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The Idea of a University: When Trustees Turn a College into a Commodity
Editor’s Note: This article by Randolph Bourne, a writer and public intellectual, was originally published as “The Idea of a University” in The Dial on November 22, 1917. This is the second of a Martin Center “History of Higher Ed” series where the Center will republish overlooked writings that shaped American higher education.
In September 1917, Professor J. McKeen Cattell of the psychology department and Professor Henry W.L. Dana, an assistant professor of comparative literature, were dismissed by the trustees of Columbia University. Both teachers had expressed publicly their opposition to World War I. In protest against this breach of academic freedom, Professor Charles A. Beard, a professor in the history department, resigned from the university.
Every American college and university is affected by the issue raised in Professor Beard’s dramatic resignation from Columbia as a protest against trustee autocracy. For the conditions which he found intolerable spring from a ruling conception held by university trustees and a portion of conservative public opinion as to the nature of the modern university. The methods taken at Columbia to secure the expulsion of Professors Cattell and Dana are very revealing as to the status of professors and the nature of university prestige.
The excuses, causes, and reasons given by the university authorities and the current comment of the newspapers show how frankly the American university has become a financial corporation, strictly analogous, in its motives and responses, to the corporation which is concerned in the production of industrial commodities.
Trustees who are business men, who hold positions as directors or executives in large financial or industrial corporations, carry over into the management of the university the attitudes and sensitivities learned in the corporate world. The university produces learning instead of steel or rubber, but the nature of the academic commodity has become less and less potent in ensuring for the academic workman a status materially different from that of any other kind of employee.
As directors in this corporation of learning, trustees seem to regard themselves primarily as guardians of invested capital. They manage as a sacred trust the various bequests, gifts, endowments which have been made to the university by men and women of the same orthodoxies as themselves. Their obligation is to see that the quality of the commodity which the university produces is such as to seem reputable to the class which they represent. And in order to maintain the flow of capital and the general credit of the institution they must keep the stock above par.
In the minds apparently of the trustees, and of the executives and professors who work with them, the reputation of a university is comparable to the standing of a corporation’s securities on the street, the newspapers taking the place of the stock exchange. The real offence of Professors Cattell and Dana seems to have been not so much that they were unpatriotic as that they had lowered the prestige of the university in the public mind. Neither the president nor the trustees nor the faculty committees brought forward any evidence besides epithet that either professor had, in the language of President Butler’s warning, actually “opposed or counselled opposition to the laws of the United States, or had acted, spoken, or written treason.”
What these professors had done was to associate themselves with organizations which were enjoying infamy in the irresponsible press.
No attempt was made to discover whether the newspaper accounts were true. Chatter and rumor were sufficient to convict them. Wny? Because on the stock exchange it is by rumor and prejudice that the value of securities is hit, not by evidence. When your stock is depressed by an alarming rumor, it is irrelevant whether the rumor is true or not. The mischief lies in what people think, not in the actual facts. And for this purpose newspaper chatter is authoritative. Your object then becomes not to discover the truth but to combat the rumor. If the fall in your stock is due to a suspicion of the value of your commodity, you renew your efforts to convince the public of its soundness. If it is due to an offending employee, you dismiss the employee. Having removed the cause of the prejudice, you may then expect your securities to resume their former level.
Only on such an interpretation can we explain the tendency of university authorities to rely on newspaper opinion and upon the complaints of persons whom they would not take seriously on any other question whatever. One is often amazed at the callousness of university trustees towards the indignation that follows these arbitrary dismissals of professors. But this corporate attitude naturally discounts the opinions of the non-investing public.
It is not the discontent of idealists that matters, but the vague complaints from parents that their sons are being taught irreligion and sedition within the university, complaints from business men that a professor is tainted with economic heresy, indignation of prominent alumni at the connection of the university’s name with unpopular movements.
These are the attitudes that depress the credit of the university in the investing world, and these are the attitudes that carry weight, therefore, with the university president and the trustees. Vested interests presumably receive dividends in the form of orthodox graduates. Whatever interferes with the supply of such a revenue is therefore a serious assault on the stability of the corporation.
One is often amazed at the callousness of university trustees towards the indignation that follows these arbitrary dismissals of professors.
In any such system of ideas, the professor becomes inevitably a mere employee of a company which has a standing to maintain in the corporate world. His intellectual freedom is extremely precarious, because a chance remark, or any public activity, may bring him that newspaper censure which causes the grave damage the university is likely to incur in the minds of the significant classes. An “institution of learning,” administered even on autocratic principles, might be expected to move always with the most scrupulous regard for the dignity of the teacher and for the principles of legal evidence in any cases of dismissal or censure. The professor might be expected to have a status more secure and more respected than that of the employee, holding his position from day to day, and might be expected to be dismissed only after formal charges, and after conviction on evidence which would satisfy an impersonal and judicial mind.
