第16章 CHAPTER IV(4)

VAs intimated above, there are two main reasons for the continued and tenacious connection between these schools and the universities: (a) ancient tradition, fortified by the solicitous ambition of the university directorate to make a brave show of magnitude, and (b) the anxiety of these schools to secure some degree of scholarly authentication through such a formal connection with a seat of learning. These two motives have now and again pushed matters fairly to an extreme in the reactionary direction. So, for instance, the chances of intrigue and extra-academic clamour have latterly thrown up certain men of untempered "practicality" as directive heads of certain universities, and some of these have gone so far as to avow a reactionary intention to make the modern university a cluster of professional schools or faculties, after the ancient barbarian fashion.(9*) But such a policy of return to the lost crudities is unworkable in the long run under modern conditions. It may serve excellently as a transient expedient in a campaign of popularity, and such appears to have been its chief purpose where a move of this kind has been advocated, but it runs on superficial grounds and can afford neither hope nor fear of a permanent diversion in the direction so spoken for.

In the modern community, under the strain of the price system and the necessities of competitive earning and spending, many men and women are driven by an habitual bias in favour of a higher "practical" efficiency in all matters of education; that is to say, a more single-minded devotion to the needs of earning and spending. There is, indeed, much of this spirit abroad in the community, and any candidate for popular favour and prestige may find his own advantage in conciliating popular sentiment of this kind. But there is at the same time equally prevalent through the community a long-term bias of another kind, such as will not enduringly tolerate the sordid effects of pursuing an educational policy that looks mainly to the main chance, and unreservedly makes the means of life its chief end. By virtue of this long-term idealistic drift, any seminary of learning that plays fast and loose in this way with the cultural interests entrusted to its keeping loses caste and falls out of the running. The universities that are subjected in this fashion to an experimental reversion to vocationalism, it appears, will unavoidably return presently to something of the non-professional type, on pain of falling into hopeless discredit. There have been some striking instances, but current not ions of delicacy will scarcely admit a citation of nam es and dates. And while the long-term drift of the modern idealistic bias may not permit the universities permanently to be diverted to the service of Mammon in this fashion, yet the unremitting endeavours of "educators"seeking prestige for worldly wisdom results at the best in a fluctuating state of compromise, in which the ill effects of such bids for popularity are continually being outworn by the drift of academic usage.

The point is illustrated by the American state universities as a class, although the illustration is by no means uniformly convincing. The greater number of these state schools are not, or are not yet, universities except in name. These establishments have been founded, commonly, with a professed utilitarian purpose, and have started out with professional training as their chief avowed aim. The purpose made most of in their establishment has commonly been to train young men for proficiency in some gainful occupation; along with this have gone many half-articulate professions of solicitude for cultural interests to be taken care of by the same means. They have been installed by politicians looking for popular acclaim, rather than by men of scholarly or scientific insight, and their management has not infrequently been entrusted to political masters of intrigue, with scant academic qualifications; their foundations has been the work of practical politicians with a view to conciliate the good will of a lay constituency clamouring for things tangibly "useful" -- that is to say, pecuniarily gainful. So these experts in short-term political prestige have made provision for schools of a "practical" character; but they have named these establishments "universities" because the name carries an air of scholarly repute, of a higher, more substantial kind than any naked avowal of material practicality would give. Yet, in those instances where the passage of time has allowed the readjustment to take place, these quasi-"universities," installed by men of affairs, of a crass "practicality," and in response to the utilitarian demands of an unlearned political constituency, have in the long run taken on more and more of an academic, non-utilitarian character, and have been gradually falling into line as universities claiming a place among the seminaries of the higher learning. The long-term drift of modern cultural ideals leaves these schools no final resting place short of the university type, however far short of such a consummation the greater number of them may still be found.