Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/456

452 have heard him say that his teaching is splendidly clear and thorough."

"O yes," was the reply, "of course he can teach—we take that for granted—but as a booster the man is a flat failure. He never gets out and does a thing for the college—just keeps himself shut up in his laboratory all the time. For all the good he does he might just as well not be here."

Between the faculty, with its ideal of scholarship, and the trustees with their ideal of commercialism, stands the president of the college. Employed by the trustees as executive head of the institution, he has been given great power and broad discretion. In all matters touching the internal affairs of the college he is the confidential adviser of the board, and his advice is seldom disregarded. The board have placed in his hands the right of employing and discharging teachers at will, and without assigned cause. While certain powers are supposed to belong to the faculty, the president may not only veto, but may by executive order reverse its decisions, and in such cases his decision is final. It is true that cases of this sort may be appealed to the trustees, but it is an axiom of the trustees that, so long as they retain a president, he is to be supported in all that he does. As a practical proposition, therefore, in case of any disagreement between faculty and executive, the faculty enjoy only so much authority as the president may choose to allow them, and if he sees fit to overrule them completely they have no recourse. The president is in fact an autocrat, and the college policy is largely the reflection of his individual will.

It must not be supposed however that the board of trustees is a mere negative quantity, without opinions as to the conduct of the institution. The president's opinion is law, but the president's opinion is likely to be the reflection of the opinions of his more influential trustees. He is the creature of the trustees and depends upon them for his office. Were his views to take color unconsciously from those of any other man or body of men, one would expect that it would be the trustees whose opinions would determine his. His faculty have no means of asserting themselves, and are, accordingly, not in a position to command his respect. In the organization of the college they have been deprived of all real authority. They stand powerless before the president, as he would stand powerless before the trustees were there to be a conflict of authority between them. Naturally his views of college policy are modeled after those of the men who control him rather than those of the men and women who are so abjectly under his control. He comes quite naturally to attach too high a value to the commercialistic factor in the college problem, because that is the factor that appeals to his trustees. He discredits the views of his faculty whenever they conflict with the prevailing views of the trustees, even when such subjects as academic standards are concerned, in which it must be supposed that the faculty are experts and the trustees are not. There is, therefore, to-day a broad and