第45章 CHAPTER II(14)

Much the same is true for the other social clubs, not of an advisedly factional character, that are latterly being installed by authority under university patronage and guaranteed by the university funds; as, also, and in a more pronounced degree, for college athletics, except that the item of expense in connection with these things is much more serious and the resulting diversion of interest from all matters of learning is proportionally greater. Among these means of dissipating energy and attention, college athletics is perhaps still the most effective; and it is also the one most earnestly pushed by the businesslike authorities, at the same time that it is the most widely out of touch with all learning, whether it be the pursuit of knowledge or the perfunctory taskwork of the collegiate division. So notorious, indeed, is the discrepancy between college athletics and scholarly work that few college authorities latterly venture to avow as cordial a support of this training in sportsmanship as they actually give. Yet so efficient a means of attracting a certain class of young men is this academic enterprise in sports that, in practical effect, few schools fail to give it all the support that the limits of decorum will admit.

There is probably no point at which specious practices and habitual prevarication are carried so far as here. Little need be said of the threadbare subterfuges by which (ostensibly surreptitious) pecuniary inducements are extended to students and prospective students who promise well as college athletes;(10*)or of the equally threadbare expedients by which these members of the gild of sportsmen are enabled to meet the formal requirements of scholarship imposed by shamefaced intercollegiate bargaining.(11*)But apart from such petty expedients, however abundant and commonplace, there is the more significant practice of retaining trainers and helpers at the university's expense and with academic countenance. There is the corps of workmen and assistants to take care of the grounds, buildings and apparatus, and there is the corps of trainers and coaches, masseurs and surgeons, masquerading under the caption of "physical culture,"whose chief duty is to put the teams in form for the various contests. One may find a football or baseball coach retained officially as a member of the faculty and carried on the academic pay-roll, in a university that practices a penurious economy in the equipment and current supply of materials and services necessary to the work of its scientific laboratories, and whose library is in a shameful state of neglect for want of adequate provision for current purchases and attendance. The qualifications of such a "professor" are those of a coach, while in point of scholarly capacity and attainments it would be a stretch of charity to say that he is of quite a neutral composition. Still, under the pressure of intercollegiate competition for the services of such expert lanistae, he may have to be vested with the highest academic rank and conceded the highest scholastic honours, with commensurate salary. Expediency may so decide, partly to cloak the shamefulness of the transaction, partly to meet the exacting demands of a coach whose professional services have a high commercial rating in the sporting community, and who is presumed to be indispensable to the university's due success in intercollegiate athletics.

The manifest aim, and indeed the avowed purpose, of these many expedients of management and concessions to fashion and frailty is the continued numerical growth of the undergraduate school, -- the increase of the enrolment and the obtaining of funds by use of which to achieve a further increase. To bring this assiduous endeavour into its proper light, it is to be added that most of these undergraduate departments are already too large for the best work of their kind. Since these undergraduate schools have grown large enough to afford a secure contrast as against the smaller colleges that are engaged in the same general field, it is coming to be plain to university men who have to do with the advanced instruction that, for the advanced work in science and scholarship, the training given by a college of moderate size commonly affords a better preparation than is had in the very large undergraduate schools of the great universities. This holds true, in a general way, in spite of the fact that the smaller schools are handicapped by an inadequate equipment, are working against the side-draft of a religious bias, with a corps of under-paid and over-worked teachers in great part selected on denominational grounds, and are under-rated by all concerned. The proposition, however, taken in a general way and allowing for exceptions, is too manifestly true to admit of much question; particularly in respect of preparation for the sciences proper, as contrasted with the professions.