Education: Minnesota Picks Cowley

Like Robert Maynard Hutchins, 42, strapping, six-foot-two Dr. William Harold Cowley, 41, was a precocious youngster in U. S. education. Hutchins, while still a Yale student (Law, ’25), was Secretary of the University. Cowley, while still a Dartmouth (’24) undergraduate, conducted a successful campaign to reorganize the college’s curriculum. Hutchins became president of the University of Chicago at 30. Cowley had a varied career as a newspaperman, personnel consultant and professor of psychology at Ohio State University, at 39 became president of high-ranking little Hamilton College (TIME, June 20, 1938).

Thereupon Dr. Cowley started a public feud with Dr. Hutchins. Accusing Dr. Hutchins of excessive “intellectualism,” Dr. Cowley expounded a rival philosophy and coined a name for it: “holoism” (i.e., education of “the whole man,” not merely his mind). Last week Dr. Cowley’s crusade against Hutchinsism bore spectacular fruit. He was offered the presidency of the University of Minnesota, second largest U. S. university (15,167 full-time students), by unanimous vote of its board of regents. To Hutchins, vocational-minded, unclassical Minnesota is an arch example of what a university should not be. Cowley, delighted with the offer, indicated he would accept it and exclaimed: “Minnesota … is one of the outstanding universities in the country.”