By Kenton Machina⁽¹⁾
 

Did you ever think about why we have colleges and universities? About what it would be like if we didn't have such things? About where they came from? Where they are going? It seems to me that a college student ought to think at least a little bit about such things.

It is commonly said that universities arose in the Western world primarily during the 12th and 13th centuries, in Europe. In a sense, that may be true, but to say that is to leave out a great deal of relevant information. There were schools and even a major tax-supported research institute in the Eastern end of the Mediterranean centuries earlier.

Wealthy men in Ancient Athens, several hundred years before the Common Era (which begins with the estimated date of the birth of Jesus) paid teachers to educate their sons. One of those sons, named Plato, rebelled against the common teachings, on the basis of his contact with a man named Socrates, and eventually established a school for advanced education in Athens. One of the pupils of that school, named Aristotle, later founded his own school. These schools were tiny by today's standards, but they seem to me to count as private colleges. Many subjects, such as mathematics, physics, ethics, and government were studied in some depth at these schools, although at the time those who engaged in these activities thought of themselves simply as engaged in intellectual enterprise. Of course, these schools were attended only by males, since almost everybody around that part of the world thought they knew females could barely think. (The evidence for this hypothesis about females seemed to them to be overwhelming: none of the females in their culture were able to carry on deep, educated discussions. They seemed only interested in child rearing and homemaking. I leave it to you to figure out why this was so and why the men thought the way they did.)

Later, but still before the time our calendars set as the time of Jesus, a great research institute with a huge library was established in the city of Alexandria, on the north coast of what is now Egypt. Ptolemy, emperor of Egypt, and his successors, used tax money to support this enterprise, which lasted for hundreds of years before eventually being completely destroyed, in stages, by various Roman emperors for various reasons, starting with Julius Caesar. At this institute a number of important research results were obtained-for example, the size of the Earth was measured quite accurately by using trigonometry and some remarkable measuring of huge distances between water wells.⁽²⁾ Euclid, the man for whom Euclidean geometry is named, worked there. The two libraries contained approximately 700,000 volumes. The libraries were finally almost completely destroyed in 391 CE (that is, about 400 years after the birth of Jesus), by emperor Theodosius I, apparently because he wanted to wipe out "pagan" culture so as to unify his empire under Christianity. Here we have a prominent example of one of the many occasions on which Christianity has been used as a reason or excuse to attack intellectual achievement, and thus to attack universities.⁽³⁾

Interestingly, one of the reasons for once again establishing universities many centuries later, in Medieval Europe, was to promote the study of Christian theology, for the Christian church had gradually come to place importance on careful reasoning about the faith.⁽⁴⁾ (Christian theology is the attempt to organize and make precise or intellectually defensible the claims of the Christian religion.) The University of Paris, one of the great Medieval European universities, established in the 12th century, specialized in Christian theology. Of the Medieval universities established at about this same time, some specialized in law, some in medicine, and some in theology or the study of Ancient Greek thinkers such as Aristotle who by now were no longer seen simply as dangerous pagans but rather as people who had many worthwhile ideas to offer even though they weren't Christian. Notice that the primary reason for the establishment of these universities was to promote advanced study in the professions which the culture of that time saw as being worthwhile. Notice also that natural science was not among the specializations of interest, even though (contrary to what I always thought when I was in college) there actually were a few Medieval scientists.

After the Ancient Greek period came to an end, natural science did not become exciting and influential in the West until the 16th and 17th centuries. Given what goes on in American universities today, you might expect that the great universities of Europe would have led in the effort to develop the sciences. But you would be dead wrong. The universities provided only lukewarm support for the development of the new science, and often tended to work against it, for they had become bastions of social conservatism, with many Christian professors who saw at least some of the new scientific ideas as evil and threatening. As you might expect, universities that originally specialized in medicine seemed to provide the most fertile ground for the development of scientific interests. For example, Galileo (1564-1642) started out as a medical student, but quickly was drawn, largely on his own initiative it seems, to the investigation of physics.⁽⁵⁾ He became a faculty member at the University of Padua for many years, but he did much of his famous research on the solar system while in the private employ of the grand duke of Tuscany, and he was later tried and convicted by a church court for teaching the religiously dangerous theory that the Earth was not the center of the universe. Galileo's story is revealing. Much of the scientific research in that day was conducted on the fringes of universities by individuals in the employ of some rich patron, or individuals who were independently wealthy enough to pay their own way.⁽⁶⁾

Eventually, as the decades rolled by, and Europe began to become industrialized, and science continued to develop, it became socially acceptable for universities to include the sciences in their range of studies. Presumably this happened because those with the money and power to make social decisions saw the tremendous potential for commercial profit in being able to control nature, and this outweighed the fear that scientific development would undermine religious and moral authority and social stability. (Despite this "liberalization" of the universities, women still did not attend. After all, some things must remain sacred!)

