of the great and good university; her pupils are also the nation and the world.
What now are the principal obstacles which have stood, and are still standing, in the way of the most efficient discharge of their obligations to their pupils, to the nation and to mankind, by the institutions of the higher and professional education in the United States? If we confine our attention—as indeed our theme demands—to those obstacles which arise more strictly within the university circles themselves, we may say: On the part of the students, the chief are the vices of extravagance, lawlessness, superficiality and idleness. All these are, to an extent, difficult to determine, connected with the grosser vices of certain forms of dissipation. The obstacles arising from the existing form of administration, on the part of the trustees, are chiefly due to ignorance, indifference and a species of cowardice which too often takes the fashion of reluctance to oppose the president or the majority of their colleagues on the governing board, or even to inquire too curiously into the motives or the significance of the measures brought before them by their presiding officer. And, finally, the smooth and efficient discharge of the functions of the university are hindred by insufficient education, lack of didactic skill, tactlessness, indifference or low moral tone, in any or all of its several faculties.
It would by no means be fair to charge the deficiencies and vices of the student body to the administration of the university, whatever the exact form of that administration might happen to be. The particular list of vices mentioned above are the national vices. And no amount of painstaking or system of discipline can keep life in the university free from infection by its public environment. It is not at all clear for what proportion of the extravagance, lawlessness, superficiality and indolence of the students the university may justly be held responsible. And, of course, previous to prolonged experience it is difficult to prove that these vices would be minimized or better held in check by a somewhat radically different form of university administration.
Of late years, the presidents who have been wise at the beginning, or who have become wise through experience in the early period of their career, have been more and more inclined to leave most of the discipline of the students in the hands of the faculties, or of the appointees of the faculties, to which the various classes of the students belong. In a large institution, the less there is of the one-man-power discipline, on the whole the better. Especially is the president tempted by favoritism, prejudice, various kinds of fears and by personal or family or friendly sympathies, to act unwisely if any power of punishing or pardoning is left in his hands alone. It is a misfortune for him and for the institution even to seem to have any such power. Too often has the professor, on bringing forward the name of some member of his classes who had failed in his studies or cheated in an examination, been made by the
