第41章 CHAPTER II(10)

Even those preferred lines of instruction which in their own right engage the serious interest of the instructors can get nothing better than superficial attention if the time and energy of the instructors are dissipated over a scattering variety of courses. Good work, that is to say sufficiently good work to be worth while, requires a free hand and a free margin of time and energy. If the number of distinct lines of instruction is relatively large, and if, as happens, they are distributed scatteringly among the members of the staff, with a relatively large assignment of hours to each man, so as to admit no assured and persistent concentration on any point, the run of instruction offered will necessarily be of this perfunctory character, and will therefore be of such amateurish and pedantic quality. Such an outcome is by no means unusual where regard is had primarily to covering a given inclusive range of subjects, rather than to the special aptitudes of the departmental corps; as indeed commonly happens, and as happens particularly where the school or the department in question is sufficiently imbued with a businesslike spirit of academic rivalry. It follows necessarily and in due measure on the introduction of the principles, methods, and tests of competitive business into the work of instruction.(6*)Under these principles of accountancy and hierarchical control, each of the several bureaux of erudition -- commonly called departments -- is a competitor with all its fellow bureaux in the (thrifty) apportionment of funds and equipment, -- for the businesslike university management habitually harbours a larger number of departments than its disposable means will adequately provide for. So also each department competes with its fellow departments, as well as with similar departments in rival universities, for a clientele in the way of student registrations. These two lines of competition are closely interdependent. An adverse statistical showing in the number of students, or in the range, variety and volume of courses of instruction offered by any given department; is rated by the businesslike general directorate as a shortcoming, and it is there fore likely to bring a reduction of allowances. At the same time, of course, such an adverse showing reflects discredit on the chief of bureau, while it also wounds his self-respect. The final test of competency in such a chief, under business principles, is the statistical test; in part because numerical tests have a seductive air of businesslike accountancy, and also because statistical exhibits have a ready use as advertising material to be employed in appeals to the potential donors and the unlearned patrons of the university, as well as to the public at large.

So the chief of bureau, with the aid and concurrence of his loyal staff, will aim to offer as extensive and varied a range of instruction as the field assigned his department will admit. Out of this competitive aggrandizement of departments there may even arise a diplomatic contention between heads of departments, as to the precise frontiers between their respective domains; each being ambitious to magnify his office and acquire merit by including much of the field and many of the students under his own dominion.(7*) Such a conflict of jurisdiction is particularly apt to arise in case, as may happen, the number of scholastic departments exceeds the number of patently distinguishable provinces of knowledge; and competitive business principles constantly afford provocation to such a discrepancy, at the hands of an executive pushed by the need of a show of magnitude and large traffic. It follows, further, from these circumstances, that wherever contiguous academic departments are occupied with such closely related subject matter as would place them in a position to supplement one another's work, the negotiations involved in jealously guarding their respective frontiers may even take on an acrimonious tone, and may involve more or less of diplomatic mischief-making; so that, under this rule of competitive management, opportunities for mutual comfort and aid will not infrequently become occasion for mutual distrust and hindrance.

The broader the province and the more exuberant the range of instruction appropriated to a given department and its corps of teachers, the more creditable will be the statistical showing, and the more meagre and threadbare are likely to be the scientific results. The corps of instructors will be the more consistently organized and controlled with a view to their dispensing accumulated knowledge, rather than to pursue further inquiry in the direction of their scholarly inclination or capacity; and frequently, indeed, to dispense a larger volume and a wider range of knowledge than they are in any intimate sense possessed of.

It is by no means that no regard is had to the special tastes, aptitudes, and attainments of the members of the staff, in so apportioning the work; these things are, commonly, given such consideration as the exigencies of academic competition will permit; but these exigencies decide that the criterion of special fitness becomes a secondary consideration. Wherever the businesslike demands of a rounded and extensive schedule of courses traverse the lines of special aptitude and training, the requirements of the schedule must rule the case; whereas, of course, the interests of science and scholarship, and of the best efficiency in the instruction given, would decide that no demands of the schedule be allowed to interfere with each man's doing the work which he can do best, and nothing else.