Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/757

Rh has been said elsewhere, have they opportunity to acquire the necessary familiarity after assuming office, for business matters occupy most of the time at board meetings and matters affecting work by the teaching board are largely incidental. It would be strange if the trustee did not regard his board's responsibility as the more important.

The change for the worse in relations of the boards is due in no small degree to a change in character of the president's duties. That officer is no longer primarily a teacher; in many of the larger universities he does no teaching, is simply the executive officer; while in many of the smaller institutions he does little teaching because efforts to raise money occupy most of his attention. The chronic impecuniosity of most colleges prevents trustees, when seeking a president, from inquiring closely respecting a candidate's fitness to represent the educational side of the institution; money and more students are the crying needs. The appointee is usually a man of great expectations—on the board's part; he will find money, gather students, advertise the institution, awaken interest everywhere and convert indifferent alumni into hustling canvassers. But once appointed he is left practically to his own resources, to be praised by the board if he succeed, to be blamed if he fail—a rather uninviting post, whose holder deserves more sympathy than is contained in the libel that he has every grace except that of resignation. He has been appointed not to elevate the institution as an educational power, but to make of it a 'big thing.' One may not censure him severely for emphasizing what may be termed the noneducational side or for resorting at times to odd expedients for increasing the total of students and instructors; but the results have been disastrous, for thus it has come about that the vast majority of people and the vast majority of prospective students measure an institution not by the character of its instruction or by the fitness of its instructors, but by the mass of its buildings, by the number of students and by its prominence in the semi-professional athletics which so disgrace American colleges.

The president is practically the only source whence the trustees may obtain information respecting internal affairs of the institution, as, with rare exceptions, the faculties have no representatives on or before the corporate board. He is the responsible head, the only element known to the trustees; in the nature of the case, he formulates the business to be presented, so that, if he possess a fair degree of tact, the board merely carries out his wishes. If successful in securing money and students, he is liable to be human enough to forget that he has done this work as the professors have done theirs and to think of himself as creator with consequent right to control policy and to direct expenditure. Business presented to the trustees is not likely to be such as to encourage great inquisitiveness respecting details of internal