Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 69.djvu/401

Rh professors should elect a president, a man with expert knowledge of education and university administration, whose salary, dignity and powers should be similar to those of individual professors. The university should be divided into schools as units, each of which should elect its dean and executive committee and should nominate men to fill vacancies. These nominations should be subject to approval by a board of advisers, consisting of professors from the school concerned, from related schools and from outside of the university; but final election should be by the university senate, and subject to veto by the trustees. Each school should have educational as well as financial autonomy and its property should be a trust fund for its benefit. Representatives from all schools should be elected to a senate, which should legislate for the university as a whole and should be co-ordinate with the trustees.

Reorganization along the lines of either method would bring about the desired result. The faculty's influence would pervade the whole institution and the work throughout would be directed to educational ends.

Undoubtedly were such changes effected others would come about. In all probability, catalogues, for a time, would show a decreased number of matriculants and possibly the total of benefactions reported to the commissioner of education would be diminished seriously. The writer has long believed with Professor Jastrow that decrease in benefactions and in the number of matriculants would not be serious evils. While the number of matriculants might be less, the proportion of students would be more and while the total of benefactions might be less, the amount devoted to genuine educational work would be more. The number of colleges might be reduced—certainly no calamity. Many so-called colleges, described by the editor of a prominent religious paper as academies with a college annex, might disappear. As academies with a few teachers, they could pay their way—with their petty college annex, they have a deficit. These gone, there would be relief to the generously-inclined; and a great amount of money, no longer wasted on them, would be available for other purposes.