PRESIDENT TUCKER'S SPEECH AT THE NEW YORK ALUMNI DINNER, DECEMBER 8, 1908*

I need hardly say to you, Mr. President and brethren, that I had not expected to meet with you again in any official capacity. I had hoped, as I still hope, to resume my place from time to time in the New York Association, the only local alumni association to which I have had the honor of belonging by the rights of residence. During the seventies, as the older men present will recall, we used to come together annually, more often than otherwise at the call of our host of gracious memory, Hiram Hitchcock, whose boast it was that the New York Association was the. first among the alumni associations of any college to hold an annual banquet away from the college hearthstone. I think that your dinners have kept the flavor of this fine distinction.

The errand which brings me here at this time is, however, chiefly official, for I would like to say some things to you about our present situation which I can perhaps say more fitly than any one else. So far as the question of my successor in the presidency is concerned, you must look to the committee of the trustees of which, of course, I am not a member, who alone can speak the fitting and authoritative word; but on the more general question of the immediate future of the College, quite apart from its personal bearings, I may be permitted to speak.

Let me say at once that nothing to my mind could be more admirable than the temper alike of undergraduates and of graduates during the somewhat protracted season of what I have elsewhere termed "crippled leadership." The poise, the restraint, the sustained enthusiasm, which have characterized both students and alumni, are evidence of the stability of the College and of the selfrespect of all concerned with its interests. It is also proper to say that this period itself as it continues is becoming one of education in the problems of the higher education. The trustees have found this to be the case, through their assiduous and intelligent service, and the alumni are, I think, coming to understand that more is involved in any present action than the simple choice of a president. The difficulty of selecting and securing the right man for a college president is perhaps increasing, but the difficulty does not lie just it is commonly supposed to lie. It is not necessarily harder than formerly to find presidents for our colleges and universities because these institutions are so much larger. Corporations of all kinds are growing larger, but organization keens pace with expansion. The chief difficulty in respect to the choice of a college president lies in the fact that there is no training school for the position. Faculties may be supposed to offer candidates in abundance, but this is far from the fact, and for the plain reason that the prevailing interest of members of a faculty does not lie in the direction of administration. Many members of faculties are interested in administration to the degree of criticism ; few, very few, to the degree of responsibility. Owing to the nature of the training for college and university teaching, the first interest of a professor is in his department Presumably he is an investigator; presumably, also, he knows how to organize the results of his investigation for practical uses. But rarely is he prepared to transfer his interests to the broader field of general administration. At other times other professions have been drawn upon to a considerable extent to furnish college presidents; especially has this been true of the ministry. Educational problems, however, are becoming so distinct and so technical that any professional training of any sort, however closely it may be allied to educational interests, fails to make connection, without long and careful adjustment, to the special work of the higher education. And what is true of the professions in this regard is true of business, except as men may be called upon, under exceptional circumstances, to meet the financial difficulties in which at limes educational institutions are involved. Naturally the older institutions turn at once to their alumni in the expectation that the right man will appear regardless of specific training. But as training or personal capacity of a certain kind enters more and more into the account, the disappointment is frequent. Happy are the alumni who, as in the case of VVilliams College, have the foreordained man, (turning to President Garfield, who was present). We Dartmouth men, Mr. Garfield, are on the whole a law-abiding people with a decent respect for the commandments, but I doubt if there is one of us 'here tonight who does not know, as he thinks of the happy fortune of Williams, that he is at heart guilty of coveting his neighbor's president.

Closely associated with the just referred to is the further difficulty growing out of the fact that a college president holds so many personal and intimate relations with other men, with trustees, with members of the faculty, with alumni and students, and with the families which represent the constituency of the college. On account of these relations everybody concerned feels that he has the right to an opinion about the man himself, and that his opinion ought to be respected in any given choice. The question of likes and dislikes enters largely into the account. If the relation were altogether of a business sort, the question of general likableness would not be made very prominent, but as the relation is personal, the question becomes influential if not decisive. Availabilty of this sort is reckoned, often far too much, as a part of efficiency.