None of the circumstances connected with the latest expulsions at Columbia shows that any such standards prevail in our largest and wealthiest university.
They show, on the contrary, that under trustee control the American university has been degraded from its old, noble ideal of a community of scholarship to a private commercial corporation. And the situation at Columbia is merely a sharpened form of what has gone on in other colleges and universities throughout the country.
Professor Beard’s stirring gesture has raised the issue whether this reigning corporate idea of a university shall any longer prevail. If that reigning idea is making it impossible for a man of Charles Beard’s intellectual distinction, courage, and democratic idealism to serve our largest university, we have come to the time when Americans will have to choose between the current philosophy of university government and the presence in the university of independent ann vigorous minds.
If a man like Professor Beard is to be forced to cut short his academic career because the status of the college teacher is becoming intolerable, a revolution in the idea of a university cannot come too quickly.
The present agitation for at least a constitutional form of government by which control over all academic matters is turned over to the faculties is an advance. But to ensure the instructor’s freedom, both university authorities and the newspaper public must learn to distinguish between his academic functions and his private opinions and activities. He will scarcely be free as long as he is vulnerable for activities which in no way concern his academic work, or as long as he is considered to implicate the university in everything he says or does. The partisan of “academic freedom” will also want to see worked out an entirely new status for both the instructor, who is now an employee, and for the student, who is now partly ward and partly consumer. State control is no solution, so long as directorship is given to men with the current corporate attitudes.
State ownership of universities, with control vested in the “guild” of professors, is probably the ideal solution. Meanwhile what is most needed is a clear realization of the hostility between the present system of ideas which governs university control, and the functional and cooperative ideals which should govern a community devoted to learning. That hostility is almost complete, and Professor Beard has done a great service by making a dramatic issue of it at the present time.
SOURCE
House Democrats’ New Bill Would Drive Up College Costs Even Further
House Democrats on Tuesday introduced a bill that combines some of the worst higher education policies into one bundle.
The bill, titled the College Affordability Act, would overhaul the Higher Education Act of 1965. While that law certainly needs significant revision, this proposal would replicate, and in some cases double down on, the unwise policies that led to our current $1.6 trillion student debt crisis.
Americans simply cannot afford the College Affordability Act.
While this bill doesn’t outright cancel student debt, students would see significantly more of their loan balances forgiven under the proposed restructuring of payment plans.
The College Affordability Act would cap monthly payments and enable students to enroll in an income-based repayment plan. Students who make regular payments would then have the remainder of their loan balances forgiven after 20 years.
While some students are already enrolled in this type of plan today, tying even more payments to income and capping monthly payments would cause the bill left to taxpayers at the 20-year mark to skyrocket.
Parent borrowers would also qualify for income-based repayment under this proposal. The parent PLUS loan program is one of the most egregious drivers of tuition inflation, as parents tend to take out large loan balances.
It is simply bad policy to potentially leave taxpayers on the hook for parents who took out student loans on behalf of their adult children.
While “free college” is technically absent from this bill, make no mistake—that is the goal.
Title IV of the College Affordability Act includes a federal-state partnership called America’s College Promise. This entails a grant program to states to help eliminate the cost of community college while maintaining funding for four-year public institutions.
According to the committee’s bill summary, “This program creates the foundation and makes a down payment toward future investments in four-year debt-free college for students across the country.”
This federal-state partnership would come with a $500 million fund to ensure the implementation of best practices in the states, as well as ensure equity in higher education.
“Free” college, whether for community college students or bachelor’s degree students, will drive up college costs. The only difference is that taxpayers will get the bill—and if history is any indicator, that bill will increase every year.
Massive Increase in Who Qualifies for Aid
The bill’s proposed changes to the Pell Grant program mean additional spending and more taxpayer exposure.
The College Affordability Act would permanently index Pell Grant funding to inflation, which would increase the maximum Pell award significantly.
Additionally, the bill proposes increasing the number of eligible semesters to 14, making it possible for graduate students to use Pell Grants for tuition.
Generally speaking, graduate students have a much easier time paying off their loans than bachelor’s degree holders. The federal government should have no role in providing free money to students who would fare well in the loan market.
The College Affordability Act also proposes lifting the ban on allowing incarcerated individuals to qualify for Pell Grants. Allowing prisoners to go to college on the backs of American taxpayers would result in increased spending while millions of Americans (who do not qualify for grants) struggle to pay off their loans.
