Thorstein Veblen

“ But as competitors for the good-will of the unlettered patrons of learning the university directorates are constrained to keep this need of a reputable notoriety constantly in mind, however little it may all appeal to their own scholarly tastes.
It is in very large part, if not chiefly, as touches the acquirement of prestige, that the academic work and equipment are amenable to business principles, -- not overlooking the pervasive system of standardization and accountancy that affects both the work and the equipment, and that serves other purposes as well as those of publicity ”

“ So, again, space will, on the same ground, be wasted in heavy-ceiled, ill-lighted lobbies; which might once have served as a mustering place for a body of unruly men-at-arms, but which mean nothing more to the point today, and in these premises, than so many inconvenient flagstones to be crossed in coming and going. ”

“ To carry instant conviction of a high academic worth to this large element of the populace, the university buildings should bulk large in the landscape, should be wastefully expensive, and should conform to the architectural mannerisms in present vogue. In a few years the style of architectural affectations will change, of course, as fashions necessarily change in any community whose tastes are governed by pecuniary standards; and any particular architectural contrivance will therefore presently lose much of its prestige value ”

“ Unless the man in competitive business is able, by force of these businesslike aptitudes, to get something more than he gives, it is felt that he has fallen short of the highest efficiency. So the efficient salesman, and similarly the efficiently managed business concern, are enabled to add to their marketable goods an immaterial increment of "prestige value," as some of the economists are calling it. ”

“ It is in the eyes of the unlettered, particularly the business community, that it is desirable for the university to present an imposing front; that being the feature of academic installation which they will readily appreciate. ”

“ The gain which so accrues to any university from such an accession of popular illusions is a differential gain in competition with rival seats of learning, not a gain to the republic of learning or to the academic community at large; and it is a gain in marketable illusions, not in serviceability for the ends of learning or for any other avowed or avowable end sought by the universities. ”

“ The common run of business concerns are occupied with industrial enterprise of some kind, and with transactions in credit, -- with a running sequence of bargains from which the gains of the concern are to accrue, -- and it is upon these gains that attention and effort centers, and to which the management of the concern constantly looks. ”

“ More particularly is there a marked proclivity to extend the plant and the school organization into new fields of scholastic enterprise, often irrelevant or quite foreign to the province of the university as a seminary of learning; and to push these alien ramifications, to the neglect of the urgent needs of the academic work already in hand, in the way of equipment, maintenance, supplies, service and instruction.
The running-expenses are always the most urgent items of the budget, as seen from the standpoint of the academic work ”

“ In practice, under compulsion of the business principles of publicity, it will be found, however, that the exterior and the decorative appointments are the chief object of the designer's attention; the interior arrangement and working appointments will not infrequently become a matter of rude approximation to the requirements of the work, care being first taken that these arrangements shall not interfere with the decorative or spectacular intent of the outside. ”

“ The qualities that count as of prime consequence in business enterprise, therefore, particularly in such business enterprise as has to do with many impressionable customers, are the salesmanlike virtues of effrontery and tact. ”

“ They are useful for purposes of competitive gain to the businessman, not for serviceability to the community at large, and their value to their possessor lies in the differential advantage which they give to one seller as against another. They have, on the whole, no aggregate value or utility. From the point of view of the common good, work and expenditure so incurred for these competitive purposes are bootless waste. ”

“ Such concerns have to meet their competitors in buying, selling, and effecting contracts of all kinds, from which their gains are to come. A university, on the other hand, can look to no such gains in the work which is its sole ostensible interest and occupation; and the pecuniary transactions and arrangements which it enters into on the basis of its accumulated prestige are a relatively very trivial matter. ”

“ The most familiar and convincing illustrations of such good will are probably those afforded by the sales of patent medicines, and similar proprietary articles of household consumption; but intangible values of a similar nature are involved in nearly all competitive business. They are the product of salesmanship, not of workmanship ”

“ A margin of prepossessions or illusions as to their superior, but intangible and inexpensive, utility attaches to a given line of goods because of the advertiser's or salesman's work, -- work spent not so much on the goods as on the customer's sensibilities. ”

“ A few years ago, in one of the larger, younger and more enterprising universities, a commodious laboratory, well appointed and adequately decorated, was dedicated to one of the branches of biological science. To meet the needs of scientific work such a laboratory requires the services of a corps of experienced and intelligent assistants and caretakers, particularly where the establishment is equipped with modern appliances for heating, ventilation and the like, as was the case in this instance. ”

“ But intelligent service comes high, and ignorant janitors are willing to undertake what may be asked of them. And sufficient warmth can be had in an inclement climate and through a long winter season only at an appreciable expense. So, with a view to economy, and without the knowledge of the scientific staff who made use of the laboratory, the expedient was hit upon by the academic executive, in consultation with a suitable janitor, that the outdoor intake be boarded up tightly. ”

“ Any one given to curious inquiry might find congenial employment in tracing out the manner and proportion in which these, and the like, strains of aesthetic indoctrination are blended in the edifices and grounds of a well-advised modern university. ”

“ The archaic forms which it ostensibly preserves are structurally out of date, ill adapted to the modern materials and the modern builder's use of materials. Modern building, on a large scale and designed for durable results, is framework building. The modern requirements of light, heating, ventilation and access require it to be such; and the materials used lend themselves to that manner of construction. The strains involved in modern structures are frame-work strains; whereas the forms which these edifices are required to simulate are masonry forms. ”

“ As will be found true of other lines of this university enterprise in publicity, so also as to this presentation of a reputable exterior; it is designed to impress not the academic personnel, or the scholarly element at large, but the laity. The academic folk and scholars are commonly less susceptible to the appeal of curious facades and perplexing feats of architecture ”

“ It appears that the successful men of affairs to whom the appeal for funds is directed, find these wasteful, ornate and meretricious edifices a competent expression of their cultural hopes and ambitions. ”

“ In recent scholastic edifices one is not surprised to find lecture rooms acoustically ill designed, and with an annoying distribution of light, due to the requirements of exterior symmetry and the decorative distribution of windows ”

“ And then, too, edifices created with a thrifty view to a large spectacular effect at a low cost are also liable to so rapid a physical decay as to be ready for removal and replacement before they have greatly outlived their usefulness in this respect. ”

“ They have to be adapted, simulated, deranged, because in modern use they are impracticable in the shape, proportion and combination that of right belonged to them under the circumstances of materials and uses under which they were once worked out. ”