Review of Veblen’s 'The Higher Learning in America'

The American Historical Review. (London: Macmillan, 1919)
Vol. XXIV (October 1918 to July 1919)

Vol. 24, No. 4 (Jul., 1919), pp. 714-715.
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[714]
The Higher Learning in America: a Memorandum on the Conduct of Universities by 
Business Men. By Thorstein Veblen. (New York: B. W. Huebsch. 1918. Pp. 286. 
$2.00.)

The reader must not expect to find in this little book a discussion of the past 
development of the higher learning, historical or other, in the United States, 
or of its present situation, or of its future prospects, or of the methods by 
which it may be made to flourish — save as regards the one particular to which 
its subtitle limits the book. It is a discussion of the trustee or regent system 
in American universities. As such, it is in part an historical work, which may 
be appropriately reviewed in an historical journal, for, with none of the 
apparatus of dates and almost no specific details, with hardly a direct mention 
of any one of our universities (though with somewhat too much hinting at two of 
them), Professor Veblen analyzes skillfully an important chapter of our 
intellectual and institutional history. He sets out to show us, in his usual 
ironical style, the evils that have flowed from that quaint system on which our 
universities are administered — a system to which there are few parallels 
elsewhere in the world, but to which we have become so accustomed that we hardly 
see how odd it is. Briefly, an American university consists of a body of 
relatively specialized experts (the faculty), ruled over by a body of relatively 
ignorant amateurs (trustees or regents), acting through an over-powerful 
president who either shares their point of view, their admiration for numbers 
and quantities and visible signs of material success, their crude zeal for 
competition with other universities, or else feels obliged to act for the most 
part as if he did. Such a system obviously imposes great difficulties and 
restraints upon the development of the higher learning in our universities. Mr. 
Veblen hardly exaggerates them. One has but to think of the board of trustees 
nearest to his own observation, and to ask himself how many of these business 
men, lawyers, " prominent citizens ", one would ever think of consulting 
respecting any matter of scholarship, apart from the interests of their 
particular institution. The probability is that, if we exclude from 
consideration the lower work of thesis-making, in the field of the higher 
learning our universities are, in proportion to their size, less productive than 
they were twenty years ago.

But some things may be said in abatement of Professor Veblen's strictures.
(1) The conditions are not so black as he has painted them — there may be 
reasons why they may seem darkest to an economist. Like some other American 
institutions — the spoils system, for instance — the rule of trustees has worked 
better than theoretically it ought to work. These "prominent citizens" feel that 
they ought to serve the interests of the higher learning, and mean to do so, 
though incompetent to do it well.
(2) Mr. Veblen assumes that the primary function of the university is to promote 
science and learning, and that all teaching, all care of undergraduates, all the 
work of the professional schools, are [715] secondary, are indeed improper 
excrescences upon its real work. But has a man a right, in non-mathematical 
discussions, to base reasoning on peculiar definitions of his own? Was ever any 
American university founded, or any university in the world long carried on, 
except primarily for teaching? And if founded mainly to meet the community's 
varied needs for teaching, it is reasonable that the community should be 
represented in the management, though hoffentlich by more suitable men than now, 
more widely representative of classes of the community, and contented to take a 
more modest status in relation to the professors than now, to co-operate and 
confer rather than to dictate or to " hire and fire" or to "back up the 
president".
(3) Mr. Veblen exaggerates, as it seems to the reviewer, the extent to which the 
superior investigator is stimulated and aided by having to teach graduate 
students — as graduate students run now — and so underrates the role which is to 
be played in the future development of learned investigation among us by 
institutions founded for that special purpose. They are visibly increasing and 
are doing well. They may yet do more than the universities, for the advancement 
of learning.

But Mr. Veblen's essay is profitable reading — especially for trustees.
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