Book Description

Excerpt from The Guilelmensian, 1903, Vol. 46 Any estimate of such an administration must be defective. By far the greater part is unseen and unknown. Private interviews, private corres pondence, personal influence quietly exerted and even influence uncon sciously exerted, effect more than comes to public knowledge and more than is achieved by public methods. Accidents and collisions attract notice, but little notice is taken, and no records kept, of accidents avoided and collisions prevented. A college must unite trustees, faculty, alumni, students, and parents of students. As it would be a miracle if all these elements were in spontaneous agreement, the president must provide the universal solvent. He must collect the currents from the various batteries and combine them in one motor. His methods and policy are exposed to criticism in which he is judged as an executive, though he has small freedom of action compared with a business manager or a mili tary leader. He must give liberty and independence to his faculty to get the highest results, yet he must keep sufficient control to secure effective teaching and adequate uniformity. He is the source of discipline and yet would keep the good will of the students. He is expected to maintain a high standard of scholarship without turning away too many delinquents. In addition to all this he is assigned the task of raising money. The very qualities which fit him for his other duties are likely to make this task extremely distasteful, for it is not often that a man of scholarly culture possesses also the peculiar talents of the promoter, and if he does, his training, away from business and money making, robs him of pleasure in their exercise. Such are the conditions and such the problems of the office. One need not be an administrator to see the difficulties, but only a practical administrator can appreciate them to the full. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.