As compared with the press, universities possess certain great advantages which justify the public in demanding from them higher standards of accuracy and impartiality. The professor enjoys some measure of leisure; the editor is always under the lash of production on the stroke of the event. It is also a very considerable advantage that the editorial “we” and the anonymity of the newspaper are foreign to college practice. There is, of course, a pretty well recognised body of opinion on methods and ideals common to the faculties of our learned institutions, but in the separate fields of departmental work any opinion that may be expressed is primarily the opinion of the professor expressing it. His connection with a given institution is, indeed, a guaranty of greater or less weight as to his general scholarly ability, and he will, of course, be mindful of this in all that he says or writes. But beyond this his personal reputation is directly involved. Those who make a newspaper suffer collectively and more or less anonymously for any truckling to corrupt interests. The college president or teacher guilty of an offence of the same sort must suffer in his own person the contempt of his colleagues, his students, and the public generally.
Newspapers, moreover, are usually managed by private corporations frankly seeking profit as one of their ends. Universities and colleges, on the other hand, are much more free from the directly economic motive. There are, however, certain large qualifications to the advantages which institutions of learning thus enjoy. Every university and college is constantly perceiving new means of increasing its usefulness and persistently seeking to secure them. The demands made in behalf of such purposes may seem excessive at times, but it is clear that an educational institution which does not appreciate the vital importance of the work it is doing, and consequently the importance of expanding that work, is simply not worth its salt. In a great many cases the readiest means of securing the necessary funds is by appeal to rich men for large gifts and endowments. As the number of munificent Mæcenases is always limited and the number of needy institutions always very considerable, a competitive struggle ensues, different in most of its incidents from the directly profit seeking struggles of the business world, but essentially competitive none the less. In the campaign of a university or college for expansion a large body of students makes a good showing; hence too often low entrance requirements weakly enforced and low standards of promotion. At times even the springs of discipline are relaxed lest numbers should be reduced by a salutary expulsion or two. Courses are divided and subdivided beyond the real needs of an institution and salaries are reduced in order to secure a sufficient number of teachers to give the large number of courses advertised with great fulness in the catalogue. A large part of crooked collegiate athletics is due to an indurated belief in the advertising efficacy of gridiron victories as a means of attracting first, students, and then endowments. So far as charges of corruption against our higher educational institutions are at all justified they are justified chiefly by the practices just described. Fairness requires the statement, however, that a marked change of heart is now taking place. Public criticism has placed athletic graft in the pillory to such an extent that enlightened self-interest, if no better motive, should bring about its speedy abolition by responsible college managements. Many sincere efforts have been made by members of faculties singly and through organisations covering certain fields of study to raise and properly enforce entrance and promotion standards. Finally in the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching there has been developed an agency of unparalleled efficiency for detecting and exposing low standards. A college may continue to publish fake requirements, to crowd its class rooms with students who belong to high schools, to pad its courses, to underpay and overwork its instructing staff, but if it does these things it cannot, even if otherwise qualified, secure pensions for its professors, and in any event its derelictions will be advertised broadcast in the reports of the Foundation with a precision and a conviction beyond all hope of rebuttal. Let cynics smile at a process which they may describe as bribing the colleges to be good by pensioning their superannuates, but unquestionably the work of the Foundation has resulted in a new uprightness, a new firmness of standards, a higher efficiency that bodes well for the future of American education. Parents may give material encouragement to this movement by reading the publications of the Carnegie Foundation, as well as college catalogues and advertisements, before they determine upon an institution for the education of their children.
Although the conditions just described are the principal evil results of the competitive struggle for college and university expansion, the accusations of corruption against institutions of learning have usually dealt with their teaching of the doctrines of economics, sociology, and political science. Endowments must be secured; as a rule they can be had only from the very rich; among the very rich are numbered most of the “malefactors of great wealth”;—ergo university and college teaching on such subjects must be made pleasing or at least void of all offence to plutocratic interests.
There is a certain disproportion between the means and the ends considered by the foregoing argument which is worth notice. To found or endow a college or university requires a great deal of money. Any institution worthy of either name is made up of numerous departments,—languages, literature, the natural sciences, history, and the social sciences,—of which only the last named are concerned with the moot questions of the day. If one cherished the Machiavellian notion of corrupting academic opinion to his economic interest he would be obliged, therefore, to support an excessively large number of departments the work of which would be absolutely indifferent to him. Endowment of the social sciences alone would be rather too patent. That they are not over-endowed at the present time in comparison with their importance relative to other departments is a condition the large mournfulness of which seems beyond all possibility of doubt to the writer. Nor should it be forgotten that the teachers of the social sciences form but a small minority of the whole body of university and collegiate instructors in all subjects. Nevertheless they are subject to the rigid general standards of accuracy, fairness, and impartiality prescribed by the profession as a whole, and enforced severely whether the offender be a biologist, a philologist, or an economist. Criticism is far more relentless and constant in this sphere than laymen are wont to suspect, except on the rare occasions when some more than ordinarily virulent controversy is taken up by the daily papers. Under such conditions any academic tendency either toward servility or toward demagogy is not likely to go long unchallenged.
