Corruption in American politics and lifeBrooks, Robert C. (Robert Clarkson)
History
Corruption in American politics and life
Brooks, Robert C. (Robert Clarkson)
Political corruption -- United States; United States -- Social conditions -- 1865-1918
Newspapers, moreover, are usually managed by private corporations
frankly seeking profit as one of their ends. Universities and
colleges, on the other hand, are much more free from the directly
economic motive. There are, however, certain large qualifications
to the advantages which institutions of learning thus enjoy. Every
university and college is constantly perceiving new means of increasing
its usefulness and persistently seeking to secure them. The demands
made in behalf of such purposes may seem excessive at times, but it
is clear that an educational institution which does not appreciate
the vital importance of the work it is doing, and consequently the
importance of expanding that work, is simply not worth its salt. In a
great many cases the readiest means of securing the necessary funds is
by appeal to rich men for large gifts and endowments. As the number
of munificent Mæcenases is always limited and the number of needy
institutions always very considerable, a competitive struggle ensues,
different in most of its incidents from the directly profit seeking
struggles of the business world, but essentially competitive none
the less. In the campaign of a university or college for expansion
a large body of students makes a good showing; hence too often low
entrance requirements weakly enforced and low standards of promotion.
At times even the springs of discipline are relaxed lest numbers should
be reduced by a salutary expulsion or two. Courses are divided and
subdivided beyond the real needs of an institution and salaries are
reduced in order to secure a sufficient number of teachers to give the
large number of courses advertised with great fulness in the catalogue.
A large part of crooked collegiate athletics is due to an indurated
belief in the advertising efficacy of gridiron victories as a means
of attracting first, students, and then endowments. So far as charges
of corruption against our higher educational institutions are at all
justified they are justified chiefly by the practices just described.
Fairness requires the statement, however, that a marked change of heart
is now taking place. Public criticism has placed athletic graft in
the pillory to such an extent that enlightened self-interest, if no
better motive, should bring about its speedy abolition by responsible
college managements. Many sincere efforts have been made by members of
faculties singly and through organisations covering certain fields of
study to raise and properly enforce entrance and promotion standards.
Finally in the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching
there has been developed an agency of unparalleled efficiency for
detecting and exposing low standards. A college may continue to publish
fake requirements, to crowd its class rooms with students who belong
to high schools, to pad its courses, to underpay and overwork its
instructing staff, but if it does these things it cannot, even if
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