A well known American scientist made to me the statement that there has not been a man of distinction called to Columbia in ten years, nor has one arisen there. To attribute so much to Butler and his interlocking trustees might seem to credit them with superhuman maleficence; but the scientist explained the phenomenon, as follows: American university teachers are greatly underpaid; there is no first class man who could not get more money if he turned his energies to other pursuits. If he stays as a teacher it is because he loves the work, and is willing to accept his reward in other forms—in the respect of his fellow men. But if he finds that he has no standing and no power; if he sees himself and his colleagues browbeaten and insulted by commercial persons; if he knows that all the world pays no attention to his opinions, assuming him to be the puppet of commercial persons—then the dignity of the academic life is gone, and nothing is left but an inadequate money reward.
What you have at Columbia is a host of inferior men, dwelling, as one phrased it to me, in “a twilight zone of mediocrity”; dull pedants, raking over the dust heaps of learning and occupying their minds with petty problems of administration. They have full power to decide whether Greek shall be given in nine courses or nine and one-half, also whether it shall count for four credits or four and a quarter. “And we love that,” said one to me, with a bitter sneer.
The standing of Columbia University in the field of science under the regime of the interlocking president was interestingly revealed by a study published in “Science” in 1906, and continued in 1910: “A Statistical Study of American Men of Science,” by J. McKeen Cattell, Professor of Psychology in Columbia University. It so happens that Professor Cattell has become President Butler’s most vigorous opponent; but this investigation had no special reference to Columbia, and the method of conducting it was such as to preclude favoritism. A list of the thousand leading men of American science was obtained by writing to ten leading men in twelve different branches of science, and asking them to name the most eminent representatives of their science in the country. The one thousand leaders thus selected were studied from various points of view, their ages, the countries from which they came, the institutions at which they studied, the institutions with which they were connected. Of these leaders it appeared that thirty-eight had taken their doctorate degrees at Columbia, while 102 had taken their degrees at Johns Hopkins; 78 had studied at Columbia, while 237 had studied at Harvard. In 1905 Columbia had 60 of the thousand leaders on its faculty, while Harvard had 66 and Yale 26; but in 1910 Columbia had 48, a loss of 12, while Harvard had 79, a gain of 13 and Yale had 38, a gain of 12. In the listing of 1910 it appeared that 238 scientific men had gained a place among the leaders, while 201 had lost their standing in that group. A study of the institutions with which these men were connected revealed an extraordinary state of affairs. Among the Harvard men 22 had won their way to the first thousand; among the Chicago men 13 had won; while among Columbia men, with a much larger faculty, only 8 had won. On the other hand, 6 Harvard men had lost their standing, and 3 Chicago men, while 12 Columbia men had lost—more than in any other institution in the United States! So much for academic autocracy!