Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 73.djvu/337

Rh given to Professor B; while Professor C, but recently refused recognition, finds that his merit has risen several points because his stock is quoted higher at a rival university exchange. Not thus is academic loyalty furthered. The salary question is a most disturbing factor of the academic situation; and the cure is prevention. Most of the irritating situations must not be allowed to arise; the ones that legitimately find their place will be suitably solved under a suitable system of principles; and the president's life, if he wishes it, will be a happier one. An equalized system of comfortable salaries fixed for the professorship and the scale of living of the environment, will dispose of this question and leave all freer to devote themselves to what their functions demand. I do not advocate for the good of the academic life the existence of large rewards or special prizes, though I deem it for the good of the community to thus manifest its appreciation of academic service. I agree with President Remsen that once the professor is relieved from financial worry the cause would not be particularly benefitted, though the professor might be pleased to receive a larger income. It is thus clear that the procedure by which incomes are to be determined and adjusted follows directly from the principles that show the way to remove far more difficult though not more irritating disabilities of the academic life.

President Remsen's remark laid him open to a retort which was promptly made: that a president would not be injured though he might be pained by having his salary reduced to that of a professor. The disparagement between the appraisal of academic and of administrative service is yet another and a serious misfortune of externalism. It affects not presidents alone, but deans, and heads of departments; it diverts unusual talents into unprofitable channels; it obstructs many of the byways of academic activity. It is thoroughly bad in appearance or reality to countenance the view that the only or the normal method of rising is by assumption of administrative powers. It is equally bad to encourage the popular misconception o*f academic service by throwing the limelight either upon administrative position or upon athletic prowess or upon any but the central purpose for which the university exists. It was far different in the older simplified college, in which the president was commonly the leader of the faculty, the embodiment of the spirit of the institution, distinguished for just what the academic sanction of the day approved, and quite incidentally an administrator. To-day when the office seeks the man, the search is for one with executive taste or pioneering ambition; and when the man seeks the office, it is too commonly because he likes the disposition of authority and the enjoyment of movement with no oversensitiveness to the jar or other disquieting accompaniments of locomotion. I do not for a moment imply that the university presidency is other than