Considering the high cost and small profits of university manipulation in this light it is very doubtful whether so indirect a method of social defence would appeal to our financial pirates. Whatever their defects or vices, men of this type have at least received the rigorous training of the business career. They are not philosophers of farsighted vision, nor are they easily perturbed by fears of distant dangers. Troubles near at hand they see very clearly; indeed, one of the chief grounds of clamour against such men is the crass directness of the bribery to which on occasion they resort. Interests under fire appeal rather to political hirelings, to venal lawyers, to the courts, to legislatures, or to the press for effective protection and defence. College doctrines are too remote, too uncertain of manipulation to be of assistance. Although they did not learn it from the poet, business men are certainly not unmindful that:
“was ein Professor spricht
Nicht gleich zu allen dringet.”
Given both the motive and the means, however, the task of corrupting the college teaching of economic, political, and social doctrines would seem almost hopelessly difficult. A given institution, may, indeed, be endowed almost exclusively by a certain man of great wealth. With very few exceptions knowledge of such munificence is made public property. If then the president or professors of such a university should endeavour to justify or palliate the business conduct of the founder their motives will be suspected from the start and their arguments, however artfully they might plead the case, discounted accordingly. If discretion were thrown to the winds (there is perhaps one case of this sort) the net effect of the work of such apologists, instead of aiding their financial friends, might profoundly injure and embarrass them. Those who are familiar with the character of the American student know that he would be the first to detect any insincerity in the discussion of public questions by an instructor or college official. If the prosperity of the college were due almost entirely to a single bounteous donor its venal professors would, of course, have no direct motive to defend the economic misconduct of any other than their particular friend among the captains of industry. Possibly they might develop a policy similar to that of newspapers in the same predicament,—silence or soft speaking regarding the sins of their great and rich friend combined with louder trumpetings against the social misconduct of other and indifferent financial interests. In the case of all our important institutions of learning, however, funds of very considerable size in the aggregate have been received from many sources in the past, and new gifts, even when they are of large amount, represent merely fractional additions thereto. Those who know our colleges and universities will find it hard to believe that the old academic ideals and traditions of well supported institutions, their scientific honesty and earnest devotion to broad public service, are to be cheaply bought by gifts of half a million or more from the nouveau riche. There is such a thing as loyalty to the small gifts often made with the highest motives and the greatest sacrifices by generations long since dead. Few institutions desire to disregard this sentiment, and no institution can disregard it with impunity.
Finally there are the great state institutions of the country, maintained almost wholly by taxation and hence free from any corrupting influence that large endowments might exercise. There can be no doubt that the possession of these two fundamentally different kinds of economic support is a great safeguard to the independence of university instruction in the United States. No country is more blatant in asserting its Lehrfreiheit than Germany, but there the exclusive reliance of universities upon state support, coupled with the tremendous strength of government, makes necessary very considerable modification of the Teutonic boast of absolute academic freedom. To be sure state institutions in the United States have been charged at times with similar subservience to legislatures and political leaders. Whatever perversion of this sort may have occurred it was at least not turned to the advantage of corporate misdoing. Indeed it probably had a directly opposite and strongly demagogic trend. Fortunately our state universities are becoming so powerful, so well fortified by high and honest traditions, so beloved by great and rapidly growing bodies of influential alumni that the days of their dependence upon political favour are well nigh over. It is now beyond all doubt that they are destined to a career of immense usefulness to our democracy, and it seems highly probable that they will overtake, if they do not ultimately excel, the great endowed institutions of the country. If the latter should ever show themselves subject to the influence of predatory wealth the development of well supported public universities should supply the necessary corrective. At the present time, however, a strong presumption of the general devotion of both classes of institutions to the public welfare is afforded by the fact that no recognisable distinction exists between the general doctrines of economics, political, and social science as taught in endowed schools on the one hand and in state schools on the other.
It was unfortunately essential to the foregoing argument that the worst motives should be assumed on the part of college benefactors. Justice requires ample correction of this point. A conspiracy to influence the social doctrines of our colleges, as we have seen, is neither so inexpensive, so direct, nor so likely to succeed as to commend itself to business men looking for immediate results. No doubt there have been men of wealth who by large and well advertised benefactions to colleges and universities have sought not to influence college teaching but to rehabilitate themselves and their business methods in popular esteem. Conspicuous giving with this penitential purpose in view is not likely to prove very effective, however. The sharp insight as to motives and the half humourous cynicism peculiar to American character are sufficient safeguards against the purchase of undeserved sympathy by rich offenders. In spite of the enormous sums given in the United States not only to the higher educational institutions but also for many other educational and philanthropic purposes, it seems extremely doubtful that public opinion has been affected thereby favourably to plutocratic interests. Few of the great mass are directly touched and consciously benefited by such gifts, but all are able to see (and if not they are helped by radicals to see), the superfluity out of which the donations were made. Benefactors, prospective and actual, must face the certainty of much criticism and misinterpretation. So far as this criticism is unjust it is to be regretted; so far as it is just it contributes materially to social welfare. Investments in business are judged as to their wisdom by the ready tests of profits and permanence; investments in social work are not subject to tests so accurate and so easily applied. To some extent their place is taken by the advice and criticism of workers in the field. Still there is large possibility that gifts for social work may be applied in useless or even in harmful ways. A wise conception of the function of the philanthropist must therefore include a realisation of the value of criticism by specialists, and also a determination either to ignore misinterpretation and unjust criticism, or to await its reversal by a better informed, if somewhat belated public opinion.