Return of Obama-Era Regulations
The College Affordability Act would reinstate the Obama-era war on for-profit colleges.
Operating under the assumption that the only bad schools in America are for-profit schools, the College Affordability Act would reestablish the “gainful employment” rule, which singled out proprietary institutions and threatens their eligibility for funding under Title IV of the Higher Education Act.
The bill also calls for a new enforcement unit within the Department of Education, which would undoubtedly be dedicated to limiting the ability of for-profit institutions to operate.
There is no doubt that some for-profit institutions are not high quality enough to make Americans comfortable sending their tax dollars to subsidize them. However, bad institutions exist across the higher education sector, including four-year nonprofit institutions.
If higher education regulations are to exist, they should certainly be sector-neutral in their application.
Wrong Direction for America
This bill comes with a price tag estimated at $400 billion. Yet it opens the door for a massive increase in the federal government’s power to regulate and fund higher education in America.
This will likely result in costs that far surpass the $400 billion of taxpayer money initially being spent.
The College Affordability Act includes absolutely no provision to drive down college costs or insulate taxpayers from students’ inability to pay off their loans. In fact, through increased access to income-based repayment, taxpayers are even more exposed.
Americans deserve a Higher Education Act reauthorization that protects their interests and addresses the root causes of the student debt crisis. The College Affordability Act does neither.
SOURCE
Round One—Harvard Beats Asian Americans
In a long-awaited decision, federal trial judge Allison Burroughs has ruled that, while Harvard does consider a student’s race in determining who gets in and who doesn’t (“the use of race in and of itself is admitted”), nonetheless Harvard is not breaking the law.
That outcome was not surprising, and the judge’s opinion is unlikely to change many minds or alter the case’s expected trajectory to the Supreme Court.
Judge Burroughs found that “Race is only intentionally considered as a positive attribute.” But if race is a positive attribute for favored groups, then does it not follow that it is a negative attribute for everyone else? Well, yes, she admits about 100 pages later, writing, “Race conscious admissions will always penalize to some extent groups that are not being advantaged by the process.” Sure, there is discrimination against Asian Americans, but it isn’t “undu[e]” or “disproportionate.”
Here’s a sociopolitical reality: If it’s legally accepted that racial discrimination in admissions is permissible if you do A-B-C and do not do 1-2-3, then universities will make those claims. And so Judge Burroughs explains at great length why she accepts Harvard’s assertions that its discrimination is “narrowly tailored” (A-B-C) and that she is persuaded by the school that its discrimination is not anti-Asian (vis-a-vis whites, 1-2-3) but is only pro-diversity.
I believe she’s wrong in concluding that our law permits group discrimination as long as it doesn’t hurt disfavored groups “unduly.” The Civil Rights Act in particular and the 14thAmendment weren’t written that way. But Harvard drew one of the judges who reads the Supreme Court’s dubious jurisprudence to conclude that they were.
So those who favor a colorblind society (including college admissions) will struggle on. The plaintiffs (Students for Fair Admissions) have already announced that they’ll appeal to the First Circuit. I’m ultimately hoping for a Supreme Court decision that racial discrimination in university admissions is not permissible, period.
With the overwhelming majority of Americans rejecting this unequal treatment (preferring E pluribus unum) and with a judiciary that is less and less hospitable to it (since, after all, the text of the civil rights laws prohibit schools from discriminating on the basis of race and ethnicity), and with this discrimination becoming more outdated in our increasingly multiethnic country—why should anyone expect the struggle to stop?
Defenders of racial preferences wax eloquent about the need to consider students “holistically,” the continuing role of race in our society, and the necessity of nuance and balancing in making difficult admission decisions. Certainly, there is a time and place for all that in our discourse—but there is also a time and a place for bright lines and clear rules. The rule of law, Justice Scalia famously titled one of his law review articles, is a law of rules. And there should be a clear rule here: No racial discrimination in university admissions.
Let me elaborate on the A-B-C, 1-2-3 point above. The approach the Supreme Court takes in Equal Protection Clause cases like this one is to say that racial discrimination triggers “strict scrutiny,” which means that it is allowed only if the discriminator has a really good reason for the racial discrimination (a “compelling interest”) and is using race no more than absolutely necessary in order to achieve that interest. That’s what “narrow tailoring” means.
Strict scrutiny is supposed to be a very hard standard and judges are supposed to examine claims by discriminatory institutions rigorously to see if they really are truly compelling, not mere pretexts for favoring some and disfavoring others.
