A university like this one is an army, and not such a small army either, judging by peacetime standards. The United States found that it was worth while, indeed that it was absolutely necessary in organizing its forces, to find out everything it could about every man in the army, what he needed physically to increase his efficiency; what he needed to keep him interested and out of mischief; what he should have in the way of training—based on what he knew already and based on careful mental tests—to make him of the greatest usefulness; whether he had the will to win, and if not, whether anything could be done to get it into him.
In a word, the United States wanted to know just what each man's possibilities were. Was he officer material or non-com material? Should he go into the line or one of the special corps—or to the labor battalion? As a result of this program, the Army succeeded in finding a place that counted for 98 per cent of the drafted men.
Now I realize that a university can't do all these things with its army in just the way the government can. It can't casually transfer a man from engineering to psychology, nor a girl from philosophy to cookery—or vice versa—no matter how desirable such a transfer might be for the individual and the community. But it can do a great deal more than it now does in finding out about all its members, informing them of their strength and weaknesses, in seeing that every student gets a chance to enjoy in so far as possible the high privileges of youth, and to get a helping hand over the bumps in the road, which also come with youth. Every student ought to have the opportunity to round out his character and his capacities. It ought not to be left to chance that any student gets the best personal contacts for him or her with faculty and fellow-students, the best opportunities for learning team play. Every student ought to leave with some definite aim in life, and if possible an aim high enough to be an ideal that is worth working for.
A university is not doing its full duty if its athletics and social life are limited to those who need these the least; if its alumni are regarded merely as fillers of the grandstands or recipients of oratory, and possible sources of pecuniary support. The alumni are the best possible sources of keeping the faculty informed as to what the world really wants in the way of trained men and women, and, for the students, of information, suggestions, and jobs, both temporary and permanent.
I realize that many of these things are now done here and elsewhere, but in the light of what we have learned from the experience of the University of Uncle Sam, I am sure that our American universities and colleges have hardly scratched the surface of what they might do and what, I think, they will ultimately do in the realm of human engineering. Nearly all educational institutions merely follow what they find the leaders are doing, and in this field there is an opportunity, I am sure, for real leadership.
We know now that men and women can be measured by impersonal tests and that it is practicable to put aside the material which it is either impossible to fashion in the academic mould, or for which, even if the job is possible, the expense in wear and tear is entirely beyond the value of the result to be obtained. To be specific, why shouldn't we have an intelligence test of candidates for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, just as we had a physical and psychological examination for candidates for the flying schools?
I don't mean that we should leap from one illogical position clear across the road into another. Mental measurements are not yet an exact science, and a man of moderate ability, with a will to succeed, may be a better academic investment than his more brilliant brother who lacks that quality; but, by pruning very sparingly (one does not have to chop down a tree to prune it) the saving in time and energy will be enormous.
Fundamentally the human relationships are what count, the qualities leading to team play and coöperation, and away from isolation and its ills. This means that if a faculty is to exercise its leadership, it must know the student body, it must maintain and develop points of human touch. Impersonal tests, impersonal records, all that modern practice and modern science can teach us we must have, but these must be used only as the framework for what is after all the fundamental thing, direct human contact between teacher and teacher, teacher and student, and student and student.
Now as to leadership, and in a university we can identify the leaders with the teachers, there is no doubt, I think, that the teachers' profession comes out of the war in a higher place than it went in, and the scholar goes back to his work with a feeling of confidence in himself in view of his record in competition and comparison with men in other callings. I venture to predict that we shall hear a good deal less frequently in the future the old gibe that the man who could do things did them and the man who couldn't, taught them. The teachers made good, not only because of their scholarship, but because of their personality. I think this experience of the last two years is going to accelerate greatly the movement which had already started of turning to the academic world for the man who can do things and do them with other people. Entirely apart from the contrasts in income, the sheer fun of executive work, with plenty of money to spend on what you want to get done, is a pretty strong temptation for a man with a heavy teaching schedule and an annual department appropriation of say $75. Both the regular army officers who have made conspicuously good, and the scholars of the coöperative type who have made conspicuously good, are being actively bidden for by bankers and manufacturers and all sorts of people. Neither profession can compete on the purely financial side with these tempters and, in order to hold their first-rate men, they will each have to make some greater contribution in the things that money alone can't buy.