Thorstein Veblen

“ It describes an institutional ideal; not necessarily an ideal nursed by any given individual, but the ideal logically involved in the scheme of modern civilization, and logically coming out of the historical development of Western civilization hitherto, and visible to any one who will dispassionately stand aside and look to the drift of latterday events in so far as they bear on this matter of the higher learning, its advancement and conservation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Many if not most of those men who are occupied with the guidance of university affairs would disown such a projected ideal, as being too narrow and too unpractical to fit into the modern scheme of things, which is above all else a culture of affairs ”

“ But in the long run these various interests and ideals of expediency have, all and several, shown themselves to be only factional elements in the scheme of culture, and have lost their preferential voice in the shaping of academic life. The place in men's esteem once filled by church and state is now held by pecuniary traffic, business enterprise. ”

“ The intellectual predilection -- the idle curiosity -- abides and asserts itself when other pursuits of a more temporal but more immediately urgent kind leave men free to take stock of the ulterior ends and values of life ”

“ Now, it may be remarked by the way, that civilized mankind should have come so to set their heart on this chase after a fugitive knowledge of inconsequential facts may be little to the credit of the race or of that scheme of culture that so centres about this cult of the idle curiosity. ”

“ The question of what, in any ulterior sense, ought to be sought after in the determination of academic policy and the conduct of academic affairs will, however, not coincide with the other question, as to what actually is being accomplished in these premises, on the one hand, nor as to what the long-term cultural aspirations of civilized men are setting toward, on the other hand. ”

“ 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 question of material ways and means, and the detail requirements of the day's work, are for ever at hand and for ever contest the claims of any avowed ulterior end; and by force of unremitting habituation the current competitive system of acquisition and expenditure induces in all classes such a bias as leads them to overrate ways and means as contrasted with the ends which these ways and means are in some sense designed to serve. ”

“ Yet it is true to the facts, taken in a generalized way, and it describes the type to which the American schools unavoidably gravitate by force of the community's long-term idealistic impulsion, in so far as their drift is not continually corrected and offset by vigilant authorities who, from motives of their own, seek to turn the universities to account in one way and another. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”