These two difficulties, as you can at once see, beset your committee in their search for a president. The search has a certain indefiniteness about it, because there is no authorized place to which they can look. And in their search the committee naturally encounter the opinions of various persons, concerning which, as I have said, men may. be extremely sensitive.

I put aside, however, what is to me the more incidental question of the choice of any given man for the presidency of the College, to speak more definitely of certain changes or advances which await an incoming administration. On this subject I can speak freely without attempting in the least to prescribe any policy, or to interfere even by suggestion with the freedom of my successor. The present, or as it may now better be termed, the past administration, has had to deal with the various problems of reconstruction. Its work has necessarily been that of expansion, the reorganization and enlargement of the older departments of instruction, the organization of new departments, the increase of the equipment of the College, and in general the creation of the college plant which, owing to the limitations of the village of Hanover, had to deal with the fundamental questions of water, drainage, heat and light, as well as with buildings, equipment, and instruction. This work is not complete. The College "needs a new gymnasium, which I trust will be secured through the present movement of the younger alumni, and above all, a new library building to cost not less than with an equal amount for the endowment of the library. But the essential work of the coming years I should characterize as intensive rather than extensive, and concerning this change or advance, I wish to say in the first place that it must be costly. Men cost far more than buildings, as ought to be the fact. This has been true even during the process of reconstuction, when every effort had to be made to create a sufficient college plant, ‡ Apart from any advance in salaries the cost of instruction is constantly increasing through the increased demand for division and sub-division in classroom worK. A generation ago at Dartmouth as elsewhere, the proportion of instructors to students was about one to thirty. Today it is one to fifteen at Dartmouth, which holds about an average place among the colleges in this regard. it lakes twice as much instruction to educate your sons as it took to educate you. It will cost still more, perhaps a further doubling of the cost, to educate your granasons. This increase is partly due to the fact that the means of education are more costly, owing to the changes of method in instruction, and partly to the fact that more incentive has to be introduced into the process of the higher education to make amends for the withdrawal of a certain amount, of personal motive. If your sons do not come to college with the same eagerness for knowledge which you had, the college must pay the price of this difference in motive power.

‡ The amount paid in salaries during the past fifteen years, exclusive 01 the Medical and the Thayer schools, has been ...... $1,476,332

The total amount expended in the creation of the college plant, including dormitories, which lor the most part represented a transfer of investments, rather than new money, has been .......................... .... .......... 1,478,418 Divided as follows : Recitation halls, laboratories,etc. 606,122 General properties, such as heating and lighting plant, water, sewers, etc ...................... 248 220 Dormitories ...................... 624,076

The dormitories, as has been said, represent for the most part the transfer of investments and take their place as income bearing properties, the same as stocks or real estate.

Of funds received during this period, $636,145 were specifically tor instruction; for general purposes, used chiefly for instruction #611,495; tor buildings and improvements $682,543 ; and sundry endowments, chiefly for scholarships and library $216,848.

The following table shows the relative amounts paid in salaries and for the maintenance of buildings (not including dormitories) for the past live years:

'04 Salaries $120,851.91 Maintenance $20,677.88 '05 " 127,481 32 " 26,046.30 '00 " 127,529.65 29,217.38 '07 " 136,629.20 " 30,344.56 '08 " 154,487.50 " 30.704.49

But the chief cost of the future will lie in the endeavor to satisfy the wants of the superior scholar, the man, that is, who has the capacity for real scholarship and who is also disposed to use it. As things now are, the superior scholar is held back by the average scholar, or rather by the man who has the capacity tor superior scholarship but does not care to use it. The interior scholar can be classified for purposes of instruction, or when his inferiority passes a given point, eliminated. It is a very costly matter to meet the large and entirely legitimate wants of a superior scholar, either by following out the elective system to its natural conclusion in high specialization, as at Harvard, or through the preceptorial system leading men directly to general culture, as at Princeton.

