Thorstein Veblen

“ Whatever expedients of decorative real-estate, spectacular pageantry, bureaucratic magnificence, elusive statistics, vocational training, genteel solemnities and sweat-shop instruction, may be imposed by the exigencies of a competitive business policy, the university is after all a seat of learning, devoted to the cult of the idle curiosity, -- otherwise called the scientific spirit. ”

“ By force of the exigencies of competitive prestige there is, of course, a limit of tolerance that sets decent bounds both to the number of such supererogatory scholars harboured by the university, and the latitude allowed them in their intemperate pursuit of knowledge; but their presence in the academic body is, after all, neither an irrelevant accident nor a transient embarrassment. It is, in one sense of the expression, for the use of such men, and for the use which such men find for it, that the university exists at all ”

“ It is not the long-term serviceability of these official scientists that counts toward their availability for academic leadership, but their popular prestige. They may not be such leaders as the science needs, but they are such exponents of opinion as are believed to commend themselves to the tastes of the well-to-do laity. ”

“ Should such a man become unduly insistent in his advocacy of scholarship, so as seriously to traverse the statistical aspirations of the executive, or in any way to endanger the immediate popular prestige of the university, then it may become an open question whether his personal prestige has not been bought at too high a cost. As a business proposition, it may even become expedient to retire him. ”

“ At least in a genial, speculative sense of the phrase, scholarship still outranks official preferment in the esteem of the generality of academic men, particularly so long as the question does not become personal and touch their own preferment. In great part the academic corps still understands and appreciates the scholarly animus, and looks, on the whole, kindly and sympathetically -- indeed, with a touch of envy -- on those among them who are so driven to follow their own scientific bent, to the neglect of expedient gentility and publicity. ”

“ Herein lies the difference between homiletical exposition and scientific inquiry.
Now, on these matters of habit and convention, morality and religion, law and order -- matters which intimately touch the community's accepted scheme of life -- all men have convictions; sentimental convictions to which they adhere with an instinctive tenacity, and any disturbance of which they resent as a violation of fundamental truth. These institutions of society are made up of the habits of thought of the people who live under them. ”

“ And stultification, broad and final, waits on any university directorate that shall dare to avow any other end as its objective. So the appearance of an unwavering devotion to the pursuit of knowledge must be kept up. Hence the presence of scholars and scientists of accepted standing is indispensable to the university, as a means of keeping up its prestige. The need of them may be a need of their countenance rather than of their work, but they are indispensable, and they bring with them the defects of their qualities. ”

“ Remotely by force of a worldly-wise appointing power, proximately by force of the good taste and sober sense of well-chosen incumbents, something of filial piety comes to pervade the academic handling of those institutional phenomena that touch the sentiments of the passing generation. Hence it comes that current academic work in the province of the social, political, and economic sciences, as well as in the sciences that touch the religious interest, has a larger reputation for assurance and dignity than for an incisive canvassing of the available material. ”

“ But in the sciences that deal with the less tangible and measureable data, the so-called moral or social sciences, common notoriety is not even an approximately accurate index of scientific capacity or attainments; and still it is, of course, the standing of the incumbents in point of common notoriety that must chiefly be had in view in any strict valuation of them for purposes of academic prestige. ”

“ In the main, therefore, all the competitive endeavours and manoeuvres of the captains of erudition in charge must be made under cover of an ostensible endeavour to further this non-competitive advancement of learning, at all costs. Since learning is not a competitive matter; since, indeed, competition in any guise or bearing in this field is detrimental to learning; the competitive manoeuvres of the academic executive must be carried on surreptitiously, in a sense, cloaked as a non-competitive campaign for the increase of knowledge without fear or favour. ”

“ A wise academic policy, conducted by an executive looking to the fiscal interests of the university, will aim not to alienate the affections of the large businessmen of a ripe age, by harbouring specialists whose inquires are likely to traverse these old-settled convictions in the social, economic, political, or religious domain. It is bad business policy to create unnecessary annoyance. ”

“ So, by and large, it will be found that these accredited leaders of scientific inquiry are fortunate enough not narrowly to scrutinize, or to seek particular explanation of, those institutional facts which the conservative common sense of the elderly businessman accepts as good and final; and since their field of inquiry is precisely this range of institutional facts, the consequence is that their leadership in the science conduces more to the stability of opinions than to the advancement of knowledge. ”

“ As it does in popular speculation, so also in this academic quasi-science, the interest centres on what ought to be done to improve conditions and to conserve those usages and conventions that have by habit been imbedded in the received scheme of use and wont, and so have come to be found good and right. It is of the essence of popular speculations on this range of topics that they are focussed on questions of use; that they are of a teleological order; that they look to the expediency of the observed facts and to their exploitation, rather than to a scientific explanation of them. ”

“ Usage and the urgent need of a reputable notoriety impose on university men an extraneous and excessively high standard of living expenses, which constrains them to take on supernumerary work in excess of what they can carry in an efficient manner. The need of university prestige enforces this high scale of expenses, and also pushes the members of the staff into a routine of polite dissipation, ceremonial display, exhibitions of quasi-scholarly proficiency and propagandist intrigue. ”

“ It is not simply the vulgar, commonplace convictions of the populace that must receive consideration in this field of the moral and social sciences, -- including such matters as religion, sociology, economics, and political science, so-called. What is especially to be conciliated by the official scientists is the current range of convictions on all these heads among those well-to-do classes from whom the institution hopes to draw contributions to its endowment, on the one hand, and the more reputable part of its undergraduate clientèle, on the other hand. ”

