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John James Tigert IV was born on February 11, 1882 on the campus of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. He was the son of John James Tigert and Amelia McTyeire. His father was a clergyman, religious editor, and bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South; his mother's father, Holland Nimmons McTyeire, was a founder and the first president of Vanderbilt.
Compiling an enviable record as a scholar-athlete during his undergraduate years at Vanderbilt, Tigert received a B. A. in 1904 and became the first Rhodes Scholar from Tennessee.
He studied at Pembroke College, Oxford, from 1904 to 1907, earning a B. A. in jurisprudence. Oxford awarded him an M. A. in 1915, following the "apprenticeship" of time in a profession required by the university.
In recognition of Tigert's long service as its president through depression and war, the University of Florida awarded him an honorary degree, a doctor of letters, during its 1953 centennial celebration.
Tigert returned to the United States in 1907 to become professor of philosophy and psychology and director of athletics at Central College in Fayette, Mo. , a position he held for two years.
In 1909, Tigert became president of Kentucky Wesleyan College at Winchester, where he served also as player-coach for the boys' basketball team and coach of the girls' basketball team. Disappointed with the level of local and church support for the college, he resigned in 1911 and joined the University of Kentucky faculty as professor of philosophy and psychology. In 1912 he also became director of athletics and coach of the football and girls' basketball teams.
During World War I, Tigert lectured to military personnel in Europe for the Young Men's Christian Association and the Army Educational Corps. A lecture series on community leadership and Americanism for the Radcliffe Chautauqua Company in 1920 caught the attention of leaders in the American Legion. With the legion's active support, Tigert was appointed United States commissioner of education in 1921, the youngest man to have held that office.
Relatively unknown among professional educators, he began his new duties amid charges that he had won the office through political favoritism, but his energy and persuasiveness soon gained him acceptance. As commissioner, Tigert enjoyed little authority beyond responsibility for collecting and disseminating educational statistics and a general mandate to promote the cause of education. The limitations suited him, for he was opposed to strong federal influence over education. Under his leadership the Bureau of Education's activities remained focused on school surveys, rural education, Americanization, and schooling for native peoples in Alaska, the agency's only direct educational responsibility.
In 1923, Tigert accompanied President Warren G. Harding to Alaska, but the trip produced no new education policies for that territory. He involved the Bureau of Education in cosponsoring American Education Week with the American Legion and the National Education Association, but drew strong criticism of the program's militaristic tone from Charles W. Eliot, president emeritus of Harvard, and from the Young Women's Christian Association, the American Association of University Professors, and other groups. Although Tigert did not expand the Bureau of Education's influence or give it new directions, his failure to do so derived principally from the agency's restricted mandate and the lack of congressional support.
In August 1928 he resigned to become president of the University of Florida at Gainesville. He held that office for nineteen years. Tigert brought a national perspective to the university during the Great Depression, world war, and postwar recovery. His interest in research and advanced studies led to the reorganization of the graduate school and the development of new graduate programs. The university conferred its first Ph. D. degrees in 1934.
In an effort to focus attention on relations with Central and South American nations, Tigert created the Institute of Inter-American Affairs. He raised university admission standards, promoted extension programs throughout the state, and added a demonstration school to the College of Education.
He also strengthened intercollegiate athletics and supported the development of Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) and military studies. He was instrumental in organizing the Southeastern Athletic Conference and was active in the National Collegiate Athletic Association.
Tigert's most fundamental curriculum innovation came with the creation of the General College, which provided general arts and sciences instruction for all freshmen and sophomores at the university. Reflecting his experience at Oxford, Tigert viewed general education as a prerequisite for both specialized studies and professional training.
Tigert retired in 1947. As an ironic footnote to his career-long dedication to organized college sports, evidence suggests that his resignation resulted in part from Florida Governor Millard F. Caldwell's interference in selecting the university's football coach. After retiring, Tigert served as one of two Americans on India's Commission on Higher Education and, from 1949 to 1954, as a visiting professor at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Fla. He died at Gainesville, Fla.
John James Tigert IV gained his greatest national prominence as the U. S. Commissioner of Education from 1921 to 1928, and the third president of the Tigert served as president of the University of Florida for nineteen years, longer than any of the other presidents of the university. During his term, the university awarded its first doctoral degrees in 1934, a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa was installed in 1938, and total student enrollment grew from 2, 162 in 1928 to over 7, 500 in 1947. As university president, he was responsible for significant and lasting academic, athletic and administrative reforms. In recognition of Tigert's long service as its president through depression and war, the University of Florida renamed its main administrative building, Tigert Hall, for him in 1960. As a fitting final tribute to a professor, education reformer and administrator, who also fervently supported college sports, Tigert was inducted into the University of Florida Athletic Hall of Fame as an "Honorary Letter Winner, " and was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame as a player in 1970.
Tigert's early career benefited from the respect enjoyed by his father and maternal grandfather, particularly within southern religious circles, but he eventually established a reputation of his own as a lecturer-preacher and author of almost 300 books and articles. He viewed good citizenship as the principal goal of education, and competitive sports, religious conviction, and military training as means to engendering morality and self-discipline among the young. But he also tirelessly promoted high standards of learning. For Tigert, scholarship, not athletics, constituted the university's essential mission, an aim that, he insisted, promised to advance both individual and national well-being.
He was a member of the National Collegiate Athletic Association.
He met Edith Jackson Bristol, a piano teacher at Howard Payne College. They were married on August 25, 1909, and had two children.
He was survived by his wife Edith, their son and daughter, and five grandchildren.
