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Veritas et Pecunias: The Historical Economy of Education

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Peter Dobkin Hall
Peter Dobkin Hall*
Affiliation:
Wesleyan University Institution for Social and Policy Studies, Yale University
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Abstract

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Type
Essay Review I
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 14 , Issue 4 , Winter 1974 , pp. 501 - 511
Copyright
Copyright © 1974 by New York University 

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References

Notes

1. Rudolph, Frederick in The American College and University (New York, 1962), p. 178, states in this regard: Google Scholar The American college … was an expression of Christian charity, both in the assistance that it gave to needy young men and in the assistance that it received from affluent old men. While the colonial economy could not support philanthropy of the dimension that founded the colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, individual benevolence was nonetheless in the English tradition, and the colonial colleges therefore naturally looked to it for sustenance.Google Scholar Richard Hofstadter, and Metzger, Walter P., on the other hand, assert in Academic Freedom in the Age of the College (New York, 1955), that Google Scholar The earliest colleges had been founded at a time when private resources were much too feeble to maintain them, and support by the state was a necessity. … In the last thirty years before the outbreak of the Revolution both state aid and state interference diminished as the burden of support shifted from government to private individuals…. Google Scholar

2. An excellent description of the present crisis in the economics profession is Greene, Wade, “Economists in Recession,” The New York Times Magazine, 12 May 1974.Google Scholar

3. McClelland, David, The Achieving Society (New York, 1961), p. 8.Google Scholar

4. Ibid., 11.Google Scholar

5. One of the few economic historians to recognize the complexity of this question is Thomas Cochran. I strongly recommend his essay “The Entrepreneur in American Capital Formation” National Bureau of Economic Research, Capital Formation and Economic Growth (New York, 1955).Google Scholar

6. The actual quotation is: “… in more than one outburst of eloquent humility, a scheduled speaker observed that he and his colleagues had been busy ‘optimizing the arrangement of deck chairs on the Titanic.’” Greene, Wade, “Economists in Recession,” 19.Google Scholar

7. For an interesting account of this, see Dresch, Stephen P., “Demography, Technology, and Higher Education: A Model of Educational Adaptation” (New Haven, 1974)—this is a working paper of the Institution for Social and Policy Studies.Google Scholar

8. The ascendance of merchants onto the governing boards of endowed colleges occurred at different times. It happened very early at Harvard, with the appointment of James Bowdoin as a Fellow in 1780. By 1820, the board was entirely mercantile. While no layman sat on the Yale Corporation until after the Civil War, the influence of the mercantile community was pronounced. Merchant James Hillhouse was Treasurer of Yale until 1832. While his successor Wyllys Warner was a clergyman, he was heavily dependent on mercantile advise and consent to college policies—as he toured the cities of the eastern United States raising funds for Yale. Treasurer's Correspondence in the Yale University Archives.Google Scholar

9. A typical expression of this view of American cultural and educational institutions is to be found in Robert F. Lucid's introduction to The Journal of Richard Henry Dana (Cambridge, 1968), xviii, in which he states that Bostonians, having lost national political power with the demise of Federalism, redirected their energies towards “areas of cultural significance.” Frederick Cople Jaher in his various writings expresses a similar view of the commitment to culture by the upper classes. He sees it as a turning away from active entrepreneurship, a conservative response by a group which was no longer willing to participate actively in the mainstream of American economic and political life. For a superb refutation of this view, vide Kolko, G., “Brahmins and Businessmen” in Moore, Barrington and Wolfe, Kurt, The Critical Spirit: Essays in Honor of Herbert Marcuse (Boston, 1967), pp. 343–63.Google Scholar

10. Dresch, Stephen P., “The Endowed Institution: Positive Theory and Normative Implications” (New Haven, 1973). This is an unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar

11. Curti, Merle and Nash, Roderick in Philanthropy in the Shaping of American Higher Education (New Brunswick, 1965) hold to the view of endowments as conservative influences. This book contains a very complete bibliography of the literature in the history of American educational institutions, although its emphasis is on the philanthropic impulse as an intellectual rather than a social or economic phenomenon.Google Scholar

12. Harris, Seymour E., who has actually studied endowments in the concrete, argues for endowments as liberalizing:Google Scholar Above all, endowment income provides opportunities to meet new contingencies and to exploit new opportunities. The function of the endowment is well performed when there is maximum freedom of use. Without these free funds, President Lowell insisted, many opportunities to find brilliant men are lost.Google Scholar The Economics of Harvard (New York, 1970), p. 336.Google Scholar

13. Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Elsie Venner, A Romance of Destiny (New York, 1961), p. 16.Google Scholar

14. For the legal definition and operation of trusts, both testamentary and charitable, Scott, Austin Wakeman, The Law of Trusts (Boston, 1939). See also, Newhall, Guy, Future Interests and the Rule Against Perpetuities in Massachusetts (Boston, 1942). The Rule Against Perpetuities was formulated in order to prevent the ultimate tying up of all property in unalienable form. It defines a perpetuity as: Google Scholar … an estate unalienable, though all mankind join in the conveyance … a thing odious in the law, and destructive to the commonwealth; it would stop commerce and prevent the circulation of property.Google Scholar Perry, Jarious Ware, A Treatise on the Law of Trusts and Trustees (Boston, 1872). The Rule was adopted by the British courts in 1682—but was not enunciated in America until 1833, in Nightingale vs. Burrell, 15 Pickerings Reports 104 (1833).Google Scholar

15. For the values transmission functions of trusts, see Holbrook, Donald, The Boston Trustee (Boston, 1939). For a more theoretical approach, see Sussman, Marvin et al., The Family and Inheritance (New York, 1970).Google Scholar

16. The association of contributions to endowment with the transformation to industrial capitalism is forcefully shown in Sears, Jesse B. Philanthropy in the History of American Higher Education (Washington, 1922). Sears does a comparative study of gifts to Harvard, Yale, Columbia and Princeton which makes clear that gift-giving as a broad phenomenon is closely associated with broader economic developments. In this regard, see also, Eliot, Samuel A., “Public and Private Charities in Boston,” North American Review, July, 1845; and Eliot, Samuel A., “Charity in Boston,” Ibid., July, 1860.Google Scholar

17. For the relation between families and enterprise, vide Farber, Bernard, Guardians of Virtue: Salem Families in 1800 (New York, 1972). See also Porter, Kenneth Wiggins, The Jacksons and the Lees (Cambridge, 1937).Google Scholar

18. Laslett, Peter, The World We Have Lost (New York, 1965).Google Scholar

19. For the function of endowments as credit institutions in England, see Jordan, Wilbur K., Philanthropy in England, 1480–1660 (London, 1959). Foster, Both M. S. and Harris, S. E. discuss personal loans and mortgages as college investments in their books—although they do not highlight the fact that Harvard was the only institutional source of credit of this type in colonial Massachusetts.Google Scholar

20. White's, Gerald T. History of the Massachusetts Hospital Life Insurance Company (Cambridge, 1955) discusses the importance of endowment and family trusts in making up the capital of the Hospital Life Insurance Company—the most important financial institution in New England before 1870.Google Scholar

21. These books were reviewed in few places. A reflection of the indifference of the scholarly community to them is the small use to which university libraries' copies have been put. Yale's copy of Harris has been borrowed half-a-dozen times since its acquisition. Princeton's copy has only been borrowed once since its acquisition. It is ironic that the book first came to my attention, not through a fellow scholar's recommendation, but from Robert Killingsworth, the Financial Analyst of Yale University. The Foster book has been used more extensively— but is presently being remaindered by the Harvard University Press, presumably in response to small demand by purchasers.Google Scholar