The Uses of the University

單維彰的私人書摘

Kerr, Clark (2001). The uses of the university, 5th ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

我從很久以前就關心「大學」。 最早讀的書是金耀基的《大學之理念》，這本書的臺灣版是 1983 年份的， 我讀的是這個版本，並沒有比較它跟 2000 年在香港出的牛津版有多少差別？ 我很可能是在中原大學四年級或擔任助教的那一年讀了這本書， 它形塑了我的許多「理想」。 但是，等到長大變得「現實」之後，禁不住懷疑：這本書的「理念」好像對不上這個社會，也對不上我的經驗。

後來，大約在西元 2000 年前後，我參加了王燦槐教授召集的讀書會， 主題也是「大學的理念」； 已經不記得讀的是什麼書？（現在也不想花時間去查找。） 只記得是英文書，而且那本書讓我理解： 當 Newman (1852) 歌頌牛津與劍橋的大學範式時，其實它們的光輝即將結束； 甚至當 Flexner (1930) 提倡德國的研究型大學範式時，它們也將要沒落了。 那一本書還讓我提出一個疑問：美國的大學發展政策，不論是非對錯，起碼有一個明確的動機──化約之後就是為了「冷戰」。 那麼臺灣呢？臺灣的政策有自己的理由嗎？直到今天我都看不出來我們有自己的理由。

雖然金先生在序言裡已經提到佛蘭斯納 (Flexner) 和克爾 (Kerr)， 但是在我記憶中整本《大學之理念》都是英國的牛津劍橋範式── 也許我當年沒讀懂，應該回去重讀一次金耀基，但前述印象深深刻在我的心中長達半輩子。

在讀書會之前，可能還有劉兆漢校長送給全校同仁每人一本的《學術這一行》。 這本書應該也帶給我「大學理念」的想法，可是我不記得了； 記得的是我挑出那本書一整頁的翻譯錯誤。

John Henry Newman (1801-1890) 在 1852 出版 The Idea of University。 Abraham Flexner (1866-1959) 在 1930 出版 Universities: American, English, German；他也是普林斯頓高等研究院的創立者與第一任主管（1930-39）。 Clark Kerr (1911-2003，他從民國元年活到民國 92 年) 的本業是經濟學， 這本《大學之用》從 1963 年初版之後， 哈佛大學每隔十年就替他出新版，而他也就藉機新增一兩章，作為增補與反思， 並添入老先生持續閱讀與學習所得的新知。 最後這一版（第五版）寫作於二十世紀末，克爾校長當時已經年近 90； 這本書應該是他的天鵝之歌了。

Kerr 除了曾經是加州大學系統的校長，也曾是 Carnegie Commission on Higher Education 的主席。

讀這本書，讓我感到過去閱讀「大學理念」所花費的時間全是浪費。 我的意思不是以前那些書的作者不好，而是我自己太淺，還沒有能力讀懂那些作者。 而現在克爾這一本書，每句話都傳遞實實在在的意義給我。 Kerr 這本書對於理解二戰之後美國高等教育與科技研究，至關重要。 雖然作者說的是美國，但是因為美國是世界的典範，所以在很大程度上了解美國就等於了解鐵幕以外的世界；至少，可以用來了解臺灣。 如前述，我認為臺灣沒有自己的大學理念，臺灣只知道有樣學樣地複製著美國， 而這樣的「制度」也造福了許許多多「學術這一行」的個體，所以大家都沒想要抱怨什麼。

雖然感到滿滿的心得，但是我沒有時間詳細寫了。 希望 Kerr 這本書的大概念已經內化於胸，只記下貼標籤的麟光片羽：

p.ix, line 19

The last great attempt to restore attention to undergraduates and their liberal education ... was failed: UC Santa Cruz, Hutchins at Chicago, Red Book at Harvard.

p.2, line -7

Newman felt that other institutions should carry on research, for "If its object were scientific and philosophical discovery, I do not see why a University should have any students"

p.3, line 9

By 1852, when Newman wrote, the German universities were becoming the new model. ... The gentleman "at home in any society" was soon to be at home in none. Science was beginning to take the place of moral philosophy, research the place of teaching.

p.5, line 10

The "Modern University" was as nearly dead ain 1930 when Flexner wrote about it as the old Oxford was in 1852 when Newman idealized it.

p.9, line -1 .. p.10

... Yale at the time was the great center of reaction--its famous faculty rfeport of 1828 was a rining proclamation to do nothing, or at least nothing that had not always been done at Yale or by God. ... Daniel Coit Giolman ... became the first president of the new univeristy of Johns Hopkins in 1876. The institution began as a graduate school with an emphasis on research. ... Charles W. Eliot at Harvard followed the Gilman breakthrough and Harvard during his period (1869 to 1909) ... became a university.

p.30, line 5

Power should be commensurate with responsibility.

