the higher learning in america-第20章
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dispassionate animus of scientific inquiry。
These extenuating considerations do not touch the case of
that body of businessmen; in the proper sense of the term; from
which the membership of the governing boards is drawn。 The
principles that rule business enterprise of that larger and
pecuniarily effectual sort are a matter of usage; appraisement;
contractual arrangement and strategic manoeuvres。 They are the
principles of a game of competitive guessing and pecuniary
coercion; a game carried on wholly within the limits of the
personal equation; and depending for its movement and effect on
personal discrepancies of judgment。 Science has to do with the
opaquely veracious sequence of cause and effect; and it deals
with the facts of this sequence without mental reservation or
ulterior purposes of expediency。 Business enterprise proceeds on
ulterior purposes and calculations of expediency; it depends on
shrewd expedients and lives on the margin of error; on the
fluctuating margin of human miscalculation。 The training given by
these two lines of endeavour science and business is wholly
divergent; with the notorious result that for the purposes of
business enterprise the scientists are the most ignorant;
gullible and incompetent class in the community。 They are not
only passively out of touch with the business spirit; out of
training by neglect; but they are also positively trained out of
the habit of mind indispensable to business enterprise。 The
converse is true of the men of business affairs。(6*)
Plato's classic scheme of folly; which would have the
philosophers take over the management of affairs; has been turned
on its head; the men of affairs have taken over the direction of
the pursuit of knowledge。 To any one who will take a
dispassionate look at this modern arrangement it looks foolish;
of course; ingeniously foolish; but; also; of course; there is
no help for it and no prospect of its abatement in the calculable
future。
It is a fact of the current state of things; grounded in the
institutional fabric of Christendom; and it will avail little to
speculate on remedial corrections for this state of academic
affairs so long as the institutional ground of this perversion
remains intact。 Its institutional ground is the current system of
private ownership。 It claims the attention of students as a
feature of the latterday cultural growth; as an outcome of the
pecuniary organization of modern society; and it is to be taken
as a base…line in any inquiry into the policy that controls
modern academic life and work just as any inquiry into the
circumstances and establishments of learning in the days of
scholasticism must take account of the ecclesiastical rule of
that time as one of the main controlling facts in the case。 The
fact is that businessmen hold the plenary discretion; and that
business principles guide them in their management of the affairs
of the higher learning; and such must continue to be the case so
long as the community's workday material interests continue to be
organized on a basis of business enterprise。 All this does not
promise well for the future of science and scholarship in the
universities; but the current effects of this method of
university control are sufficiently patent to all academic men;
and the whole situation should perhaps trouble the mind of no
one who will be at pains to free himself from the (possibly
transient) preconception that 〃the increase and diffusion of
knowledge among men〃 is; in the end; more to be desired than the
acquisition and expenditure of riches by the astuter men in the
community。
Many of those who fancy themselves conversant with the
circumstances of American academic life would question the view
set forth above; and they would particularly deny that business
principles do or can pervade the corporate management of the
universities in anything like the degree here implied。 They would
contend that while the boards of control are commonly gifted with
all the disabilities described that much being not open to
dispute yet these boards do not; on the whole; in practice;
extend the exercise of their plenary discretion to the directive
control of what are properly speaking academic matters; that they
habitually confine their work of directorship to the pecuniary
affairs of the corporation; and that in so far as they may at
times interfere in the university's scholarly and scientific
work; they do so in their capacity as men of culture; not as men
of property or of enterprise。 This latter would also be the view
to which the men of property on the boards would themselves
particularly incline。 So it will be held by the spokesmen of
content that virtually full discretion in all matters of academic
policy is delegated to the academic head of the university;
fortified by the advice and consent of the senior members of his
faculty; by the free choice of the governing boards; in practice
drawn out from under the control of these businessmen in question
and placed in the hands of the scholars。 And such; commonly; is
at least ostensibly the case; in point of form; more particularly
as regards those older establishments that are burdened with
academic traditions running back beyond the date when their
governing boards were taken over by the businessmen; and more
particularly in the recent past than in the immediate present or
for the establishments of a more recent date。
This complaisant view overlooks the fact that much effective
surveillance of the academic work is exercised through the
board's control of the budget。 The academic staff can do little
else than what the specifications of the budget provide for;
without the means with which the corporate income should supply
them they are as helpless as might be expected。
Imbued with an alert sense of those tangible pecuniary values
which they are by habit and temperament in a position to
appreciate; a sagacious governing board may; for instance;
determine to expend the greater proportion of the available
income of the university in improving and decorating its real
estate; and they may with businesslike thrift set aside an
appreciable proportion of the remainder for a sinking fund to
meet vaguely unforeseen contingencies; while the academic staff
remains (notoriously) underpaid and so scantily filled as
seriously to curtail their working capacity。 Or the board may;
again; as has also happened; take a thrifty resolution to
〃concede〃 only a fraction say ten or fifteen per…cent of
the demands of the staff for books and similar working materials
for current use; while setting aside a good share of the funds
assigned for such use; to accumulate until at some future date
such materials may be purchased at more reasonable prices than
those now ruling。 These illustrations are not supplied by fancy。
There is; indeed; a visible reluctance on the part of these
businesslike boards to expend the corporation's income for those
intangible; immaterial uses for which the university is
established。 These uses leave no physical; tangible residue; in
the way of durable goods; such as will justify the expenditure in
terms of vendible property acquired; therefore they are prima
facie imbecile; and correspondingly distasteful; to men whose
habitual occupation is with the acquisition of property。 By force
of the same businesslike bias the boards unavoidably incline to
apportion the funds assigned for cu