Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/98

94 civic, social. In no sense should the executive feel a personal ownership in the university; but he should have a sense of personal responsibility, that the university must be administered in such ways that the present democratic aspirations of the state for a larger life may be met and the future democratic life of the commonwealth may be provided.

For these reasons one of the executive's chief characteristics should be his ability to appreciate men and his willingness to judge of the worth of men for membership in the university, either as teachers or as students, by the promise that they show of ability to contribute something constructive to the progress of democracy. At the present time, in many schools, the efficiency of strong men is lessened by the petty tyrannies of executive control and by undemocratic forms of domineering authority which serve no purpose save the satisfaction of the petty tyrant involved. The president should see to it that the strong men and women of the university faculty are given broad freedom to work, both within and without the university, at those constructive programs which they are prepared to offer. The president's real service to the university and the state is not in his own exaltation; but only in his securing to the university a field for broadly social educational work, and in his securing teachers of the right sort to occupy this field. There are men in every university who have these broadest ideals of social scholarship, "learning at work in the service of the state," who need to have larger freedom for their work.

Such a president will, however, scarcely ever be chosen by a board of control acting independently. As a matter of fact a democratic organization of the university would demand that the people of the state, represented by the board of control, the faculty, represented by a committee elected by themselves, and the student body, represented by a committee chosen in the same way, should all have a share in the selection of the president. He is to be the representative of the people. He is to work with the faculty. He is to be a leader and an inspirer of the student body. How can he be all of these unless all of these interests have some share in his choice? The state might well pay any sum needed to secure such a man.

If we turn for a moment to a more definite discussion of the faculty, it should be said that a faculty for such an institution should be made up, mostly, of real teachers; that is, of men and women who are interested in teaching young men and women rather than in research work, and who have just enough of the research ideal to give them zest for their work and to keep them, intellectually, active and young.

There should be, undoubtedly, in each department a real research man, whose main function should be to stimulate the constant growth of the department along intellectual lines. But the faculty as a whole should be interested primarily in the social outcome of education rather