Mr. President

John and Margaret Perkins of the University of Michigan decided that the nation knew far too little about the presidents its colleges & universities were getting. They decided to make a survey of their own. Last week, in School and Society, they told what they had found out about the heads of 84 state and land-grant colleges.

A good many of the 84, they found, had apparently decided early about their future. One out of four had majored in education at college. The next largest number had specialized in social or physical sciences; only six had picked the humanities ; of the whole group only half had taken a Ph.D.

Most (77%) had gone to eastern colleges, and three out of ten had earned a degree at the institutions they later headed. Of the 35 southern colleges & universities, 32 had chosen a southerner for president.

About 40% of the presidents had once worked at something besides education. The University of Kansas picked a vice president of the Hawaiian Pineapple Co.; Iowa chose a Chicago lawyer. There were a physician, a dirt farmer, two journalists, a rear admiral and a former state governor.

But most (77%) had done some teaching, and 83% had been some sort of executive on the college level (one out of four had been a dean).

The average president, conclude the Perkinses, has taught about eight years, been an administrator for another eight, became a president at 45, has now been in office about six years. There was not a woman in the lot.

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