teacher, and financial agent that of a fitting social representative of the institution.
But increased and increasing endowments entailed the burden of organizing and administering them. The funds secured must be wisely used and no one could hope to be successful as the head of an educational institution who did not unite with the ability to raise funds that of a wise administrator.
But wise administration is a complex term. It implies the organization not only of the internal but of the external affairs of an institution—the care of buildings and of grounds, and even familiarity with a species of hotel-keeping if the college has dormitories or residence halls.
Thus by an accumulation of duties that have been added as the scope of the college has broadened, the college president has added to his primary qualification of religious head that of educational head, financial head, social head and administrative head, including the duties of superintendent of buildings and grounds and even those of hotel proprietor. It has been a veritable piling of Ossa on Pelion and the office has become so burdened with duties and responsibilities that it seems as if it must break down of its own weight.
A person unfamiliar with the situation might reasonably conclude that all of our colleges and universities were threatened with bankruptcy and had been placed in the hands of a receiver so unlimited are the powers that have been conferred on their presidents. But those whose acquaintance with present conditions makes it possible for them to understand the steps by which this present development has been reached know that the powers now placed in the hands of the president have been cumulative and in a measure accidental rather than the result of fixed plan.
Of the eight factors concerned in college legislation and administration, seven have been considered. It remains only to examine the part taken by the faculty in the government of the colleges with which they are associated. Singularly enough this part seems entirely negligible. The faculty of a college has no voice in the election of a president who is to rule over them by appointive if not by divine right, nor are its members, as far as known, ever consulted when a choice of president is to be made, nor are even expressions of opinion sought from them.
It is also true that no college professor is ever a member of the board of trustees that governs the institution with which he is connected, and that he is even in some cases expressly prohibited from ever becoming a member of the governing body. The corporate state may be represented by its governor who may be ex officio a member of the board of trustees of a college within the state; the state at large may through the votes of its citizens choose the boards of regents who control the policy