American colleges and universities followed much the same path of development as the older European ones. Not too surprising, since it was Europeans who invaded North America, took it over, and repopulated it. However, Americans have always had a tendency toward anti-intellectualism, and suspicion of too much theorizing without any obvious practical benefit. ("Practical" to most Americans seems to mean "promoting good living", which in turn seems to mean "producing wealth, and/or religious morality".) So, you can now put this together to see what kind of colleges Americans would support. No, not business colleges, at least not right away. The notion that one could engage in a serious academic study of business and economics didn't develop for quite a number of years after Americans started their collection of colleges. All right, so what is left? What would be practical enough for 17th century Americans? Let's use Harvard College (later, Harvard University) as an example. It was founded in 1636 with a grant from the Massachusetts Bay Colony to train Puritan ministers. (Notice the lack of separation of church and state.⁽⁷⁾ It is examples like these which the framers of the US Constitution presumably had in mind when they included provisions in the Constitution prohibiting the nation from establishing a religion.) Interestingly, at Harvard there was no systematic course work in theology until 1721, because such study was not thought necessary for Congregationalist ministers. In other words, for 85 years Harvard was training ministers without having a single professor of theology, apparently because the Congregationalists at that time did not see the need for theological investigation of their religious convictions. But a hundred years later, by 1827, Harvard had become the center of theological education for New England. Times had changed, and theological study had become important to the education of ministers. However, I don't want to leave you with the impression that Harvard only trained ministers all those years. Gradually, it became home to the study of more and more subjects, including some that would have been perceived off campus as impractical, and received less and less state support. Perhaps its ability to introduce more and more "impractical" studies was related to the fact that it became reliant only on private sources of funds. I don't know.

Let's use another example, closer to home. Illinois State University was not always a university in which one could pursue a number of different fields of study. The school was founded as a state-owned, single-purpose college in 1857, and soon thereafter was plopped out in the middle of the prairie so that the young students, especially women, who attended it would not be corrupted by the evil influences of the big city of Bloomington. (I don't know what the 1865 population of Bloomington was.) Notice that I said women attended! In fact, the majority of the students were women for quite a few years.⁽⁸⁾ What happened to the all-male bias of the old European universities we had been thinking about above? The answer lies in the sole purpose of the college, to train school teachers for the state of Illinois.

The town of Normal, which eventually grew up around the college, got its name from the school, which was called a "normal" school. It was called a "normal" school because that is what teacher training colleges were always called in the 1800's. Apparently, teacher training schools in America were called "normal" schools because they were aspiring to follow in the tradition of the French teacher training schools, known as "normal" schools.⁽⁹⁾ Why the French referred to a teacher training school as "normale", I don't know. If you look around the campus very carefully, you may be able to spot some old pieces of equipment, like music stands, that still have stenciled on them the initials, "ISNU", which stands for "Illinois State Normal University", the name this institution had when it stopped being known simply as a normal college, but before it became Illinois State University.

(Educated American women in the last decades of the 19th century basically could occupy either of two socially acceptable professions - school teaching or nursing. Actually, the nursing college idea came a bit later than school teaching: the first American nurses colleges were established in 1873.⁽¹⁰⁾)

Over time, American colleges and universities have gradually added more fields of study to their curricula. Obviously, Harvard University no longer trains Puritan ministers, and ISU no longer is restricted to training school teachers. It is interesting to think about what forces might have brought this change about. Have Americans become less obsessed with the realm of the "practical"? Certainly not, in my opinion. I submit that broad public support for multipurpose institutions of higher education in this country comes about solely because the public perceives such institutions as serving a practical purpose. For religiously-oriented private colleges and universities, the practical is still defined for their supporting public as the promotion of wealth, moral living, and the promotion of the faith. The state-operated schools have less of a focus on the moral living part of that, although I think the public still expects at least some kind of moral benefit to come from a college education. Such schools of course are forbidden by the Constitution from promoting a religious faith. So, for state-operated schools, what's left as the primary focus? The obvious answer: wealth promotion.