In the second place, advance from the extensive to the intensive touches a most sensitive and vital point in the higher education, namely, how to meet the varying demands for college teaching. So far as the teacher is concerned, the demands of a college are more varied than those of a university. Necessarily a certain part of the work of the college represents elementary instruction, while, on the other hand, certain courses admit of a considerable degree of specialization. The graduate school leading to the doctor's degree has not yet entirely found its place in supplying instructors for the colleges, it does not yet deliver its graduates with the same degree of preparedness for professional work which characterizes, tor example, the law school. At present it is with the graduate school as if the law school should train men specifically for the bench rather than for the bar. The interest enkindled by a graduate school is for the specializing work of the university rather than tor the varied work of the college. The college cannot afford to take the man who has no interest in research, and who has had no facilities for gratifying his interest. It cannot secure good elementary teaching from men whose sole interests and ambitions lead them away from that kind of teaching. The college cannot bring in two grades of men. If distinctions are made, inevitably the teacher will rank below the investigator. There are but two ways of meeting this dilemma in which the colleges now find themselves. First, as has been seriously proposed of late, by eliminating whatever belongs distinctively to the college, considered apart from the university, or secondly, by securing a much larger proportion of men from the graduate schools who will do as the vast majority of men in all other professions do, combine professional study with professional practice, with a view to the highest degree of practical efficiency. Every profession must have its experts, possibly the teaching profession in somewhat larger proportion than any other except the medical, but the vast majority of the best men in every profession have to learn how to adjust themselves effectively to their tasks. I think that this result will come in time in the training of men for the general uses of the higher education, but for the immediate future the question is perhaps the most serious one which confronts the colleges, as they are now turning-more directly toward intensive work.

But these questions, whether financial or more strictly educational, seem to me to be of less moment than the rising question which may fairly be termed institutional. I believe that within. the next decade the relative stand- ing of the New England colleges will be pretty well established. What is more certain is that within this time the place of the New England college itself in the general educational system of the country will be fixed. No one who follows the educational discussion on the administrative side can fail to note a certain common discontent with the traditional position of the New England college, affecting as it does the development of newer colleges throughout the country. In the process of standardizing the higher education, which is now going on, the New England college holds an anomalous and as it appears to many, a somewhat obstructive position. Various changes are proposed in the way of adjusting it to what is termed the national system, but all look toward its practical elimination as a college. The alternative is from time to time presented — the college must become more or less: it must reduce its standards by virtually taking in two years of the high school, graduating its students at twenty, or it must advance its standards to the minimum of requirements allowed for a university,

† The most recent presentation of these views may be found in the November and December numbers of the Atlantic Monthly, by Doctor Henry S. Pritchett, President of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. As may be expected from the very great administrative ability of Doctor Pritchett, and from his careful study of foreign as well as of American institutions, the articles are worthy of serious attention. They have also a practical significance growing out of the relation of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching to so many institutions throughout the country.

In the November number of the Atlantic under the title "The College of Discipline and the College of freedom," after quoting the remark of Sir W. H. Preece in a recent address before the Royal Society of Arts, — "ln America the national coordinated system will be evolved which will make the United States the best secularly educated country in the world, and its educational policy thoroughly organized," — Doctor Pritchett says, — "I believe that these hopeful words are likely to come true, but it is evident that, before that time, much must be done to clarity the present educational confusion. This is the educational problem of the next twenty years, and we are just now squarely facing it." Near the close of the article he says further, "in the reorganization which will sooner or later come, the college years seem to me likely to be those between sixteen and twenty, rather than between eighteen and twenty-two. Under such an arrangement the college will take account both of discipline and of freedom. Its professors will be, first of all, teachers, and its function will be to lead boys out of the rule of the school into the freedom of the university; out of the tutelage of boyhood into the liberty of men. If the college does not fill this function, it will in the end be squeezed out between the reorganized secondary school and the fully developed university."

