The professional knowledge and skill of physicians, surgeons, dentists, pharmacists, agriculturists, engineers of all kinds, perhaps even of journalists, is of some use to the community at large, at the same time that it may be profitable to the bearers of it. The community has a substantial interest in the adequate training of these men, although it is not that intellectual interest that attaches to science and scholarship. But such is not the case with the training designed to give proficiency in business. No gain comes to the community at large from increasing the business proficiency of any number of its young men. There are already much too many of these businessmen, much too astute and proficient in their calling, for the common good. A higher average business efficiency simply raises activity and avidity in business to a higher average pitch of skill and fervour, with very little other material result than a redistribution of ownership; since business is occupied with the competitive wealth, not with its production. It is only by a euphemistic metaphor that we are accustomed to speak of the businessmen as producers of goods. Gains due to such efficiency are differential gains only. They are a differential as against other businessmen on the one hand, and as against the rest of the community on the other hand. The work of the College of Commerce, accordingly, is a peculiarly futile line of endeavour for any public institution, in that it serves neither the intellectual advancement nor the material welfare of the community.
The greater the number and the higher the proficiency of the community's businessmen, other things equal, the worse must the rest of the community come off in that game of skilled bargaining and shrewd management by which the businessmen get their gains.
Gratuitous or partly gratuitous training for business will presumably increase the number of highly proficient businessmen.
As the old-fashioned economists would express it, it will increase the number of "middlemen," of men who "live by their wits." At the same time it should presumably increase the average efficiency of this increased number. The outcome should be that the resulting body of businessmen will be able, between them, to secure a larger proportion of the aggregate wealth of the community; leaving the rest of the community poorer by that much,except for that (extremely doubtful) amount by which shrewd business management is likely to increase the material wealth-producing capacity of the community. Any such presumed increase of wealth-producing capacity is an incidental concomitant of business traffic, and in the nature of the case it can not equal the aggregate increased gain that goes to the businessmen. At the best the question as to the effect which such an aggregate increased business efficiency will have on the community's material welfare is a question of how large the net loss will be; that it will entail a net loss on the community at large is in fact not an open question.
A college of commerce is designed to serve an emulative purpose only -- individual gain regardless of, or at the cost of, the community at large -- and it is, therefore, peculiarly incompatible with the collective cultural purpose of the university. It belongs in the corporation of learning no more than a department of athletics.(10*) Both alike give training that is of no use to the community,except, perhaps, as a sentimental excitement. Neither business proficiency nor proficiency in athletic contests need be decried, of course. They have their value, to the businessmen and to the athletes, respectively, chiefly as a means of livelihood at the cost of the rest of the community, and it is to be presumed that they are worth while to those who go in for that sort of thing. Both alike are related to the legitimate ends of the university as a drain on its resources and an impairment of its scholarly animus. As related to the ostensible purposes of a university, therefore, the support and conduct of such schools at the expense of the universities is to be construed as a breach of trust.
What has just been said of the schools of commerce is, of course, true also of the other training schools comprised in this latterday university policy, in the degree in which these others aim at the like emulative and unscholarly results. It holds true of the law schools, e. g., typically and more largely than of the generality of professional and technical schools. Both in point of the purely competitive value of their training and of the unscientific character of their work, the law schools are in very much the same case as the schools of commerce; and, no doubt, the accepted inclusion of law schools in the university corporation has made the intrusion of the schools of commerce much easier than it otherwise would have been. The law school's inclusion in the university corporation has the countenance of ancient tradition, it comes down as an authentic usage from the mediaeval era of European education, and from the pre-history of the American universities. But in point of substantial merit the law school belongs in the modern university no more than a school of fencing or dancing. This is particularly true of the American law schools, in which the Austinian conception of law is followed, and it is more particularly true the more consistently the "case method" is adhered to. These schools devote themselves with great singleness to the training of practitioners, as distinct from jurists; and their teachers stand in a relation to their students analogous to that in which the "coaches" stand to the athletes.
What is had in view is the exigencies, expedients and strategy of successful practice; and not so much a grasp of even those quasi-scientific articles of metaphysics that lie at the root of the legal system. What is required and inculcated in the way of a knowledge of these elements of law is a familiarity with their strategic use.
