The Higher Learning in America

by Thorstein Veblen

At the time of its initial publication in 1904, The Higher Learning in America was known in educated circles as the most reflective study ever made of the university system in America. Veblen's evaluation of the misleading notions and erroneous beliefs were inherent in "the higher learning" was received as fair by most academics. As a result, many believed he paved the way to an improved age in college education. Just as applicable today as they were decades ago, his sophisticated style remains deprecatingly amusing; his biting critique just as disquieting as it was at the turn of the 19th century. The Higher Learning in America remains a penetrating book by one of America's greatest social critics. American economist and sociologist THORSTEIN BUNDE VEBLEN (1857-1929) was educated at Carleton College, Johns Hopkins University and Yale University. He coined the phrase "conspicuous consumption." Among his most famous works are The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), The Theory of Business Enterprise (1904), and Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution (1915).

Genres: Education, Nonfiction, Sociology, Economics, Philosophy

228 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Thorstein (born 'Torsten') Bunde Veblen was a Norwegian-American economist and sociologist. He was famous as a witty critic of capitalism.

Veblen is famous for the idea of "conspicuous consumption". Conspicuous consumption, along with "conspicuous leisure", is performed to demonstrate wealth or mark social status. Veblen explains the concept in his best-known book, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899). Within the history of economic thought, Veblen is considered the leader of the institutional economics movement. Veblen's distinction between "institutions" and "technology" is still called the Veblenian dichotomy by contemporary economists.

As a leading intellectual of the Progressive Era, Veblen attacked production for profit. His emphasis on conspicuous consumption greatly influenced the socialist thinkers who sought a non-Marxist critique of capitalism.

Reviews

[Joseph Wycoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most important work on higher education ever written. Every graduate student in any field of study who has not read this work is NOT - in the Veblenian definition of the term - "faculty." At the time of publication (1918), colleges and universities were dominated by "schoolmasters" as Veblen defined them - moralizing martinets who regarded themselves as conservators of "worldly wisdom." Only faculty -- the educators of graduate colleges engaged in the disinterested pursuit of knowledge -- qualified as the true faculty of a college or university. All others were imposters and posers who sought to be regarded as scholars. If an academic advisor directs you (as a grad student) to read Veblen, they either want you to understand that many other scholars are beneath you based solely on your liberal arts or science degree -- or, that you have little hope to become more than a schoolmaster. The latter is more likely as many tenured faculty currently hide behind the concept of academic freedom to spout sophistic untruths and ignorance. The former (scholarship) is regrettably less likely because American higher education has been controlled by schoolmasters since the 1960s. If any of the above makes sense after reading Veblen, then you are ready to strike back and end conservatives' reactionary political policies against Truman's democratic vision for American higher education. If not, higher education remains nothing more than a show of pecuniary might for your parents' class interest.

[Dina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Apart from being written in too many words, the book premise is simple. Universities should exist for pure pursuit of knowledge and not be managed by businessman like a business. Also, the author rightly says that those professors who go into research are good teachers and the skills of teaching are different from those of research. Our schools and universities lost the purpose of making a student wanting and loving to learn. Instead they became somewhat like big corporations without actual purpose and producing mere machines. No talent can ever come out of there.

[Devin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thorstein Veblen is most well known for Theory of the Leisure Class and this book is a solid continuation along the same lines. Although he specifically examines universities many other institutions suffer from the same problems he highlights here.

Veblen truly pulls no punches and the result is a searing indictment of 'pecuniary' values. He decries the results of the money motive in higher learning, which makes learning a means to an end instead of the end in itself. In a final section (which would be ineffective without the previous critique), Veblen puts forth a few simple ideas about 'reform'. As he puts it:

"All that is required is the abolition of the academic executive and of the governing board. Anything short of this heroic remedy is bound to fail, because the evils sought to be remedied are inherent in these organs, and intrinsic to their functioning."

The result would be the dissolution of the Administration/bureaucracy as a whole, and the splintering of the various 'schools' currently held together by it (including the undergraduate and graduate colleges, and what Veblen calls 'vocational schools' including engineering, medicine, law, etc.). This, Veblen argues, is a good thing, as these different organizations have different motives and raisons d'etre.

Veblen doesn't seem to be nearly as radical as a person criticizing higher education might be. He allows that there is some use for vocational schools and undergraduate 'finishing' schools for the well-to-do, but he insists that higher learning cannot be united with such aims. If learning is the end in itself, with no hope of money-making at the end of a degree program, then it must be separated from the rest. Purely scholarly aims are the reason we make money, not the way we make money. For Veblen, civilization is about collecting the economic means to fund scholarly research, not the other way around.

Truly, this is an old-fashioned view. The 'total depravity' Veblen is disgusted by has only multiplied a hundred fold. I doubt how many people today would seriously avow scholarly research as the end of civilization. Clearly the end of civilization has become the pursuit of capital gains, at least in America.

Yet Veblen is important, because he strikes a note not often heard in the wilderness of capitalist America. What Veblen is getting at here are issues of control. His biggest issue with the university administration is that it carries out it's self appointed tasks (for a problem it creates) "with no gain at any point, excepting a gain in the facility of control - control for control's sake, at the best."

This is a fruitful line of thinking. Who should control a person's work life? Veblen says it should be that person and their peers, and no one else. This is truly a life lesson applicable to all parts of life: No one can do better than the people doing the work. To go even further, I'd say anyone controlling the career of someone else is doing it for their own selfish interest. Clearly, that is an idea whose time has not come. I suspect this book will be 'rediscovered' when it does.

"It should be plain that no other and extraneous power, such as the executive or the governing boards, is as competent - or, indeed, competent in any degree - to take care of these matters, as are the staff who have the work to do."

[Bowdoin]

Professor Sobak– I occasionally teach a seminar on the history of the liberal arts, and one of my primary research areas is in decision-making and governance within small-world networked organizations. So Veblen's study of American institutions of higher education really hits on many issues of interest to me. This book was a pioneering study of organizational behavior in 1918, but what makes it especially interesting is just how relevant it remains today. Our current hand-wringing about the crisis of the liberal arts, lack of student engagement, and the corruption of educational goals by the institutional pursuit of wealth and status were lively concerns 100 years ago. It isn't a text for the faint of heart, however. Veblen has a cutting sense of humor throughout his writing, and he does little to disguise his anger or disgust. The original subtitle Veblen gave to the book was "A Study in Total Depravity" so that gives you a sense of what you are in store for. Nonetheless, I give it two thumbs up. It's an illuminating and thought-provoking book, and I think anybody who is interested in higher education should read it!

[Mills College Library]

378 V395 2015