University constituents
Media
Part of Panorama
- Title
- University constituents
- Creator
- Hutchins, Robert Maynard
- Language
- English
- Year
- 1969
- Subject
- Universities and colleges.
- Alumnae and alumni.
- Trusts and trustees.
- Academic freedom.
- Rights
-
- Fulltext
- great discrepancies here, al though history is not always reassuring. As time passes, how will our democracy stand the strains within the country and the tremendous chal lenge of world problems that face us? It would seem than an increasingly informed and alert electorate, choosing the leadership of men and wo men of character, however idealistic this may seem, must be the trend if democracy as we know it is to survive. — by Agnes P. Mantor in The Delta Kappa Gamma Bulle tin, Winter 1969. UNIVERSITY CONSTITUENTS Alumni: In this country that strange pheno menon known as the alumni plays a weird and oftentimes a terrifying role. It is very odd, when you come to think of it, that people who have been the beneficiaries of an institution should think that they should control it, and for that very reason. Trustees are in a different category from alum ni. They at least have the undoubted legal right to control the institution. ♦ • ♦ But a university that is run by its trustees will be badly run. How can it be otherwise? Ordinarily the trustees are not educators: usually they are non-resident. If they are alumni, they must overcome the vices in herent in that interesting group. If of their own motion they take an education problem in hand, they can decide rightly only by accident. • ♦ • Academic Freedom is simply a way of saying that we get the best results in education and re search if we leave their management to people who know something about them. — Robert Maynard Hutchins, former President of the University of Chicago, in The Higher Learning in America. 24 Panorama