p.39, line 14

Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862. Then the Second Morrill Act in 1890 suplemented the original land grants with federal grants of funds to support college instruction in specified subjects... Hatch Act in 1887, establishing the Agricultural Experiment Stations [Penn State 1855 成立的，受益於這些法案] ... ROTC established during World War I ... During World War II universities participated heavily in the Engineering, Science and Management War Training Program inaugurated in 1940. ... The "G.I. Bill"--Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944-- [美國軍人權利法案]

p.41, line 14

[In 1961] Federal research expenditures have been largely restricted to the physical and biomedical sciences, and engineering, with only about 3 percent for the social sciences and hardly any support for the humanities. ... 6 universities received 57% of the funds ... 20 received 79%.

p.47, line 2

It would seem likely that the splitting of the atom and the deciphering of the genetic code should in their turn affect the balance of the twentieth century. [當時 1963 還沒看到半導體的威力] ... Economics was exciting in the 1930's; sociology was more exciting in the 1950's.

p.52, line 10

... limerick:
There was a young lady from Kent
Who said that she knew what it meant
When men took her to dine,
Gave her cocktails and wine;
She knew what it meant--but she went.
I am not so sure that the universities and their presidents always knew what it meant; but one thing is certain--they went.

p.65, line 15

... there will be a truly American university, an institution unique in world history, an institution not looking to other models but serving, itself, as a model for universities in other parts of the globe.

p.76, line 8

"the overwhelming predominance of things that are new over things that are old" and to what Robert Oppenheimer calls "a thinning of common knowledge." Knowledge is now in so many bits and pieces and administration so distant that faculty members are increasingly figures in a "lonely crowd," intellectually and institutionally.

p.89, line 12 大學領導人的難題

• how to give adequate recognition to the teaching skill as well as to the research performance of the faculty
• how to create a curriculum that serves the needs of the student as well as the research interests of the teacher
• how to prepare the generalist as well as the specialist in an age of specialization looking for better generalizations
• how to treat the individual student as a unique human being in the mass student body
• how to make the university seem smaller even as it grows larger
• how to establish a range of contact between faculty and students broader than the one-way route across the lectern or throught the television screen
• how to raise educational policy again to the forefront of faculty concerns

p.91, line 8 「平等」觀念

It was equality of opportunity, not equality per se, that animated the founding fathers and the progress of the American system; but the forces of populist equality have never been silent, ... [p. 101, line 1] the current cry for equality of result is replacing the older call for equality of opportunity.

p.104, line 4

[William James (1909) A Pluralistic Universe.] was contrasting "pluralism" with "monism." The monistic aproach, he said, is to find a single "Absolute." Such absolutes might be ... the word of God, or the class struggle of Marx, or the survival of the fittest of Darwin, or the infantile sex of Freud; some absolute that determined everything else, that lent a unity to thought, that posited a community where all the parts were internally related, where there was an organic unity with no independent parts, and that yielded an inherent consistency. ... The absolute sought to define what was right and what was wrong in the present, to explain the past, to describe the future. It sought to provide sure standards for making decisions and a clear vision of both past and future events.

p.106, line -10

The multiversity began when professional schools were originally established, beginning with the medical school at the University of Pennsylvania in 1765; when Harvard created the first departments in 1825 and Jefferson the first separate faculties at Virginia in 1824, as against the earlier single faculty with a single curriculum; when the Morrill Land Grant Act was passed in 1862; when Eliot introduced electives in the 1870's and 1880's; when Harper started an extension service at Chicago in 1892; when the "Wisconsin Idea" was born in the early 1900's ...

p.115, line 7

Heraclitus said that "nothing endures but change." About the university it might be said, instead, that "everything else changes, but the university mostly endures" ... About 85 institutions in the Western world established by 1520 still exist in recognizable forms, with similar functions and with unbroken histories, including the Catholic church, the Parliaments of the Isle of Man, of Iceland, and of Great Britain, several Swiss cantons, and 70 universities.

p.143, line -2

Since 1963, one of these models (British, German, American) has lost ground--the British or "liberal knowledge" for undergraduates model, which has also declined in Britain.

p.149, line 16

... what isw happening to (1) purposes; (2) governance; (3) the presidency; and (4) the life of the campus is all interwined together: to understand one, it is necessary to understand all.

p.154, line 3

The recent shift to more polytechnic applied research has greatly advantaged such institutions as Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech, Texas A&M, UC-Davie, Penn State [我當時正好在那裡], and SUNY-Buffalo. These six averaged an increase in federal R&D of 101 percent from 1985 to 1992. Harvard, Standord, MIT, and Berkely averaged 62 percent.