“ Academic tradition and current common sense unite in imposing on the universities the employment of prominent scholars and scientists, in that men of note in this class have a high prestige value for purposes of publicity; and it was suggested above that a reservation of some breadth must be made on this head. Common notoriety is the due test of eminence which the competitive university must apply in the selection of its notables. ”

“ And then, their more happily gifted, more worldly-wise colleagues have also a degree of respect for such a single-minded pursuit of knowledge, even while they may view these naive children of impulse with something of an amused compassion; for the general body of the academic staff is still made up largely of men who have started out with scholarly ideals, even though these ideals may have somewhat fallen away from them under the rub of expediency. ”

“ An alert sense of the practical value of their inquiries and their teaching is one of the chief requisites for official recognition in the scientists who occupy themselves with these matters, and it is one of the chief characteristics of their work. So that, in so far as it all conforms to the principles of competitive business, the line of demarcation between worldly wisdom and theoretical validity becomes peculiarly indistinct in this province of science. ”

“ The like can, of course, not be so freely said of that body of businessmen in whom is vested the final control; yet this sentiment of genial approval that pervades the academic body finds some vague response even among these; and in any event it is always to be reckoned with and is not to be outraged, unless for a good and valuable consideration. It can not altogether be set aside, although, it is true, the conduct of certain executive heads, grown old in autocratic rule and self-complacency, may at times appear to argue the contrary. ”

“ This attitude, of course, is the attitude of expediency and homiletics, not of scientific inquiry.
A single illustrative instance of the prevalence of this animus in the academic social sciences may be in place. It is usual among economists, e.g., to make much of the proposition that economics is an "art" -- the art of expedient management of the material means of life; and further that the justification of economic theory lies in its serviceability in this respect. Such a quasi-science necessarily takes the current situation for granted as a permanent state of things ”

“ And this double responsibility falls, of necessity, on the executive head of the university, under the present régime of centralized autocratic rule. Any ethical code that shall permit the executive head to accomplish what is expected of him in the way of a competitive enterprise under these circumstances, will necessarily be vague and shifty, not to and men who have tried to do say tenuous and shadowy; their whole duty in these premises are ready to admit that they have been called on to face many distasteful situations, where honesty would not approve itself as the best policy. ”

“ The framing of shrewd lines of competitive strategy, and the bureaucratic punctilios of university administration, do not commonly engage their best interest, even if it does not stir them to an indecorous impatience. ”

“ Still, in the degree in which business principles rule the case the outcome will be of much the same complexion as it might be in the absence of any such prepossession, intelligent or otherwise, in favour of the higher learning on the part of the directorate; for competition has the same effect here as elsewhere, in that it permits none of the competitors to forego any expedient that has been found advantageous by any one of them. ”

“ One who purports to be a scientist in this field can gain popular approval of his scientific capacity, particularly the businessmen's approval, only by accepting and confirming current convictions regarding those elements of the accepted scheme of life with which his science is occupied. Any inquiry which does not lead to corroboration of the opinions in vogue among the unlearned is condemned as being spurious and dangerously wrong-headed ”

“ The businesslike grounds of it can not well be avowed, since it is involved in the scheme of academic decorum, as well as in the scheme of publicity, that motives of notoriety must not be avowed. Colourable grounds of another kind must be found, such as will divert the popular imagination from the point at issue. By a judicious course of vexation and equivocations, an obnoxious scientist may be manoeuvred into such a position that his pride will force a "voluntary" resignation. ”

“ But so far as popular esteem is a truthful index of scientific achievement. the proposition holds, that scientists who have done great things have a business value to the captain of erudition as a means of advancing the university's prestige; and so far the indicated consequences follow. In some measure the scientific men so intruded into the academic body are in a position to give a direction to affairs within their field and within the framework of the general policy. ”

“ And within this conservative body, again, it is the elderly representatives of the old order that are chiefly to be considered, -- since it is the honourable custom among men of large means not to give largely to institutions of learning until late in life.
It is to be accounted one of the meritorious customs of the greater businessmen that, one with another, they eventually convert a share of their takings to the installation of schools and similar establishments designed to serve and to conserve the amenities of civilized life. ”

“ In a curious way, too, the full swing of business principles in academic life is hindered by the necessary ways and means through which these principles are worked out; so much so, indeed, as to throw a serious doubt on their ultimately achieving an undivided dominion. ”

“ That they are able to do so is a fortunate circumstance, due to the fact that their intellectual horizon is bounded by the same limits of commonplace insight and preconceptions as are the prevailing opinions of the conservative middle class. That is to say, a large and aggressive mediocrity is the prime qualification for a leader of science in these lines, if his leadership is to gain academic authentication. ”

“ It may confidently be asserted, without fear of contradiction from their side, that the official leaders in this province of academic research and indoctrination are, commonly, in no way hindered from pushing their researches with full freedom and to the limit of their capacity; and that they are likewise free to give the fullest expression to any conclusions or convictions to which their inquiries may carry them. ”

“ The run of the facts is, in effect, a compromise between the scholar's ideals and those of business, in such a way that the ideals of scholarship are yielding ground, in an uncertain and varying degree, before the pressure of businesslike exigencies. ”