It is, presumably, not that the constituent members are quite devoid of that quality, but rather that no point in their elaboration of apparatus can feasibly be reached, beyond which a working majority can be brought conscientiously to agree that dependence may safely be placed on common sense rather than on further and more meticulous and rigorous specification.
It is at this point that the American system of fellowships falls into the scheme of university policy; and here again the effect of business principles and undergraduate machinery is to be seen at work. At its inception the purpose of these fellowships was to encourage the best talent among the students to pursue disinterested advanced study farther and with greater singleness of purpose and it is quite plain that at that stage of its growth the system was conceived to have no bearing on intercollegiate competition or the statistics of registration.
This was something over thirty years ago. A fellowship was an honourable distinction; at the same time it was designed to afford such a stipend as would enable the incumbent to devote his undivided energies to scholastic work of a kind that would yield no pecuniary return. Ostensibly, such is still the sole purpose of the fellowships; the traditional decencies require (voluble and reiterated) professions to that effect. But in point of practical effect, and progressively, concomitant with the incursion of business principles into university policy, the exigencies of competitive academic enterprise have turned the fellowships to account in their own employ. So that, in effect, today the rival universities use the fellowships to bid against one another for fellows to come into residence, to swell the statistics of graduate registration and increase the number of candidates for advanced degrees. And the eligible students have learned so to regard the matter, and are quite callously exploiting the system in that sense.
Not that the fellowships have altogether lost that character of a scholarly stipendiary with which they started out; but they have, under businesslike management, acquired a use not originally intended; and the new, competitive use of them is unequivocally their main use today. It would be hazardous to guess just how far the directorates of the rival universities consciously turn the fellowships to account in this enterprising way, or how far, on the other hand, they are able to let self-deception cover the policy of competitive bargaining in which they are engaged; but it would be difficult to believe that their right hand is altogether ignorant of what their left hand is doing. It would doubtless also be found that both the practice and the animus back of it differ appreciably from one school to another. But there is no element of hazard in the generalization that, by and large, such competitive use of the fellowships is today their chief use; and that such is the fact is quite openly avowed among the academic staff of some universities at least.
As a sequel and symptom of this use of the fellowship stipends in bargaining for an enlarged enrolment of advanced students, it has become a moot question in academic policy whether a larger number of fellowships with smaller stipends will give a more advantageous net statistical result than a smaller number of more adequate stipends. An administration that looks chiefly to the short-term returns -- as is commonly the practice in latterday business enterprise -- will sensibly incline to make the stipends small and numerous; while the converse will be true where regard is had primarily to the enrolment of carefully selected men who may reflect credit on the institution in the long run. Up-to-date business policy will apparently commend the former rather than the latter course; for business practice, in its later phases, is eminently guided by consideration of short-term gains. It is also true that the average stipend attached to the fellowships offered today is very appreciably lower than was the practice some two or three decades ago; at the same time that the cost of living -- which these stipends were originally designed to cover -- has increased by something like one hundred per cent. As final evidence of the decay of scholarly purpose in the matter of fellowships, and as a climax of stultification, it is to be added that stipends originally established as an encouragement to disinterested scholarship are latterly being used to induce enrolment in the professional schools attached to the universities.(13*)One further point of contact and contamination is necessary to be brought into this account of the undergraduate administration and its bearing on advanced work. The scholastic accessories spoken of above -- clubs, fraternities, devotional organizations, class organizations, spectacles and social functions, athletics, and "student activities" generally -- do not in any appreciable degree bear directly on the advanced work, in as much as they find no ready lodgement among the university students proper. But they count, indirectly and effectually, toward lowering the scholarly ideals and keeping down the number of advanced students, chiefly by diverting the interest and energies of the undergraduate men from scholarly pursuits and throwing them into various lines of business and sportsmanship.
