Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/462

458 subject to the approval of the trustees. Finally, no member of the teaching force should be liable to discharge except after the filing of formal charges of impeachment, and a trial before the entire faculty, and the concurrence of the president and two thirds of the faculty in sustaining the charges alleged. Some such system as this, arranged to place every responsibility on the shoulders of those best equipped to meet it, and safeguarding against the misuse of power by an adequate system of checks and balances, would eliminate most of the evils incident to the present system of American college organization.

It may be objected that the budget would be a fruitful source of faculty discord. Some discord might, indeed, exist, but it is a fair question whether discord is not preferable to intrigue. Were it not better for a professor to go into faculty meeting and fight for the weal of his department openly, than to enter a private office and lobby for it secretly. In colleges, as in politics, publicity is a strong incentive to decency. The present system is one of secrecy, intrigue and deceit. The president, who holds the key to the situation, lacks the necessary special knowledge of the departments and their needs, and the securing of funds by the various professors becomes largely a competitive test in the matter of sycophancy. It were better to have all such matters threshed out in open meeting, with the data in question before the faculty. In the end its decisions would be fair and just. Here, as elsewhere, the principle of democracy will work if given half a chance.

Finally, to the charge that the proposition here offered is too radical, let us make answer by advising all doubters to study carefully the organization of the colleges of Oxford and the universities of Germany.

When one college shall have adopted the plan here suggested of transferring to the faculty the functions that are rightfully and naturally theirs, and limiting both trustees and president to their natural functions, a new and brighter era will have begun in the history of American education. The standard of collegiate instruction will at once rise many degrees, the college teacher will become a more useful member of society, as will also the college president, harmony instead of discord will reign among the three branches of the college government, and all three will be in a position to make a united and effective attack on the educational problems that are calling for solution. For when one institution shall have changed, others will soon follow, and in time our entire college system will re-form itself in accordance with the dictates of true wisdom, and along the lines of true democracy.