第42章 CHAPTER II(11)

A schedule of instruction drawn on such lines of efficiency would avoid duplication of course, and would curtail the number of courses offered by any given department to such a modicum as the special fitness of the members of the staff would allow them to carry to the best effect. It would also proceed on the obvious assumption that co-ordinate departments in the several universities should supplement one another's work, -- an assumption obvious to the meanest academic common sense. But amicable working arrangements of this kind between departments of different universities, or between the several universities as a whole, are of course virtually barred out under the current policy of competitive duplication. It is out of the question, in the same manner and degree as the like co-operation between rival department stores is out of the question. Yet so urgently right and good is such a policy of mutual supplement and support, except as a business proposition, that some exchange of academic civilities paraded under its cloak is constantly offered to view in the manoeuvres of the competing captains of erudition. The well-published and nugatory(8*) periodic conferences of presidents commonly have such an ostensible purpose.

Competitive enterprise, reinforced with a sentimental penchant for large figures, demands a full schedule of instruction. But to carry such a schedule and do the work well would require a larger staff of instructors in each department, and a larger allowance of funds and equipment, than business principles will countenance. There is always a dearth of funds, and there is always urgent use for more than can be had; for the enterprising directorate is always eager to expand and project the business of the concern into new provinces of school work,secondary, primary, elementary, normal, professional, technical, manual-training, art schools, schools of music, elocution, book-keeping, housekeeping, and a further variety that will more readily occur to those who have been occupied with devising ways and means of extending the competitive traffic of the university. Into these divers and sundry channels of sand the pressure of competitive expansion is continually pushing additional half-equipped, under-fed and over-worked ramifications of the academic body. And then, too, sane competitive business practice insists on economy of cost as well as a large output of goods. It is "bad business" to offer a better grade of goods than the market demands, particularly to customers who do not know the difference, or to turn out goods at a higher cost than other competing concerns. So business exigencies, those exigencies of economy to which the businesslike governing boards are very much alive, preclude any department confining itself to the work which it can do best, and at the same stroke they preclude the authorities from dealing with any department according to such a measure of liberality as would enable it to carry on the required volume of work in a competent manner.

In the businesslike view of the captains of erudition, taken from the standpoint of the counting-house, learning and university instruction are a species of skilled labour, to be hired at competitive wages and to turn out the largest merchantable output that can be obtained by shrewd bargaining with their employees; whereas, of course, in point of fact and of its place in the economic system, the pursuit of learning is a species of leisure, and the work of instruction is one of the modes of a life so spent in "the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men." It is to be classed as "leisure" only in such a sense of that term as may apply to other forms of activity that have no economic, and more particularly no pecuniary, end or equivalence. It is by no means hereby intended to imply that such pursuit of knowledge is an aimless or indolent manner of life;nothing like dissipation has a legitimate place in it, nor is it "idle" in any other sense than that it is extra-economic, not without derogation to be classed as a gainful pursuit. Its aim is not the increase or utilization of the material means of life;nor can its spirit and employment be bought with a price. Any salary, perquisites, or similar emoluments assigned the scholars and scientists in the service of civilization, within the university or without, are (should be) in the nature of a stipend, designed to further the free use of their talent in the prosecution of this work, the value of which is not of a pecuniary kind. But under the stress of businesslike management in the universities the drift of things sets toward letting the work of science and scholarship to the lowest bidder, on a roughly applicable piece-wage plan. The result is about such a degree of inefficiency, waste and stultification as might fairly be expected; whereof there are abundantly many examples, that humble the pride of the scholars and rejoice the heart of the captains of erudition.