Shall The University Become A Business Corporation?
Henry S. Pritchett
[Originally published in The Atlantic, 1905]
Today, in the United States, two radically different plans for the
support and conduct of higher institutions of learning are in process
of development: the one that of the private university, the other of
the university supported and controlled by the state The first finds
its notable examples mainly amongst the older universities of the
East, the second in the universities of the Central and Western
states. While these last are younger, their growth has been rapid, not
only in the number of instructors and students, but in facilities and
income.
In the Eastern States, where the older universities have for a
century and more supplied the demands of higher education, no great
state institutions have grown up. In the central West, on the other
hand, where the state universities were founded just as the railroads
were built, to supply not a present but a future want, there are few
strong and growing private universities. In fact, there are in almost
every Western state private colleges and universities whose
development has been practically stopped, and which must in the end
become feeders to the great state universities.
There are a few notable exceptions to this rule: the University of
Chicago, Northwestern University, and Leland Stanford University. The
first two are in the suburbs of Chicago. The reason that they have
flourished is not far to seek. They are situated at the seat of the
greatest social and industrial centre in America. They occupy an
exceptional strategic situation for a great university or for a great
school.
As one looks back at the rise of the great Western universities and
realizes the wisdom and the far-sightedness displayed by their
founders, one is surprised that they should have estimated at such low
value the matter of strategic position. In nearly all cases these
institutions have been placed in small and isolated villages; rarely
have they been founded in connection with the centres of the social,
commercial, and industrial life of the various states. The reasoning
appears to have been the same as that which governed the location of
the state capitals, which were put at the most inconvenient possible
points, usually near the geographic centre of the state, without
regard to the commercial centre toward which all lines of
transportation lead. This was done upon the theory that the innocent
lawmakers must be defended from contact with the wicked people of the
cities. In the same way it wa~ believed that the student must be
protected from the temptations and the distractions which the nearness
of a great city might give. Both these assumptions are fallacious, and
the history of the past forty years has proved their unwisdom.
The great state universities of the middle West have succeeded, not
because of their isolation, but in spite of it, and no one can say how
different might have been their history ,or how much more powerful
might be their position in the future had the larger policy been
adopted. The only possible chance for success for a new university in
an isolated point lies in the possession of an enormous foundation,
such as that which was given by Leland Stanford, by which an
institution was founded out-of-hand and with free tuition. But even
here the limitations of environment will place a practical limit to
what endowment may effect.
These two systems of universities rest upon fundamentally different
views as to the support of higher education. The one assumes that this
support will come by the free gift of citizens of the commonwealth,
the other assumes that the support of higher education no less than
that of elementary education is the duty of the state. The one system
appeals to the generosity of the individual citizen, the other appeals
to the sense of responsibility and the patriotism of the whole mass of
citizens. The one establishes a set of higher institutions which may
or may not be in harmony with the elementary schools of the
municipality or of the state; the other establishes a set of
institutions which are an integral part of that system, and its crown.
The one furnishes a system of instruction in which tuition fees are
high and tending constantly to grow higher, the other furnishes a
system of instruction practically free. The one had its origin in
essentially aristocratic distinctions, whatever may be its present
form of development, the other is essentially democratic in both its
inception and its development.
Will these two systems -- different in ideal, different in inception,
different in development, not necessarily antagonistic but contrasted
-- continue to flourish, if not side by side, at least in contiguous
sections of the country?
As far as one can see into the future, both of these systems will
continue to live and to flourish, but with few exceptions they will
flourish in different sections, not side by side. No one can doubt
today that the state university is gaining as a centre of influence in
intellectual and national life. There can be no question that it is to
be the seat of university education for the greater part of the whole
country, including the Central, Western, and Southern states. The
private university which seeks to gain power and influence in this
region should set itself seriously to the problem of supplementing,
not paralleling, the work of the state university. It should ask
itself earnestly the question, What is the logical function of the
privately endowed university in a commonwealth where higher education
is supplied by the state? So far as I have been able to see, little
attention has been paid to this question, which nevertheless deserves
serious and careful consideration.
No one interested in education can repress a thrill of exultation as
he looks forward to the future of the great state universities. They
were started at a fortunate intellectual epoch. Their foundation
stones were laid when the battle for scientific freedom and scientific
teaching had just been won. They were dedicated by the pioneers who
founded them in a spirit of intellectual and spiritual freedom. They
are essentially and in the broadest and simplest way democratic, and
the logical outgrowth of a democratic system of public schools. It is
to this real democracy, to the fact that they were founded, not by a
few men or by a single man, but by the whole people of the state, that
they owe their greatest fortune, and no one looking into the future
can doubt that they are to be amongst the most influential, the
richest, and most democratic universities of our land, vying with the
oldest and most famous institutions of our Eastern States in a rivalry
which we may well hope to see the noble rivalry of the scholar rather
than a rivalry of riches, of buildings, and of numbers.
The American university, whether supported by private gift or by the
state, is conducted under an administrative system which approximates
closer and closer as time goes on that of a business corporation. The
administrative power is lodged in a small body of trustees or regents,
who are not members of the university community. The board of
trustees, with the president as its chief executive officer passes
upon the entire policy and administration of the institution. It
appoints professors, promotes them, or dismisses them, it engages them
to carry out specific pieces of work at specified times, as a business
corporation employs its officials; the tenure of office of the
professor is at the will of the corporation, as in the tenure of
office of a business employee.
Under this arrangement the powers of the president are enormously
increased, and the action of the corporation is in nearly all cases
his action. He possesses an autocratic power which would not for a
moment be tolerated in a European institution. From him the same
administrative system reaches down through the institution. Professors
employ their assistants for specific duties at specified times;
students are required to undertake specific work in a prescribed way
and at a fixed time.
It is worth while to note some of the consequences of this
administrative attitude upon the life and upon the work of those who
make up the university. One of the most direct consequences is that
the professor in the American university is charged not only with the
work of a scholar, but with a large amount of routine administrative
work as well.
Would the American university whether a private or a state
institution - be bettered if its administration were turned over to
the faculty instead of being vested, as now, in a board of trustees
who do not pretend to be experts in educational methods? Would it be a
step forward, for example, to intrust to the faculty the election of
the president and of the professors, and to put into their hands the
settlement of the larger questions of policy and of expenditure? Ought
the university freedom to be extended through the faculty to the
student body so as to diminish the pressure of the organization and to
enlarge the sphere of freedom both for professor and student? Can
scholarship of a high order be developed under pressure? Are we
educating our youth away from democratic ideals, not toward them, by
the form and tendency of our university administration?
These are fundamental questions which affect our national life and,
most directly, our youth.
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