Throughout the above summary review, as also through the foregoing inquiry, the argument continually returns to or turns about two main interests, -- notoriety and the academic executive. These two might be called the two foci about which swings the orbit of the university world. These conjugate foci lie on a reasonably short axis; indeed, they tend to coincide; so that the orbit comes near the perfection of a circle; having virtually but a single centre, which may perhaps indifferently be spoken of as the university's president or as its renown, according as one may incline to conceive these matters in terms of tangible fact or of intangible.
The system of standardization and accountancy has this renown or prestige as its chief ulterior purpose, -- the prestige of the university or of its president, which largely comes to the same net result. Particularly will this be true in so far as this organization is designed to serve competitive ends; which are, in academic affairs, chiefly the ends of notoriety, prestige, advertising in all its branches and bearings. It is through increased creditable notoriety that the universities seek their competitive ends, and it is on such increase of notoriety, accordingly, that the competitive endeavours of a businesslike management are chiefly spent. It is in and through such accession of renown, therefore, that the chief and most tangible gains due to the injection of competitive business principles in the academic policy should appear.
Of course, this renown, as such, has no substantial value to the corporation of learning; nor, indeed, to any one but the university executive by whose management it is achieved. Taken simply in its first incidence, as prestige or notoriety, it conduces in no degree to the pursuit of knowledge; but in its ulterior consequences, it appears currently to be believed, at least ostensibly, that such notoriety must greatly enhance the powers of the corporation of learning. These ulterior consequences are (believed to be), a growth in the material resources and the volume of traffic.
Such good effects as may follow from a sedulous attention to creditable publicity, therefore, are the chief gains to be set off against the mischief incident to "scientific management" in academic affairs. Hence any line of inquiry into the business management of the universities continually leads back to the cares of publicity, with what might to an outsider seem undue insistence. The reason is that the businesslike management and arrangements in question are habitually -- and primarily required either to serve the ends of this competitive campaign of publicity or to conform to its schedule of expediency. The felt need of notoriety and prestige has a main share in shaping the work and bearing of the university at every point. Whatever will not serve this end of prestige has no secure footing in current university policy. The margin of tolerance on this head is quite narrow; and it is apparently growing incontinently narrower.
So far as any university administration can, with the requisite dignity, permit itself to avow a pursuit of notoriety, the gain that is avowedly sought by its means is an increase of funds, -- more or less ingenuously spoken of as an increase of equipment. An increased enrolment of students will be no less eagerly sought after, but the received canons of academic decency require this object to be kept even more discreetly masked than the quest of funds.
The duties of publicity are large and arduous, and the expenditures incurred in this behalf are similarly considerable.
So that it is not unusual to find a Publicity Bureau -- often apologetically masquerading under a less tell-tale name --incorporated in the university organization to further this enterprise in reputable notoriety. Not only must a creditable publicity be provided for, as one of the running cares of the administration, but every feature of academic life, and of the life of all members of the academic staff, must unremittingly (though of course unavowedly) be held under surveillance at every turn, with a view to furthering whatever may yield a reputable notoriety, and to correcting or eliminating whatever may be conceived to have a doubtful or untoward bearing in this respect.
This surveillance of appearances, and of the means of propagating appearances, is perhaps the most exacting detail of duty incumbent on an enterprising executive. Without such a painstaking cultivation of a reputable notoriety, it is believed, a due share of funds could not be procured by any university for the prosecution of its work as a seminary of the higher learning.
Its more alert and unabashed rivals, it is presumed, would in that case be able to divert the flow of loose funds to their own use, and would so outstrip their dilatory competitor in the race for size and popular acclaim, and therefore, it is sought to be believed, in scientific and scholarly application.
In the absence of all reflection -- not an uncommon frame of mind in this connection -- one might be tempted to think that all this academic enterprise of notoriety and conciliation should add something appreciable to the aggregate of funds placed at the disposal of the universities; and that each of these competitive advertising concerns should so gain something appreciable, without thereby cutting into the supply of funds available for the rest. But such is probably not the outcome, to any appreciable extent; assuredly not apart from the case of the state universities that are dependent on the favour of local politicians, and perhaps apart from gifts for conspicuous buildings.
