FIRST SESSION ADDRESS OF WELCOME By HON. S. A. BULLARD, M. Arch. President of the Board of Trustees, University of Illinois It affords me great pleasure as President of the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois, to welcome you as delegates and friends to this conference, to the University of Illinois, and to all the entertainments that will be given during the week; and we trust your stay here may be not only a benefit to you, but to all those people whom you represent in the different colleges throughout the country. Such an assembly as this is unique in the history of the colleges of our country. The gathering together of people representing boards. of trustees of the several colleges seems to me must result in great advantage. We shall be able to compare notes and to exchange ideas concerning the conduct of institutions of learning. The advantages to be derived from such an interchange of views, I am sure, will more than repay the cost. This is a conference. Therefore, there will be no standing committees, so that any expression of opinion of this body will have to come through resolutions introduced by individual members of the conference. In seeking the views of this conference, upon any topic, it seems to me it would be very appropriate that resolutions expressing some definite idea should be presented, to the end that we may act upon them, and the work of the conference may be preserved. The university trustee is peculiar to American institutions. He is selected in different ways in different institutions, and even in the same institution he is not always selected in the same manner. In our State the control of the University is placed in the hands of nine trustees, elected by the people as such, upon the same ticket as other officers of the State, together with the governor and the superintendent of public instruction, and another, who is elected to represent the agricultural people of the State as President of the State Agricultural Society. These twelve people constitute our board. Other institutions may have other and different ways of choosing their controlling boards, such as appointment by some official, or body of individuals, election by alumni, or faculty, or by choice of the remaining members of the trustees themselves. The trust imposed upon the governing boards may vary in the different institutions. They do not all have the same duties and responsibilities, and in all these we may not be able to make actual comparisons and draw helpful conclusions: but we may be given to see how the several boards do the work devolving upon them, and how they meet some of the perplexing questions which are constantly arising and so be enabled, ourselves, to see more clearly the pathway of duty as it dimly appears before us. No one serving as a trustee, or at least a very few, receives a salary for such service. Most of us have business interests in addition to the work which we are doing as trustees. Therefore the work of the trustee is a gratuity. The man of business affairs brings with him to his office of trustee, his usual systematic business methods, and by his advice and counsel aids largely in conserving the financial interests of his institution. His relations with the business world give him also decided views of the way in which the college or university may best serve the world of business activity about him, and thus in one more way repay to society the money expended in educational work. The duties of trustees of our colleges are responsible duites, and, if such a gathering as this will inspire us to perform those duties more conscientiously, and by having the benefit of the experiences and suggestions of others we may have more wisdom with which to perform them, I shall feel that this conference has been a success. THE UNIVERSITY PRESIDENCY By HON. ANDREW S. DRAPER, LL.D. [By permission of The Atlantic Monthly] There are at least four features which distinguish university work in America and exercise a decisive influence upon the form of government in American universities. The first grows out of the universal democracy of the country and the common ambitions of the people. Every one who shares in the spirit of the country wants to get to the top, and continually hears that he may, if he will seize his opportunities. He has no thought of following his father's work, unless, as is quite improbable, it is in line with his special ambitions. The need of the higher training for all kinds of work involving mental aptitude is now everywhere recognized. The secondary schools have become a part of the common school system, and every teacher in high school or academy leads his students very near to the point of thinking that they will lose their chance in life, and even be discredited, if they do not advance to college or university. The university life is now specially attractive to the young, and they want a share in the pleasure and enthusiasm of it. This brings to the universities great numbers who in other days never went to college, who in other lands would not go now. Many of these must be both led and pushed. Then, the common thought about liberal education has changed It is no longer only classical, culturing, disciplinary: it must prepare students not only for the multiplying professions, but for the multiplying industries. It trains one for work, but work which may distinguish him. Cultivated aimlessness is no longer the accepted ideal of American scholarship. Culture which is not the product of work either mental or manual, with some definite point to it, is held to be at second-hand, only skin-deep, and not to be taken seriously. It must not be said that mere strength and steadiness in holding down a job are the marks of an educated man. There must be native resourcefulness and versatility, sound training and serious study, discrimination in means and methods, and rational applications to real things in life, in ways that bring results of some distinct worth to the world. It makes little difference what one does, but he must do something. The all-important fact is not that real learning may now be found in all businesses, though that is important, but that one must do something of recognized value, to be held a scholar. It may be not only in letters, or science, or law, or medicine, or theology, but it may be also in administration, in planning and constructing, in mechanics, in agriculture, in banking, in public service, in anything else worth while. If one's powers of observation, of investigation, of expression, and of accomplishment, lead him to do something of real concern, to do it completely and quite as well as, or better than, others can do it, and impel him to open up new vistas and methods of doing other things of larger moment, he has a better right to be held an educated man than he who incubates the unpotential and brings forth nothing. And not only have educational values changed, but educational instrumentalities have changed. Books and academic discussions have their