p.157

1970 年代美國特別關心「大學」，出版了許多專書。 那些作者多半憂心或看衰大學。但後來回頭看，1970 年代其實是最好的時期。 相對地，現在似乎沒有人關心了；大家都去忙別的事了，或者放棄了。

p.165, line 11

在 1963 年，20 所大學吃掉 50% 的聯邦研究計畫經費。 在 1990 年，32 所大學吃掉 50% 的聯邦研究計畫經費。 〔研究型大學的總數大約 100，見 p.203〕

p.170ff

During the whole period from the end of World War II to the early 1970s, productivity in the United States was rising at a rate of 3 percent per year... At 3 percent, productivity (and the consequent potential standard of living) doubles in 25 years. 〔中國大陸保持了一段時間超過 10% 的經濟成長率， 許多稍有年紀的人感到他們像是活了「三輩子」， 這樣的感覺可以從經濟數據得到數學的解釋了。〕 ... The cost for prisons has gone up rapidly--from 4 to 9 percent of the state general fund in California over the past ten years [1994], while higher education decreased from 13 to 9 percent. For the nation as a whole, state expenditures for corrections have gone up 40 percent, whereas expenditures for higher education have decreased by 4 percent.

p.175, line 4

Tidal Wave II of students will hit (1997) and continue to about 2015. This wave of additional students may be abhout one-third the absolute size of Tidal Wave I after World War II but will amount to much less of a proportionate increase--about 20 percent instead of 200 percent. 〔但 Kerr 在別處提到，多出來的學生潮主要由「非研究型大學」吸收， 前段大學的學生人數並未大幅增加，只是錄取率大幅降低了〕

p.188, line 10 政府的責任

Adam Smith long ago set forth the three major areas for governmental responsibility as protection from external and internal violence, protection of individuals from injustice and oppression (which allows an opening to the welfare state), and provision of an infrastructure including basic education. The Great Depression added guidance of the economy to protect it against depression and then,later, inflation. Care of the environment has also been added in more recent times. ... responsibility for economic growth has also been added. This latter assignment involves enhancement of labor skills and encouragement of research and development. 〔後面接著分析教育責任的分工〕

p.192, line -2

Consideration of protection for the "non-market" functions. ... Some such needs of society for university are training for good citizenship, advancing cultural interests and capabilities of graduates, providing critiques of society (we hope from a scholarly perspective), and supporting scholarship that has no early, if ever, monetary returns.

p.195, line -18 新科技造成「第四次（教學）革命」的角色

... the "Fourth Revolution," once so confidently expected, will finally take place. 〔第四次（教育）革命，也是 500 年來的第一次。〕 The experience to date suggests that each new technology adds to but does not totally supplant prior technology--oral teaching added to apprenticeship experience, the written word added to the spoken word, printing added to handwriting, and it seems likely that the "chip" will add to but not replace all the methods that ave gone before.

p.199, line 19 自 1963 至今 (2000) 未癒之病

• Rising federal influence over the direction of intellectual endeavors, most notably at that time still directed toward weapons of mass destruction.
• Elevation of the sciences above the humanities and the social sciences, creating a widening gap between the "hard" and "soft" sides of intellectual life, and between the "rich" and the "not so rich" participants.
• The valuing of research and service over teaching, with particular neglect of undergraduates, ...
• Creation of a new class of faculty entrepreneurs, chasing federal and philanthropic dollars, who replaced the secluded scholars of yore...

p.202, line 6

... the Master Plan of 1960 for Higher Education in California, which guaranteed that there would be a place in college for every high school graduate ...

p.203, line 4

in the 1980s, the feared "demographic depression"--that is, lower enrollments due to a smaller number of eighteen to twenty-four-year-olds in the population--never developed as the economic return to a college degree advanced to unheard-of levels. Many students came to college looking for job training, not a philosophy of life ... College became less a professional and class-oriented institution for an elite and more a market-oriented instrumentality for the masses. It was a fundamenal restructuring.

p.203, line 16

... the federal government decided to advance basic scientific research through the universities. There were alternative ... The crucial document for the postwar period was Vannevar Bush's 1945 report to the president: Science, the Endless Frontier... The teaching university of old was changing almost overnight into the research university. The approximate half dozen that existed by the end of World War II, in particular MIT, Chicago, and Berkeley, exploded into one hundred by the end of the century.

p.204, line -8 .. p.205, line 10 作者所見 1960 至 70 年待衝擊大學的三股力量

• Universal access for students 〔從大量入學 mass access 到全面入學 universal access〕
• Faculty conversion from teaching to research
• An unprecedented period of prosperity〔長年連續的 3% 經濟成長率〕

p.218, line -3 .. p.219 作者對師範略感失望而呼籲大學幫助中小學

Offering more hel to primary and secondary education. I know of no school of education that has distinguished itself in this endeavor〔師範大學也忙著改成研究型大學〕, although some have tried valiantly. I suggest that these colleges try a land-grant instead of a letters and science approach, with experiment stations and extension services, rather than affiliations with the literature of the standard departments such as history, philosophy, and psychology.

p.228, line 3

So many voices compete with so little wisdom.

p.228, line -8

Ken Galbraith once spoke of two kinds of economists. One type included those who acknowledge "I don't know." The other kind consisted of those who "don't know they don't know."