Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 61.djvu/412

406 hold college work in high esteem when he finds that, though almost wholly uninformed respecting it, he is thought competent to select the managers and to direct the method. It is not surprising that some of our modern trustees entertain little respect for college professors; the only wonder is that so many of them entertain any respect whatever. Under the proposed method, however, the trustee would be no longer a mere name, he would hold office with definite duties and definite responsibilities, whose nature he would understand. He could not fail to become familiar with some portion of the institution's work, for conference would bring every trustee into contact with representatives of the faculties. His personal interest in one department or another would be apt to take practical shape.

As business principles would prevail in the management, funds for endowments could be obtained with less difficulty because there would be less dread of waste through bad investment. Patrons would be more ready to found departments, equipped with men, materials and buildings, seeing in them more enduring monuments than mere memorials of stone.

The writer has been a college professor for thirty-three years. Familiar with the changes for good and ill to which this article refers, he has felt compelled to write without reserve and it may be with some emphasis, that the conditions may be brought sharply before those who really control the future of American colleges and universities. He appeals to that business common sense which characterizes the great majority of college trustees. American colleges and universities have outgrown their swaddling clothes; no amount of patching can make them fit; the new garments must be of different cut and of different material.