The permissible deviations in that respect are commonly neither wide nor of a substantial character; though the instances of a university president exercising large powers are also not extremely rare. But in common practice, it is to be noted, the academic head is vested with somewhat autocratic powers, within the lines effectually laid down in the budget; he is in effect responsible to the governing board alone, and his responsibility in that direction chiefly touches his observance of the pecuniary specifications of the budget.
But it is more to the point to note that the academic head commonly holds office by choice of the governing board. Where the power of appointment lies freely in the discretion of such a board, the board will create an academic head in its own image.
In point of notorious fact, the academic head of the university is selected chiefly on grounds of his business qualifications, taking that expression in a somewhat special sense. There is at present an increasingly broad and strenuous insistence on such qualifications in the men selected as heads of the universities;and the common sense of the community at large bears out the predilections of the businesslike board of control in this respect. The new incumbents are selected primarily with a view to give the direction of academic policy and administration more of a businesslike character. The choice may not always fall on a competent business man, but that is not due to its inclining too far to the side of scholarship. It is not an easy matter even for the most astute body of businessmen to select a candidate who shall measure up to their standard of businesslike efficiency in a field of activity that has substantially nothing in common with that business traffic in which their preconceptions of efficiency have been formed.
In many cases the alumni have much to say in the choice of a new academic head, whether by courtesy or by express provision;and the results under these circumstances are not substantially different. It follows as an inevitable consequence of the current state of popular sentiment that the successful businessmen among the alumni will have the deciding voice, in so far as the matter rests with the alumni; for the successful men of affairs assert themselves with easy confidence, and they are looked up to, in any community whose standards of esteem are business standards, so that their word carries weight beyond that of any other class or order of men. The community at large, or at least that portion of the community that habitually makes itself heard, speaks to the same effect and on the same ground, -- viz., a sentimental conviction that pecuniary success is the final test of manhood.
Business principles are the sacred articles of the secular creed, and business methods make up the ritual of the secular cult.
The one clear note of acclaim that goes up, from the avowed adepts of culture and from those without the pale, when a new head has, as recently been called to one of the greater universities, is in commendation of his business capacity, "commercial sense," executive ability, financiering tact; and the effectual canvass of his qualifications does not commonly range much outside of these prime requisites. The modicum of scholarship and scholarly ideals and insight concessively deemed indispensable in such a case is somewhat of the nature of a perquisite, and is easily found. It is not required that the incumbent meet the prepossessions of the contingent of learned men in the community in this respect; the choice does not rest with that element, nor does its ratification, but rather at the other end of the scale, with that extreme wing of the laity that is taken up with "practical," that is to say pecuniary, affairs.
As to the requirements of scholarly or scientific competency, a plausible speaker with a large gift of assurance, a businesslike "educator" or clergyman, some urbane pillar of society, some astute veteran of the scientific demi-monde, will meet all reasonable requirements. Scholarship is not barred, of course, though it is commonly the quasi-scholarship of the popular raconteur that comes in evidence in these premises; and the fact that these incumbents of executive office show so much of scholarly animus and attainments as they do is in great measure a fortuitous circumstance. It is, indeed, a safe generalization that in point of fact the average of university presidents fall short of the average of their academic staff in scholarly or scientific attainments, even when all persons employed as instructors are counted as members of the staff. It may also be remarked by the way that when, as may happen, a scholar or scientist takes office as directive head of a university, he is commonly lost to the republic of learning; he has in effect passed from the ranks of learning to those of business enterprise.
The upshot of it all should be that when and in so far as a businesslike governing board delegates powers to the university's academic head, it delegates these powers to one of their own kind, who is somewhat peremptorily expected to live up to the aspirations that animate the board. What such a man, so placed, will do with the powers and opportunities that so devolve on him is a difficult question that can be answered only in terms of the compulsion of the circumstances in which he is placed and of the moral wear and tear that comes of arbitrary powers exercised in a tangle of ambiguities.(7*)NOTES:
