Education: The Old Breed

At patrician Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., the class of 1914 had no trouble picking the Man Most Likely to Succeed. He was bright, moonfaced James Phinney Baxter III, pride of a leading Maine family.* Armed with summa and Phi Beta Kappa key. Valedictorian Baxter headed for Wall Street riches. A brush with TB soon turned him to teaching; but the class prophecy still came true. At 44, Historian Baxter became the youngest of Williams’ ten presidents. This month, when he retired at 68, Phinney Baxter was the dean of topflight New England college presidents, and one of the most respected in the U.S. He was a throwback to the old breed: the college president who pursued not only cash but also scholarship and public service.

“Nice Boys.” Baxter prepped for the Williams presidency at Harvard, where his Ph.D. thesis disproved the idea that the Monitor and the Merrimac were the world’s first ironclad ships (the first: France’s Gloire in 1859). When he became Master of the newly opened Adams House, Baxter learned the art of running a college. The chance came in 1937 when Williams President Tyler Dennett quit after only three years (he thought the trustees were wasting money). It was Dennett who summed up one of Baxter’s main problems: “Nice boys—I mean the well-mannered, sophisticated and generally well-disposed young men now apparently in the ascendancy here.” To Dennett, they seemed more rich than bright.

Williams still has nice boys, but they work harder. When Baxter arrived, the average grade was Dplus. It is now between C-plus and B-minus on a tougher scale. Combatting the old image, Williams has boosted scholarships and student aid more than sixfold. About 30% of Williams men receive such aid, and 50% of them are products of public education rather than prep schools.

Baxter had another problem in the fondness of little (now 1,200 men) Williams for small classes and intimate seminars. That tradition made the college the subject of one of U.S. education’s most endlessly quoted remarks. Speaking about Williams President Mark Hopkins, U.S. President James A. Garfield, Williams ’56 (who was assassinated on his way to a Williams commencement), supposedly said that “the ideal college is Mark Hopkins on one end of a log and a student on the other.” In a day of academic mass production, the notion was bound to cost Williams plenty.

In his 24 years as president, Baxter found most of the needed money. The book value of Williams’ endowment more than doubled to $27.7 million (market value: $40 million). Equally important, Williams began linking fields to enrich teaching. Among the blends: art-and-literature, art-and-religion. U.S. history-and-literature. Baxter also sharply built up Williams’ backward science departments. Even so, the college now has a slightly lower (1:10) teacher-student ratio than when he took over.

“Do Better.” Baxter meanwhile found time to serve as deputy director of the OSS in World War II. publish a Pulitzer prizewinning history (Scientists Against Time) in 1946, write much of the secret Gaither Committee report on U.S. defenses in 1957. He vice-chaired the American Council on Education, headed the Association of American Colleges and the boards of visitors of both Annapolis and West Point. Still able and willing, Baxter this year will be Senior Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations in Manhattan, next year teach at Dartmouth, and eventually settle near Harvard, where he plans to write a book on U.S. diplomacy in the Civil War.

Succeeding Baxter is new President John E. Sawyer, 44, former Yale economist and Williams alumnus (’39), who, in the Williams tradition, was once the sole student in a class taught by Baxter. “You will discover that he is as convinced as I am that just holding the line is not enough,” says Baxter. “We must continually do better.” Without Baxter, doing better will be tougher.

*Uncle Percival Proctor Baxter was the cantankerous Maine Governor (1921-24) who once half-masted the Statehouse flag in honor of his dead dog.