"Dangerous Trade"

"Dangerous Trade"

What does a college president do all day long? Most undergraduates do not know. To them their President is a vague figure who occasionally descends from his shadowy musnud to preside over chapel ceremonies. To the cinema-going layman he is a capped-&-gowned comedian. But Dean Max McConn of Lehigh University, in the current North American Review, drew a startlingly different picture, showing the college president as a harrowed executive plying "a dangerous trade," holding down "a man-killing job."

Sample presidential day according to Dean McConn:

"When he arrives at his office at 9:30 the architects are waiting for him with plans for the new botanical greenhouses ... an enlarged swimming pool ... a new set of roads and walks on the South Campus. All these projects will cost more than previously estimated, but surely in view of their obvious desirability the president can find the money.

"Next comes the alumni secretary with the preliminary layout of a 'drive' for an additional ten millions of endowment. . . .

"Then perhaps the dean slips in with a particularly nasty case of student discipline, a case which must be handled firmly in the interest of student morale, yet discreetly if the name of the university is not to be smirched. . . .

"After the dean, Assistant Professor Jones, with the double purpose of pleading for an increase in salary and sowing a few innuendoes against the head of his department, whose responsibilities, it may be inferred, could be infinitely better discharged by Professor Jones himself.

"Jones is eventually thrown out, but is promptly succeeded by the director of athletics, with a.subtle plan for so handling Sub-Freshman Day that it will attract the largest possible number of desirable football candidates without appearing to seek that end or drawing animadversions from the Carnegie Foundation.

"Meanwhile the president's secretary has brought in the morning's mail, including, beside seven questionnaires and ten advertisements of new educational treatises which no college president should fail to read, a request from a magazine editor for his views on the Younger Generation, three complaints from parents of the faulty instruction and unjust treatment their sons are receiving, two explosions from alumni who are rabid because the team lost the last big game, and a postal card from 'A Citizen and Taxpayer' denouncing the whole institution as a sink of iniquity and a breeder of irreligion and sedition.

"And all the time the poor president has been hoping against hope that he might get at least an hour this morning to tackle the tremendous job of assembling the annual budget. But now he must hasten away to the monthly luncheon of the Chamber of Commerce and must, make up his speech as he drives over, because last night he was entertaining a distinguished visiting lecturer who did not have sense enough to turn in until 1 a.m."

Further bewailing the lot of the college president, Dean McConn said that all of his assistants are "his own creatures, his own appointees . . . his yes-men, as are likewise the professors." And Dean McConn deduced that the strenuous life of the college president accounts for the fact that "within the preceding nine months [November report] 55 colleges and universities made changes in their highest executive office. . . . Since there are only about 750 colleges in the country, these changes represent a turnover of 7.3% in nine months. Surely this is an alarming rate of academic mortality."

Suggested administrative expedient to ease the college president's burden: "a board of twelve; six members of the faculty, elected by the faculty; three honor seniors, elected by the class; and three alumni elected by the alumni association.''

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