries will ascertain the steps of their literary progress. Whatever science he professes he may illustrate in a series of discourses, composed in the leisure of his closet, pronounced on public occasions, and finally delivered to the press. I observe with pleasure, that in the university of Oxford Dr. ”

“ To render metaphysics and ethics acceptable to persons who have no special object to serve by pursuing such studies is an achievement of which any Professor might justly feel proud. His department, which was formerly the most unpopular in the University, has become one of those most resorted to by candidates for honours. He is equally popular as a teacher and as an examiner, and is said to be one of the most erudite of men in the literature of his department. ”

“ Peter mounted to his study and lay down on the box-couch, tired out with his day at the university. The first few weeks of the year were very fatiguing for him; there were so many exhausting things besides his lectures and all the new students; long faculty meetings in which almost no one was ever frank, and always the old fight to keep up the standard of scholarship, to prevent the younger professors, who had a sharp eye to their own interests, from farming the whole institution out to athletics, and to the agricultural and commercial schools favoured and fostered by the State Legislature. ”

“ Instead, the subjects taught are treated in their relation to life, the only way in which they can be of real interest to the students.202
"You will look in vain in the modern university for the old type of absent-minded, dry-as-dust professor. He has been superseded by the professor who is a man as well as a scholar. ”

“ You are a product of an entirely different tradition. You were educated, and have previously taught, in a large university, and this makes it difficult, perhaps impossible, for you to appreciate the needs and the point of view of the small college. The ideal of the professor in a university is self-improvement and personal achievement; but in the small college, the teacher is expected to give, above everything else, personal service and devotion to the interests of his students. ”

“ The highest result of a professor's labours would be the formation of a small class of those who were willing to prolong their university course, that they might study methods of research, that they might begin some work which would be capable of expansion into a worthy contribution to historical literature. ”

“ The teaching staffs of the American universities do not develop the qualities of the don. They do not tend to become a class apart with a special outlook upon life. It is possible to meet a professor—even a professor of English literature—in ordinary society, to talk to him, to be intimate with him and not to discover that he is a professor. ”

“ The college professor's function includes not only the increase of knowledge in the individual and the elevation of the intellectual standard in the world at large, but the actual advancement of learning. College and professor alike are not for their own campus alone, but for society in general. ”

“ They number among their professors the most distinguished men of the century, whether poets, philosophers, or divines. All who lay claim to authorship find in the lecture-room a firm stand and rank in society, as Government is ever ready to insure a life-position to distinguished scholars. To mention only a few examples of men who would scarcely be thought of in a professorial career,—Schiller was Professor of History in Jena, Rückert Professor in Berlin, Uhland in Tübingen. ”

“ All that could possibly be done would be to establish a closer relation between professors and undergraduates, to increase, in fact, the number of seminaries and societies, and to make it obligatory on each professor to have some personal intercourse with the students who attend his lectures. ”

“ Few professors do as much teaching or lecturing as the German professors, who are also noted for their elaborate papers in the scientific Journals. I myself have been burdened down with work, and know what it is; and yet I here assert that all can find time for scientific research if they desire it. But here, again, that curse of our country, mediocrity, is upon us. Our colleges and universities seldom call for first-class men of reputation, and I have even heard the trustee of a well-known college assert that no professor should engage in research because of the time wasted! ”

“ As the practice of teaching is requisite, in order to be able to explain the difficulties of any science, and render the communication of its precepts familiar to others, it is necessary that persons should devote their time very much to it. This can only be done to good purpose, so that students may reap ample advantages therefrom, by means of instituting public professorships.
The business of a Professor is to place before students in a full light, at their first entrance upon any study, the true object of that study, and to ascertain their proper pursuit. ”