Returning to the same general subject in the December number of the Atlantic Monthly under the title "The Organization of Higher Education," Doctor Pritchett says, — ''The whole subject of administration of higher education, no less than the determination of the functions of the college itself and its future, are contained in the inquiry whether the boy shall enter college at sixteen or at eighteen

"Just what function does the college, which is our most distinctive institution, fill? Is it a school for youths where bath discipline and freedom are to play a part, a school in which the youth is brought out of the tutelage of the boy into the freedom of the man ? or is it a school for men in which they choose as they will the studies and the pleasures of the college life? If the first ideal is that which is to form the college, then the college years may be well those between sixteen and twenty — if the latter, eighteen is full young for such unrestricted freedom.

"It seems clear that those who deal with American education must choose between those two distinctive conceptions of what the college is to be. If the first conception is to become general, then we may justly impose the university on the college, forming a consistent system of higher education, and insuring the permanent preservation of the American college. If the latter conception of the college is to prevail, either two years must be gained in preparatory education, or else the college must become a sort of parallel to the university, a school for the few and not for the many."

It is to say in reply to the various attacks on the present position of the Mew England college that each college is intrenched in its traditions as well as guarded by its own constituency. Those who are to administer the colleges as such must be prepared to justify their common place in the educational system, or to make such adjustments as the circumstances in each case may suggest. the discussion which this alternative opens is far too wide for me to enter at this time, but without crossing the threshold, I may be allowed to suggest that the fate of any institution of the higher education is not necessarily decided by an alternative. An anomalous position may be entirely defensible for every reason except those which relate strictly to the process of systematizing or of standardizing. Why, for example, to borrow a term from Doctor Pritchett's article on "The Organization of Higher Education," why should not the college become "a sort of parallel to the university." The university has become the home of specialization, the home, that is, of professional students. What of the man who does not propose to enter the law, medicine, the ministry, or teaching? Recent statistics show that the majority of college graduates are not entering the professions. Must their course in the higher education be cut off at twenty? And of the remainder who enter the professions, is the preparatory work really accomplished by adding two years to the average high school? Because the work of the New England college is anomalous, does it, therefore, follow that it is obsolete or useless, if it really give the higher education to vast numbers of men who would otherwise be excluded from any real participation in it, and if in addition it gives the most thorough and the most consistent preparation for those who are later to enter the professions.

But if the alternative to which I have referred should become imperative there can be, as it seems to me, but one choice. Dartmouth can never be allowed to be lower or less than it has been or is. In the event of any necessary change in range or in grade, it must become more and higher. Without change of name it may take on new functions, and advance to grades of instruction which are not now practicable. A great library, with corresponding laboratory facilities, would at any time give the physical basis for the teaching which could support a graduate college.

In what I have said to you tonight, I have wished to bring before you the large issue which is now before the trustees, involving, as it does, more than the choice of a president under ordinary conditions. It seems to me that the present position calls upon all of us as graduates of the College to exercise very much patience, while those who are especially set to the task of providing for the immediate future of the College do their work with all possible fidelity, intelligence and earnestness. Personally I should rejoice in every way, especially for the interests of the College, to have the change effected tomorrow,but in common with you all. I feel that we have one present duty, namely, to see to it that the College suffers no harm under any necessary delay in the choice of a president.

And further, the duty lies before us all, when the occasion shall arise, of showing our loyalty in our united support of the trustees in their final action. Whenever that action may take place, and whatever it may be, we have then, as it seems to me, but one duty and Privilege, as graduates of Dartmouth, to rise up in our loyalty and enthusiasm as one man, to greet, in the person of our next president, the advancing future of the College.

*At the request of some of the New York alumni the above speech, recalled as far as possible from brief notes, is printed in the MAGAZINE. Advantage has been taken of the change in form to introduce new. matter, especially through foot-notes, to illustrate or explain some of the statements made. W. J. T.