In college admissions cases, the Supreme Court has ruled that there are educational benefits from having “diversity” in its student body that can be the “compelling interest” to justify racial preferences. This means that a case like Harvard’s hinges on whether the school’s use of race is “narrowly tailored.” That is to say, the question is whether it might have achieved diversity in some other way without using overt racial preferences, whether race was used too mechanically (i.e., via quotas or some sort of points system), whether the school periodically reassesses its use of race, and so forth.
My point is that, so long as the door is left open for schools to consider race if it is “narrowly tailored,” many schools will assert that they meet those requirements, no matter how stringent they may appear on their face to be. They will hire experts, and create committees, and manufacture whatever paper trail they have to in the hopes that, if they are sued, they will prevail—with the help of a well-disposed judge.
The only way, then, that the practice of racial preferences will stop is if the Supreme Court revisits its decision to recognize the “diversity” justification as “compelling” in its 2003 Grutter v. Bollinger ruling.
That’s not such a heavy lift, really.
Is it really plausible that the “educational benefits” enjoyed by white and Asian American students in random conversations they have (in or outside the classroom) with black and Latino students are so valuable—and impossible to achieve in any other way—that they justify the long list of costs of racial discrimination?
It is personally unfair, passes over better-qualified students and sets a disturbing legal, political, and moral precedent in allowing racial discrimination.
It creates resentment and is otherwise and inevitably divisive.
It stigmatizes the so-called beneficiaries in the eyes of their classmates, teachers, and themselves, as well as future employers, clients, and patients.
It mismatches African Americans and Latinos with institutions, setting them up for failure, so that not only are those discriminated against hurt but also those supposedly benefited.
It fosters a victim mindset, removes the incentive for academic excellence, and encourages separatism.
It creates pressure to discriminate in grading and graduation.
It papers over the real social problem of why so many African Americans and Latinos are academically uncompetitive.
It breeds hypocrisy within the college and a scofflaw attitude among administrators.
It compromises the academic mission of the university and lowers the overall academic quality of the student body—ultimately resulting in less-qualified graduates (doctors, lawyers, engineers, you name it).
It gets states and schools involved in unsavory activities like deciding which minorities will be favored and which ones not, and who qualifies for inclusion in those groups, increasingly untenable in our multi-racial, multiethnic society.
The answer is clearly no.
I’ll also note a good point that Gail Heriot, a law professor at the University of San Diego law school and one of the two sane members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, recently made; namely, that it’s hard to see how a court can find a compelling interest in racial discrimination when a strong majority of the country rejects it.
I’ll note too that this unpopularity does not seem to matter much to many admissions offices; a recent study by the Center for Equal Opportunity found that all five of the Virginia public universities for which it had obtained admissions data discriminated against Asian Americans, just as Harvard does.
When the Harvard case finally does reach the Supreme Court, as is very likely, let us hope that it reconsiders—employing truly strict scrutiny—whether or not “diversity” is a “compelling interest” at all.
So long as the door is left open for schools to consider race if it is ‘narrowly tailored,’ many schools will assert that they meet those requirements, no matter how stringent they may appear on their face to be.
That means the justices should explore how plausible it is that university admissions officials can, with great confidence, by considering skin color and national origin, identify students who will, in random discussions inside and outside the classroom, provide white students and Asian American students with insights that are “compelling” in their “educational benefit.”
And, what’s more, those insights could not be attained in any way except (a) by these random discussions and (b) by university officials using racial discrimination in the admissions process to ensure that such students will be admitted to make them. That’s what the diversity rationale boils down to, and so what’s the evidence of this?
It’s hard to swallow that anyone really believes such nonsense. Whenever I debate this issue, within a few minutes we’re talking instead about slavery. And it’s always useful to put the shoe on the other foot in these debates: Suppose someone were to try to justify discriminating against blacks and Latinos based on this sort of social science—would it be viewed as plausible, let alone “compelling?”
Can we hope that the Harvard case will lead to a reversal of Grutter?
When the issue of racial preferences was last before the Supreme Court in the 2016 Fisher II decision, a 4-3 Supreme Court upheld such discrimination by the University of Texas. Justice Scalia had died during the term and his vacancy had not yet been filled; Justice Kagan had been recused because she had participated in the Obama administration’s decision-making about the case in the lower courts when she was solicitor general. Disappointingly, Justice Kennedy joined the three remaining liberals, leaving Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas and Alito to dissent.
With Justice Kennedy’s retirement and the appointments of Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, a 5-4 decision the other way is a realistic hope.
SOURCE
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