514 Chapter 19 Intellectual and Cultural Trends in the Late Nineteenth Century
such as history and economics often enticed students
into making smug (and preposterous) claims to
objectivity and definitiveness.
The gifts of rich industrialists sometimes came with
strings, and college boards of trustees tended to be
dominated by businessmen who sometimes attempted
to impose their own social and economic beliefs on fac-
ulty members. Although few professors lost their posi-
tions because their views offended trustees, at many
institutions trustees exerted constant nagging pressures
that limited academic freedom and scholarly objectivity.
At state colleges, politicians often interfered in acade-
mic affairs, even treating professorships as part of the
patronage system.
Thorstein Veblen pointed out in his caustic study
ofThe Higher Learning in America(1918) that “the
intrusion of businesslike ideals, aims and methods”
harmed the universities in countless, subtle ways. Size
alone—the verbose Veblen called it “an executive
weakness for spectacular magnitude”—became an end
in itself, and the practical values of education were
exalted over the humanistic. When universities grew
bigger, administration became more complicated and
the prestige of administrators rose inordinately. At
many institutions professors came to be regarded as
mere employees of the governing boards. In 1893 the
members of the faculty of Stanford University were
officially classified as personal servants of Mrs. Leland
Stanford, widow of the founder. This was done in
good cause—the Stanford estate was tied up in pro-
bate court and the ruling made it possible to pay pro-
fessors out of Mrs. Stanford’s allowance for household
expenses—but that such a procedure was even con-
ceivable must have appalled the scholarly world.
As the number of college graduates increased,
and as colleges ceased being primarily training institu-
tions for clergymen, the influence of alumni on edu-
cational policies began to make itself felt, not always
happily. Campus social activities became more impor-
tant. Fraternities proliferated. Interest in organized
sports first appeared as a laudable outgrowth of the
general expansion of the curriculum, but soon ath-
letic contests were playing a role all out of proportion
to their significance. After football evolved as the
leading intercollegiate sport (over 50,000 attended
the Yale-Princeton game in 1893), it became a source
of revenue that many colleges dared not neglect.
Since students, alumni, and the public demanded
winning teams, college administrators stooped to
subsidizing student athletes, in extreme cases employ-
ing players who were not students at all. One exasper-
ated college president quipped that the BA degree
was coming to mean Bachelor of Athletics.
Thus higher education reflected American values,
with all their strengths and weaknesses. A complex
society required a more professional and specialized
education for its youth; the coarseness and the rampant
materialism and competitiveness of the era inevitably
found expression in the colleges and universities.
The Morrill Actat
http://www.myhistorylab.com
College Football (1903)at
http://www.myhistorylab.comRevolution in the Social Sciences
In the social sciences a close connection existed
between the practical issues of the age and the
achievements of the leading thinkers. The application
of the theory of evolution to every aspect of human
relations, the impact of industrialization on society—
such topics were of intense concern to American
economists, sociologists, and historians. An under-
standing of Darwin increased the already strong inter-
est in studying the development of institutions and
their interactions with one another. Controversies
over trusts, slum conditions, and other problems drew
scholars out of their towers and into practical affairs.
Social scientists were impressed by the progress
being made in the physical and biological sciences.
They eagerly applied the scientific method to their own
specialties, hoping thereby to arrive at objective truths
in fields that by nature were essentially subjective.
Among the economists something approaching a
revolution took place in the 1880s. The classical school,
which maintained that immutable natural laws gov-
erned all human behavior and which used the insights
of Darwin only to justify unrestrained competition and
laissez-faire, was challenged by a group of young econ-
omists who argued that as times changed, economic
theories and laws must be modified in order to remain
relevant. Richard T. Ely, another of the scholars who
made Johns Hopkins a font of new ideas in the 1880s,
summarized the thinking of this group in 1885. “The
state [is] an educational and ethical agency whose posi-
tive aid is an indispensable condition of human
progress,” Ely proclaimed. Laissez-faire was outmoded
and dangerous. Economic problems were basically
moral problems; their solution required “the united
efforts of Church, state and science.” The proper way
to study these problems was by analyzing actual condi-
tions, not by applying abstract laws or principles.
This approach produced the so-called institution-
alist school of economics, whose members made
detailed, on-the-spot investigations of labor unions,
sweatshops, factories, and mines. The study of institu-
tions would lead both to theoretical insights and to
practical social reform, they believed. John R.
Commons, one of Ely’s students at Johns Hopkins
and later professor of economics at the University of
Wisconsin, was the outstanding member of this
school. His ten-volume Documentary History ofWatchtheVideoReadtheDocument