part, but in many directions it is now a minor part. Things are taught and learned, new insight and the power to do are gained, through actual doing. And not only is the training through doing rather than through reading and talking, but the opportunity of selection extends to every subject and every study. It requires buildings and equipment and teachers never before within the means of an institution. It has revolutionized the scope, the possessions, the plans and methods, the offerings, and the outlook of the universities. While this is coming to be true in a measure in other countries, the unconventional freedom, the industrial aggressiveness, the unparalleled volume of money going into university operations in this country have given us the leadership of a New-World movement in higher education. Again, university revenues come from men who have done things and want other things done. It is exclusively so in private institutions, and the people and representatives who vote appropriations to the state universities have no other thought. While few are so short sighted as to be opposed to a balanced and harmonious university evolution, still, money is provided more freely for the kind of instruction in which the providers are most interested. This, of course, gives shape and trend to the development. But it does more: it creates the need of teachers not heretofore adequately prepared or not prepared in adequate numbers. The vastness, the newness, and the . unpreparedness of it all create the need of general oversight and close administration. Even more, when teachers are not supported by student fees, but are paid from the university treasury without reference to the number of students they teach, or very sharp discrimination about the quality of work they do, there is no automatic way of getting rid of teachers who do not teach or of investigators who do not produce. Some competent and protected authority must accomplish this and continually reinforce the teaching staff with virile The competition between institutions rather than between men, and the natural reluctance at deposing a teacher, are producing pathetic situations at different points in many American universities, and are likely to become the occasion of more weakness in our university system than has been widely realized. Yet again, the sentiment of this country does not agree, and doubtless will never agree, that American universities shall stand for mere "scholarship" without reference to character, or that boys shall be allowed to go to the devil without hindrance, for the lack of university leadership, or to accommodate administrative cowardice or convenience. Students will have to be controlled and guided in this country, and American universities will have to have leaders who are leaders of morals as well as of learning, and who will stir the common sense, and use the common sentiment, through the authoritative word spoken in the crowd. One may lament that our universities are not copied upon German or English models; that overwhelming numbers of students are going to them; that not all who go are serious students; that we are moving in new educational directions; that our professors are not made to live on fees; and that there is neither a care for superficial culture without much regard for true scholarship, nor a vaunting of mere scholarship without reference to moral character. The labor is lost. These things are so: they are right because they are so; because they are the outgrowth of the compounding of a great new nation in the world, and because they are the logical outworkings of a marvelous advance in the thinking of men who are free to do some thinking for themselves. It is hardly worth while to be troubled because we cannot see the road beyond the turns that are ahead. There is a road beyond the turns, or one will be made. President Pritchett of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in a recent address at the University of Michigan, published in the September Atlantic, discusses, without answering, the question, "Shall the University become a business corporation?" Dr. Pritchett ordinarily does things exactly and completely. He can answer questions, particularly when he asks them. of himself. He did not answer this one because the answer is so obvious. He used his question to express a very common skepticism. Of course the university cannot become a business corporation, with a business corporation's ordinary implications. Such a corporation is without what is being called spiritual aim, is without moral methods. Universities are to unlock the truth and turn out the best and the greatest men and women; business corporations are mainly, if not exclusively to make money. If this is a harsh characterization, it can not be denied that it has been earned by the great business corporations with which the great universities must be compared if they are to be compared with any. A university cannot become such a corporation without ceasing to be a university. The distinguishing earmarks of an American university are its moral purpose, its scientific aim, its unselfish public service, its inspirations to all men in noble things, and its incorruptibility by commercialism. But that is no reason why sane and essential business methods should not be applied to the management of its business affairs. It is a business concern as well as a moral and intellectual instrumentality, and if business methods are not applied to its management it will break down. If they are not to be employed, the university, with its vast accumulations of materials and men, must be a mistake, or, worse yet, a wrong. It is neither a mistake nor a wrong, or it would not be here. It is neither an accident nor an impulse; it is a growth, the deliberate product of conditions, of means, and of thought. It is a great combination of material resources and moral forces essential to modern competitions, the needed inspiration of all factors in the population for large areas of territory, and its usefulness depends upon giving the management both moral sense and worldly knowledge. The responsible authorities in the management of a university are the trustees, the president, and the faculty. Legal enactments settle in some measure the exact functions of each, but common knowledge of the kinds of government which succeed when much property and many interests are involved, as well as the imperative necessities of the particular situation, have gone much further to establish the govermental procedure in the university. While the immediate purpose is to exploit the functions and powers of the university president, some reference necessarily brief must be made to the prerogatives and duties of the trustees and faculty. A vital principle in all government involving many cares and interests is tersely expressed in the statement that bodies legislate and individuals execute. It goes without saying that legislation must be by a body which is both morally responsible and legally competent, |