The Merchant Scholars

The American university has become so involved in industrial and Government research that it has lost sight of its basic goal: teaching students. This is the conclusion reached by two provocative new books on higher learning by authors with widely divergent views and backgrounds. In The American University Columbia University's former provost, Jacques Barzun, charges that "a big corporation has replaced the once self-centered company of scholars and has thereby put itself at the mercy of many publics." New Republic Contributing Editor James Ridgeway, in The Closed Corporation, puts the case more brusquely: "Most Americans believe that universities are places where professors teach students. They are wrong. In fact, the university looks more like a center for industrial activity than a community of scholars."

Cultural Historian Barzun is a traditionalist who feels that "the university is an institution transcending time and geography." He is distressed because too many academic institutions have become too involved with contemporary problems, too influenced by a misguided zeal for community service. The trouble, Barzun says, can be traced to a "great shift to research after 1945." One inevitable result has been the student riots, the worst of which occurred at Columbia soon after Barzun completed his manuscripts. He is noticeably cool to student rioters, although he sympathizes with some of their protests. So many professors are busy with activities outside the classroom, he says, that they have become guilty of slipshod teaching, poor preparation, dull lectures, careless assignments, late markings and a cavalier attitude that eventually justifies the anger of revolutionary undergraduates at a depersonalized system.

No Talent. Academic interest in research and problem-solving, says Barzun, has led the universities to undertake Government or foundation projects that other agencies may be better equipped to handle. "A dozen of the leading universities," he says, "are now managing large programs of urban renewal and race relations, engaging in the improvement of- housing and rehabilitation of moral derelicts, uplifting economically depressed areas, or supplying art to the community--all this without evidence that they are equipped with the talent, organization or experience to succeed." Barzun agrees with the late Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset that the university "has abandoned almost entirely the teaching or transmission of culture."

Making Money. Ridgeway is even harsher in his judgment of the company of scholars. He agrees that there has been too large a shift into research. But what bothers him even more is the ethics of certain connections between the university and private industry or Government. Far too many professors, he says, are on corporate payrolls, turning out studies concerned with lobbying or product promotion rather than the advancement of knowledge.

Ridgeway is particularly critical of Barzun's Columbia, because it not only is one of New York's largest real estate owners but also maintains a private Wall Street office to oversee investment of its endowment money. He takes a painstakingly detailed look at Columbia's involvement with the unsuccessful Strickman cigarette filter. As things have turned out, the filter has yet to make any money for Columbia. But the university's initial endorsement pushed cigarette stock prices so high that the University of Texas was able to sell 59,000 shares of R. J. Reynolds and 24,000 shares of American Tobacco at a handsome profit.

Deans as Directors. Other schools have been equally commercial in their relations with private enterprise. At M.I.T., as nearly as Ridgeway can calculate, 166 companies have been started by professors who left to market techniques or products developed at the university--often with federal backing. Far from trying to keep such entrepreneurs teaching, many deans enthusiastically join boards of directors of professor-created firms.

Both critics insist that college presidents should do more to break the ties that bind their schools to Government and business. But they do not suggest how to replace the vital advantages of Government-financed research that they disapprove of--the money for equipment and professors' salaries that might not be otherwise available. Instead, Ridgeway offers ethical safeguards. If colleges continue to operate as quasi-corporations, he says, they should be subject to public scrutiny, just as publicly owned businesses are. They must "cease being the firehouse on the corner answering all the alarms, many of them false. To recover freedom of choice takes two virtues, courage and self-knowledge. Acquiring the second means repeating on campus and abroad: not all good things are good for us."

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