Wealth is thought to be promoted by higher education in various ways. Here are a few that came to my mind: a) People with college degrees on average earn a lot more money than people who don't have degrees. b) The research done at colleges and universities is thought to be basic to the maintenance of a highly industrialized, highly technical economy. c) Today's business and industry cannot operate without a highly educated work force. d) Some of the research at universities provides necessary information to maintain and improve the military might of the US, which in turn is thought to be necessary to protect our wealth from others, for example, by insuring that no one cuts off our oil supplies from the Mideast.

Such are the arguments presented to the state Legislature and the federal Congress when funding for Illinois State (and other public institutions) is up for debate. Such are the arguments which persuade the federal government to support higher education with scholarship programs, loan programs, and research grant monies. Such are the arguments which move many private foundations, built on the fortunes of business entrepreneurs and those who inherited big bucks from them, to support public higher education.

It is likely that you have been highly influenced in your own thinking about higher education by hearing such arguments. For the parents of most younger college students, those are the only arguments that carry any weight. Perhaps they are the only reasons that carry any weight with you yourself right now.

There is, however, another point of view, a point of view which I hold, and which many faculty share. I think the reasons for having institutions of higher education mentioned above are not the most important ones. In fact, I think some of them are not very important at all. Instead of talking about wealth protection and wealth production as the main rationale for higher education, I would emphasize the ability of higher education to enhance the quality of life for all of us. Learning to appreciate a new art form, or to understand literature more deeply, or to think about philosophical issues more clearly may not do much to enhance your wealth, but it can do a great deal to enhance the quality of your life. Some students and faculty have found that they get turned on by exploring the ways rocks form, or how plants mutate. This might not have anything to do with the creation or maintenance of wealth, as far they are concerned. It has to do with the promotion of their own human happiness.

Moreover, we can't have a decent democratic community without an educated public to monitor what goes on. Although this includes wealth protection and wealth production, it includes far more, such as the protection of basic human dignity, and the promotion of a healthy atmosphere in which people can flourish.

So, from my point of view there is a tension about the university. Much of the public support for the university today comes from the practical wealth-related arguments mentioned earlier. As we have seen from the whole history of universities, much of the public support for universities has always come from what people at the time thought to be "practical". But, I am claiming that much of the actual personal value of the university comes from other things. Some faculty are moved only by the practical arguments. Some others, like me, find that point of view shallow. You will have to find your own way, and decide for yourself.

But give me one last shot at convincing you that the personal growth you can get from college is more important to you than the wealth promotion aspects. If you buy into the view that says the point of education is basically only wealth creation and wealth protection, then let me ask, What is the point of that? Don't people pursue wealth because they think it will improve the quality of their lives? If so, then it turns out you agree with me that what you really want is quality in your life! All this talk about wealth is ultimately motivated by the idea that wealth makes our lives better - makes us happier. Hence, the only question remaining is how to achieve that happiness, and how the university can assist in achieving that. Maybe you will be surprised by the answer, because maybe it has much less to do with wealth than it does with what goes on inside of you. Maybe you need to focus less on wealth (getting a good job, having a giant TV, living in a nice house in a nice neighborhood) and more on personal growth. Maybe if you do that you will get the most out of college, despite what society or your parents might think college is for.

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1. Kenton Machina is Professor of Philosophy at Illinois State University.

2. Find out more about all this and the library at Alexandria in Carl Sagan's fascinating book, Cosmos, New York, 1980.

3. Whether Theodosius' motives were sincerely religious, or were instead political, merely using Christianity as a political device to unify the Empire, requires more historical analysis than can be presented here.

4. See Charles Haskins, The Rise of Universities, Ithaca, New York, 1957.

5. A. Robert Caponigri, "Galileo Galilei", The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, New York and London, 1967, vol. 3.

6. Again, it is interesting to ask about the motives of these people. Why would someone support this kind of research?

7. See William Miller's A New History of the United States, New York, 1958, p. 50, for a discussion of the significance of Massachusetts Colony's efforts to establish public education. Technically, Massachusetts Bay Colony was a corporation, not a state, and so technically Harvard was a private school; but the colonial leaders apparently saw themselves as establishing a commonwealth. For more details about the early years of Harvard, see Samuel Eliot Morison, The Founding of Harvard College, Cambridge, MA, 1935.

8. I verified this by asking the present administration to check the first years' enrollment records. Although the first few years' worth of records are lost, starting with the mid-1860's the records are still available.

9. Look up "normal" in the New Oxford English Dictionary to see the history of the word "normal" in this sense. In French, a normal school is école normale.

10. The New Columbia Encyclopedia, W. Harris and J. Levey, eds., New York and London, 1975, p. 1980.