The Higher Learning in America A Memorandum on the Conduct of Universities by Business Men

Perhaps the pivotal book in the reform of higher education in the United States, Robert M. Hutchins' classic is once again available, with a brilliant personal and professional appreciation by Harry S. Ashmore. When it was published in 1936 The Higher Learning in America brought into focus the root causes of the controversies that still beset the nation's educational system. Taking office in 1929 as president of the University of Chicago, Hutchins began his tenure by declaring the learning available in even the most prestigious universities grossly deficient. He cited himself as case in point. At Yale he had graduated at the top of his college class and set a record in the law school that led to appointment as professor and, at 26, promotion to dean. But he had acquired only "some knowledge of the Bible, of Shakespeare, and Faust, of one dialogue of Plato, and of the opinions of many semi-literate and a few literate judges, and that was about all." The curricular reforms and administrative reorganization he undertook at Chicago are set forth in this volume, along with the philosophical arguments he worked out to explicate and defend his views. His goal was to reestablish the liberal arts and humanities as the basis for undergraduate education, consigning specialization and research to graduate and professional schools. Hutchins envisioned the university as a community of scholars who, in addition to teaching and research, provided independent thought and criticism of a society being rapidly transformed by science and technology. Challenging the educational establishment at every pertinent level, he became the most celebrated--and most controversial--intellectual of his era. After twenty-two years at Chicago, Hutchins became associate director of the newly enriched Ford Foundation, where he was primarily responsible for the bold reforms sponsored by its Fund for the Advancement of Education and Fund for Adult Education. In 1960 he established the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions at Santa Barbara to maintain an ongoing dialogue between scholars and practitioners that would "identify and clarify the basic issues of our time, and widen the circles of discussion about them."

One test of a classic work of social criticism is to see if the critique's central logic and arguments remain generally applicable beyond the critic's own time. One work that has lost little of its polemical power or social relevance is Thorstein Veblen's The Higher Learning in America. First published hi 1918, this volume sharply attacked the ascendency of business values and concerns in America's universities. In Veblen's critical analysis, the institutions of higher learning have taken on the aspects of corporations and trusts, relegating the pursuit of knowledge to secondary status. Today when the mission of higher education is uncertain and universities compete for endowments and students, this volume is as timely as ever.Veblen was not only America's most famous economist and social critic but a distinguished academic as well, having taught at major universities and the New School for Social Research. His critique is built around an essential distinction between higher learning and career or vocational training. Emphasizing the primacy of learning over training, he repudiates the practice of appointing unqualified businessmen as governing trustees and condemns college administration conceived along corporate guidelines. The entrepreneurial spirit, in this instance, understands learning as marketable knowledge and measures academic prestige hi terms of needlessly elaborate building projects and material equipment.Veblen's alternative vision severs the pursuit of knowledge and free inquiry from the institutional restrictions of economic interest. Undergraduate colleges and professional schools are to be detached from the university, while self-governance among professors and students replaces boards of trustees and presidents.Veblen's view of learning was tied to a larger conception of civilization hi which an "idly curious" elite built and elaborated upon bodies of knowledge that sustained the practical institutions of society. Ivar Berg's brilliant and stimulating introduction to this new editon offers a critical reading of Veblen's work in its own context and applies its arguments to controversies currently surrounding the American university. The Higher Learning in America continues to be of interest to educators, intellectual historians, economists, and sociologists.