Education: Presidents' Flight

He should have the ringing rhetoric of a tent-meeting preacher and the money-making genius of a loan shark, but first of all, a college president should be a scholar. Last week the heads of two of the nation's most prestigious women's educational institutions gave evidence that whatever he does, a scholar is not necessarily happy as a college president. The two presidents, both of whom resigned:

Wilbur Kitchener Jordan of Radcliffe, who took over the college in 1943, carried out the bargain struck with Harvard by his predecessor, Ada Comstock Notestein (TIME, Nov. 24), under which Radcliffe girls were admitted to Harvard classes. Reserved, grey-haired W. K. Jordan instituted a series of graduate seminars, found time to teach two courses in 17th century English history, has done well at money raising. In speaking of his resignation last week, Jordan, 57, listed his academic interests as "teaching, research and administration," in that order, added: "I have come to realize that the college itself has grown over the years, and administrative tasks have become heavier."

Harold Taylor of Sarah Lawrence, who in 1945 rode out of the West (the philosophy department of the University of Wisconsin) and, Lochinvar-like, captured the hearts of blue-jeaned undergraduates as the nation's youngest (30) college president. Handsome Harold Taylor skied, played tennis, taught classes at Manhattan's New School in his first years at Sarah Lawrence, throughout his term tossed off opinions ("It's important that someone raise some hell with philosophy") as John D. Rockefeller Sr. passed out dimes. He ran his college well, but had to give up teaching as administrative duties piled up. Recently Taylor's best-reported diversion has been a low-comedy wrangle with the Westchester County American Legion, to whom Sarah Lawrence's progressive-education scheme of life (no formal majors, no grades) smells of left-wingery. Determined to return to a scholar's life, he wrote: "The steadily increasing burden of responsibility placed upon the American college president for administering and financing education has become so great that it removes from him the opportunity to share in the intellectual and educational life."