On Fri, 2 Sep 2011 00:52:53 +0200 Joseph Catron <jncatron at gmail.com>
writes:
> On Fri, Sep 2, 2011 at 12:25 AM, shag carpet bomb
> <shag at cleandraws.com>wrote:
>
> IIRC, the intellectuals who comprised the Scottish Enlightenment
> were
> > entrepreneurs. They had to attract and retain students. Smith said
> that this
> > made the Scottish university better than the English unis where
> teachers
> > didn't have to attract students in order to make a living.
> >
In 'The Wealth of Nations', Smith argued:
------------------------------------------
V.1.135 In some universities the salary makes but a part, and frequently but a small part, of the emoluments of the teacher, of which the greater part arises from the honoraries or fees of his pupils. The necessity of application, though always more or less diminished, is not in this case entirely taken away. *112 Reputation in his profession is still of some importance to him, and he still has some dependency upon the affection, gratitude, and favourable report of those who have attended upon his instructions; and these favourable sentiments he is likely to gain in no way so well as by deserving them, that is, by the abilities and diligence with which he discharges every part of his duty.
V.1.136 In other universities the teacher is prohibited from receiving any honorary or fee from his pupils, and his salary constitutes the whole of the revenue which he derives from his office. His interest is, in this case, set as directly in opposition to his duty as it is possible to set it. It is the interest of every man to live as much at his ease as he can; and if his emoluments are to be precisely the same, whether he does or does not perform some very laborious duty, it is certainly his interest, at least as interest is vulgarly understood, either to neglect it altogether, or, if he is subject to some authority which will not suffer him to do this, to perform it in as careless and slovenly a manner as that authority will permit. If he is naturally active and a lover of labour, it is his interest to employ that activity in any way from which he can derive some advantage, rather than in the performance of his duty, from which he can derive none.
V.1.137 If the authority to which he is subject resides in the body corporate, the college, or university, of which he himself is a member, and which the greater part of the other members are, like himself, persons who either are or ought to be teachers, they are likely to make a common cause, to be all very indulgent to one another, and every man to consent that his neighbour may neglect his duty, provided he himself is allowed to neglect his own. In the university of Oxford, the greater part of the public professors have, for these many years, given up altogether even the pretence of teaching.
------------------------------------------
We know that from statements that Smith had made concerning his own university experiences, that he claimed that he got far more out of his undergraduate studies at Glasgow University than he did from his graduate studies at Oxford, and he was insistent that the Scottish universities provided their students far better instruction than their English counterparts, despite the relative affluence of the latter and the relative poverty of the former.
Smith's preference for the Scottish universities over the English ones can be contrasted with Cardinal Newman's defense of the 18th century English universities in his "The Idea of a University", where he wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------- I protest to you, Gentlemen, that if I had to choose between a so-called University, which dispensed with residence and tutorial superintendence, and gave its degrees to any person who passed an examination in a wide range of subjects, and a University which had no professors or examinations at all, but merely brought a number of young men together for three or four years, and then sent them away as the University of Oxford is said to have done some sixty years since, if I were asked which of these two methods was the better discipline of the intellect,—mind, I do not say which is morally the better, for it is plain that compulsory study must be a good and idleness an intolerable mischief,—but if I must determine which of the two courses was the more successful in training, moulding, enlarging the mind, which sent out men the more fitted for their secular duties, which produced better public men, men of the world, men whose names would descend to posterity, I have no hesitation in giving the preference to that University which did nothing, over that which exacted of its members an acquaintance with every science under the sun. And, paradox as this may seem, still if results be the test of systems, the influence of the public schools and colleges of England, in the course of the last century, at least will bear out one side of the contrast as I have drawn it. What would come, on the other hand, of the ideal systems of education which have fascinated the imagination of this age, could they ever take effect, and whether they would not produce a generation frivolous, narrow-minded, and resourceless, intellectually considered, {146} is a fair subject for debate; but so far is certain, that the Universities and scholastic establishments, to which I refer, and which did little more than bring together first boys and then youths in large numbers, these institutions, with miserable deformities on the side of morals, with a hollow profession of Christianity, and a heathen code of ethics,—I say, at least they can boast of a succession of heroes and statesmen, of literary men and philosophers, of men conspicuous for great natural virtues, for habits of business, for knowledge of life, for practical judgment, for cultivated tastes, for accomplishments, who have made England what it is,—able to subdue the earth, able to domineer over Catholics. --------------------------------------------------------
So, Smith seems to have thought that exposure of institutions of higher learning to the forces of the market would make them better at serving the needs of their students, while apparently Newman would not have been so confident about that.
Jim Farmelant http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant www.foxymath.com Learn or Review Basic Math
>
> Wojtek's comments only reflect things coming full circle, I believe.
> Someone
> more knowledgeable than I about academic history may tell us I'm
> wrong, but
> didn't the university system arise when independent,
> entrepreneurial
> scholars/instructors formed cooperatives in the Middle Ages? I
> always
> assumed that academia was part of the process Marx reported as an
> innovation
> in 1847:
>
> "The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto
> honoured
> and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician,
> the
> lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid
> wage
> labourers."
> --
> "Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure
> mægen
> lytlað."
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>
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