Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu/275

Rh board of control is to-day that of appointing the college president, and that the great power in the educational world thereby becomes the college or university president.

The position of the American college president is absolutely unique in the educational world, yet the evolution of the office has been a simple one and it is easily traced. The great majority of the older colleges in America were founded either by ecclesiastical organizations or, in communities where the civil and the ecclesiastical power, were identical, by the state, and the function of its college was to educate young men for the ministry. Thus it followed that at first the college president sustained much the same relation to the student body that the pastor of a church sustained to the members of his congregation—he was the spiritual teacher and adviser, the religious head of an institution founded for religious purposes. The first and the final test of his qualification for the position was that of orthodoxy, and when this was called in question his position as president of a college was no longer tenable. But as the ecclesiastical rigor that bound both church and state gradually relaxed, a change took place in the qualifications demanded of a college president. Education as a process came to be more emphasized and it became necessary for the college president to be not only a clergyman, but also to have a strong and commanding personality. The college president became the great teacher—a class of which Mark Hopkins will always stand as the type—and his chief financial duty was to raise funds for scholarships for the education of "worthy young men."

The next step in the evolution of the college president came when the college was frequented by young men whose career in life was to be, not the ministry, but one of the other learned professions, or business, or some branch of applied science. This necessitated the development of the secular side of education, and with this development came the demand for increased appliances, for laboratories, for large additions to libraries and museums, for the enlargement in every direction of the educational plant. Funds must be raised to provide this equipment and on the shoulders of the college president was laid the burden of securing them. Thus the college president became not only the religious head and the educational head of the institution, but its financial agent.

But it followed naturally that if large endowments were to be secured by the college president, he must be "a good mixer" with those who might be persuaded to contribute to the college. A clergyman, a scholar, a recluse, might possibly teach, but other qualifications for raising funds were imperative. He must be a man of fine presence, genial manner, consummate tact, a ready and acceptable public speaker—he must be in the best sense of the work, "a man of the world." The college president thus added to his previous qualifications of clergyman.