Rated as they are, in the popular apprehension, as gentlemen and scholars, and themselves presumably accepting this rating as substantially correct, no feature of the scheme of management imposed on the academic executive by business principles should (presumably) be so repugnant to their sensibilities and their scholarly judgment as this covert but unremitting pursuit of an innocuous notoriety, coupled as it necessarily is with a systematic misdirection of the academic forces to unscholarly ends; but prudential reasons will decide that this must be their chief endeavour if they are to hold their own as a competitive university. Should the academic head allow his sense of scholarly fitness and expediency to hamper this business of reputable notoriety, it is, perhaps with reason, feared that such remissness would presently lead to his retirement from office; at least something of that kind seems a fair inference from the run of the facts. His place would then be supplied by an incumbent duly qualified on this score of one-eyed business sagacity, and one who would know how to keep his scholarly impulses in hand. It is at least conceivable that the apprehension of some such contingency may underlie current university management at some points, and it may there fore in some instances have given the administration of academic affairs an air of light-headed futility, when it should rather be credited with a sagaciously disingenuous yielding to circumstance.
The run of the facts as outlined above, and the line of inference just indicated as following from them, reflect no great credit on the manly qualities of the incumbents of executive office; but the alternative, as also noted above, is scarcely preferable even in that respect, while it would be even less flattering to their intellectual powers. Yet there appears to be no avoiding the dilemma so presented. Of disinterested grounds for the common run of academic policy there seem to be only these two lines to choose between: -- either a short-sighted and headlong conformity to the vulgar prejudice that does not look beyond "practical" training and competitive expansion, coupled with a boyish craving for popular display; or a strategic compromise with the elders of the Philistines, a futile doing of evil in the hope that some good may come of it.
This latter line of apology is admissible only in those cases where the university corporation is in an exceptionally precarious position in respect of its endowment, where it is in great need and has much to hope for in the way of pecuniary gain through stooping to conventional prejudices, that are of no scholastic value, but that are conceived to bind its potential benefactors in a web of fatally fragile bigotry; or, again, where the executive is in sensible danger of being superseded by an administration imbued with (conceivably) yet lower and feebler scholarly ideals.
Now, it happens that there are notable instances of universities where such a policy of obsequiously reputable notoriety and aimless utilitarian management is pursued under such circumstances of settled endowment and secure tenure as to preclude all hazard of supersession on the part of the executive and all chance of material gain from any accession of popular renown or stagnant respectability. There is a small class of American university corporations that are so placed, by the peculiar circumstances of their endowment, as to be above the apprehension of need, so long as they are content to live anywhere nearly within the domain of learning; at the same time that they have nothing to lose through alienating the affections of the vulgar, and nothing to gain by deferring to the sentimental infirmities of elderly well-to-do persons. This class is not a numerous one; not large enough to set the pace for the rest; but evidently also not numerous enough to go on their own recognizances, and adopt a line of policy suited to their own circumstances and not bound to the fashion set by the rest. Some of the well known establishments of this class have already been alluded to in another connection.
Statistical display, spectacular stage properties, vainglorious make-believe and obsequious concessions to worldly wisdom, should seem to have no place in the counsels of these schools; which should therefore hopefully be counted on to pursue the quest of knowledge with that single mind which they profess.
Yet such is eminently, not to say pre-eminently, not the case.
Their policy in these matters commonly differs in no sensible degree from that pursued by the needier establishments that are engaged in a desperate race of obsequiousness, for funds to be procured by favour of well-to-do donors, or through the support of worldly-wise clergymen and politicians. Indeed, some of the most pathetic clamour for popular renown, as well as instances of the most profligate stooping to vulgar prejudice, are to be credited to establishments of this, potentially independent, class. The management, apparently, are too well imbued with the commonplace preconceptions of worldly wisdom afloat among the laity, to admit of their taking any action on their own deliberate initiative or effectually taking thought of that pursuit of learning that has been entrusted to their care. So, perhaps through some puzzleheaded sense of decorum, they have come to engage in this bootless conventional race for funds which they have no slightest thought of obtaining, and for an increased enrolment which they advisedly do not desire.
