in an editorial article in the last self-sacrifice are demanded, and the Educational Review he writes:

Truly the academic animal is a queer beast. If he can not have something at which to growl and snarl, he will growl and snarl at nothing at all.

In the Educational Review for October last he quotes from The Nation the following:

There is a fine opening for a new institution to show what a college can be wherein the personal domination by the president is abandoned, and in its stead we have a company of gentlemen and scholars working together, with the president simply as the efficient center of inspiration and cooperation. and with some inconsistency remarks: Concerning this statement two things may be said with a considerable amount of emphasis. The first is that the condition described in the last four

lines is precisely what is to be found at every American college and university that is worthy of the name, and that no evidence to the contrary has ever been produced by anybody. The second is that, while the attempt to create a contrary impression may be originally due to ignorance, when persisted in it can only be attributed to malice.

Permanent tenure of office for the professor is not such a unique state of privilege as President Van Hise imagines. A president's wife has per manent tenure of office; he can not dismiss her because he regards her as inefficient or because he prefers another woman. In the army and navy, in the highest courts, to a certain extent in the civil service of every country, there is permanence of office.

wages do not measure the performance. In Germany, France and Great Britain the permanence of tenure has given dignity and honor to the university chair, attracting to it the ablest men and setting them free to do their best work. In this country the better the institution, the more permanent has been the tenure of office. Up to the time of the writing of President Butler's report only one professor had ever been dismissed from Columbia University, and then it was for entering the

confederate army.

It is possible to adduce arguments for the introduction of the competitive system into the university. Thus President Butler holds that it is undesirable to pay equal salaries. He says:

In my judgment such a policy would fill the university with mediocrities and render it impossible to make that special provision for distinction and for genius which the trustees ought always to be able to make. But it appears that the general course of social evolution is not towards com petition. In the university it would probably be adverse to the finer traits of scholarship and character, most of all when, as under our present system, the competition would be for the favor of presidents and trustees. The president may assume superhuman responsibilities, but he is after all human in his limitations. He may regard common sense as agreement with him, common loyalty as subservience to him, Indeed it is respect for the opinions of mankind as nowhere completely disregarded; serv- deference to that small portion of ice is always a valid claim for con- mankind which has money to give. tinued employment. Perhaps one wife in fifty is divorced by the courts, one army officer in a hundred courtmarshalled, one judge in a thousand impeached; but such actions are taken after definite charges and opportunity

for defence.

Permanent tenure of office is intended to improve the service, not to demoralize it. It is attached to honorable offices, where public spirit and

|

If there is to be competition in order to retain university chairs, then the university must be prepared to forego able men or to compete with other professions in the rewards it gives. It must offer prizes commensurate with those of engineering, medicine and law, namely, salaries as large as a hundred thousand dollars a year. It is further true that under these circumstances a man must be judged by his peers.

1

There are doubtless advantages in a responsible both for appointments and system of severe competition for large for finances, then there could and prizes under honorable conditions, as would be gathered there a group of well as in permanent tenure of office scholars such as has not been seen in with small salaries and a free life; this country since the early days of but confusion and harm result from the Johns Hopkins University. There running with the hare and hunting are but few of the younger men on with the hounds. A university which whom the future of scholarship and dismisses professors when the presi- research depends who would not gladly dent thinks that they are inefficient or go to such a college, whether as teachlack common sense is parasitic on the ers or as students. great academic traditions of the past and of other nations. A single university which acts in this way will in the end obtain a faculty consisting of a few adventurers, a few sycophants and a crowd of mediocrities. If all uni versities adopt such a policy, while retaining their present meager salaries and systems of autocratic control, then able men will not embark on such rotten ships. They will carry forward scientific work in connection with industry and will attract as apprentices those competent to learn the ways of research.

THE

GRADUATE COLLEGE OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY has now no president and could get on admirably without one. It is true that the pro fessors at Princeton who disagreed with the president and opposed his policies were not dismissed for lack of common sense and common loyalty. On the contrary, they won victories in a fair field where each side contended for principles. It is also true that at Princeton one professor has been able, first with and then without the favor of the administration, to carry out the plans which he formed. But the ques tion arises whether Princeton could not to advantage place the control of its policies formally in the hands of its faculties.

If the new graduate college should, like the colleges of the English universities on which it is confessedly modelled, be placed in charge of its fellows and professors, letting them be

The graduate college of which Professor West has dreamed, for which he has worked and which he has now made an accomplished fact is described by him in the last number of The Century Magazine, with special reference to the ideal of the scholar's life. Thanks to the bequest of Mrs. Swan, to the liberal gift of Mr. Proctor followed by gifts from other alumni, to the subscriptions to a memorial of Grover Cleveland, who was the first chairman of the committee of the graduate college, and to the large endowment left by Mr. Wyman, the graduate college has resources amounting to between three and four million dollars. Of this sum about six hundred thousand dollars will be spent on the buildings, including the Cleveland memorial tower, the Proctor dining hall and the Thomson residential court. The greater part of Mr. Proctor's gift and practically the whole of the Wyman bequest will be devoted to the endowment of professorships, fellowships and opportunities for research and publication. With the library, the laboratories and the academic buildings of the university, with the beauty of its architecture, the charm of the open country, the academic and national traditions of the place, the infant college is surely endowed by the fairies with all ideal gifts.

Professor West has been charged with exploiting the externals of culture, and it may be that he exhibits a touch of the pedantry that he ridicules. But his article in The Century is broad and sympathetic; his plans and ideals

GROUND PLAN OF THE BUILDINGS OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, showing the situation of the Graduate College.

1