Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 69.djvu/397

Rh by college presidents in their appeals to generously-inclined people that the 'poor professor' is almost a byword. In truth the professor is often poor enough, but he is not guilty of exploiting his poverty or of seeking praise for self-abnegation. In any event, he has profited little from large gifts, which too often take the shape of buildings, thereby increasing the running expenses and endangering the already too small salaries. There is, indeed, sign of awakening conscience, for one day last summer it was announced that a college had received a considerable sum of money and that the salaries would be increased at once. Harvard has received a great sum, whose income is to be devoted solely to endowment; while the presidents of two other great universities have announced that increase of salaries is the most urgent need. It must be remembered, however, that these universities are in large cities, where the salaries, though counting large in dollars, have comparatively small purchasing power. Five thousand dollars in New York city is actually less than two thousand in many a college town, while two thousand dollars in that city means living in conditions incredibly narrow to dwellers in villages. This matter of salary is, however, relatively unimportant. The all important matter for consideration is the insignificant position of the professor in the organism of which he is the all-important element. These words are written with due deliberation. During his almost forty years of service, the writer has seen the gradual evolution of the president in American colleges and the resulting decadence of the professor.

Effect on Higher Education.—The American university is a great business corporation, conducted on business principles. The sense of ownership is as marked in president and trustees as though the corporation had been formed to make drugs or to build ships and they held all the stock. Within a few months, we have seen the spectacle of two educational corporations endeavoring to unite their properties under one control, though the faculties were opposed to the union. Intervention by the courts was necessary to prevent consummation of the deal. A few years earlier, negotiations of somewhat similar character were conducted between two other institutions, without any reference whatever to the faculties' opinion—properly enough, too, if, as stated by one of the trustees, the professors are merely employees of the corporation. The justification for such procedure is that men outside of boards of instruction see things from a higher plane than do those inside. One must refrain from commenting on this plea.

The anxiety to have the corporation do a big business makes number of matriculants quite as important, to say the least, as the character of instructors or instruction. Summer schools, at first mere incidents, are now recognized parts of several universities, and even modest colleges are not without them. They are important, affording opportunity for