The Online Library of Liberty

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• Editorial Staff
• Associate Editors
• Editorial
• Bibliographical Essay: Isaac Kramnick, English Middle-class Radicalism In the Eighteenth Century
• I: I Social and Political Thought
• Community, Individuality, and Freedom
• Rousseau's Social Thought
• A Sociological History of Utilitarianism
• Spencer and Comte In American Labor Thought
• Bureaucracy In Weber & Kafka
• Bergson's Political Doctrines
• Oakeshott's Political Theory
• Oakeshott's Political Philosophy
• Undermocratic Liberal Republicans
• Wilkes and Radical Politics
• Late Liberal Imperialism
• Kant and Reason In Politics
• II: Education, Politics, and Values
• Schools and Political Socialization
• Schooling For Imperialism
• The Political Economy of Public Schooling
• Federal Education Policy
• The Problems of Federal Education
• William James As Individualist
• Existential and Phenomenological Education
• Early Federal Educational Policy
• Education, Labor Markets, & Controlled Youth
• Government Control of Universities
• III: Economic Thought and Values
• Business and Legal History
• Schumpeter's Economic Theories
• Menger and Entrepreneurship
• Saint-simonian Economic Ideas
• The Free Market & the Third World
• Democratic Capitalism, Justice, & Religion
• Property, Law, and Economics
• The Economic Analysis of Law Vs. Values
• IV: Foreign Policy and Ideology
• The Attractiveness of War
• Walzer On International Morality
• Eduard Bernstein and Imperialism
• Roosevelt Vs. His War Critics
• American Preconceptions of Japan
• The Marshall Plan and Russia
• V: Self-knowledge, Autonomy, and Liberty
• The Self In Political Thought
• Autonomy, Self, and Will Power
• Self-knowledge: Goethe, Kant, and Hegel
• The Egoist As a “psychopath”
• The History of Social Psychology
• Psychology, Self, and Society
• Free Will, Responsibility, and Motivation
• Free Will, Purpose, and Responsibility
• Political “groupthink” and Reality
• Personal Freedom and Autonomy
• Research Fields
• Economics
• Education
• History
• Philosophy
• Political Philosophy
• Psychology
• Sociology

Government Control of Universities

Daniel Levy

• Yale University, Institution for Social and Policy Studies

This review article discusses the extent and determinants of government control over the universities. Levy draws on material from six recent books: John H. Van de Graff et. al., Academic Power: Patterns of Authority in Seven National Systems of Higher Education (1978); Jerry Harr, The Politics of Higher Education in Brazil (1977); L.E. Gladieux and T.R. Wolanin, Congress and The Colleges: The National Politics of Higher Education (1976); Galo Gómez O., Chile de hoy: educación, cultura y ciencia (1976).

There are three determinants of increased government control: systemwide, intrauniversity, and extrauniversity. As to the systemwide determinants, expanding enrollment, and a declining private sector were key factors. (Shrinking or stagnating enrollments were also used as an argument for greater government control.) Expanding enrollments led to institutional proliferation which also increased governmental control, both because newer institutions lacked the entrenched power to resist control and because of the call for government coordination.

Systemwide expansion also affected intrauniversity structures. Expansion promoted demands for democratization, which helped to break down old power centers, creating a vacuum which government helped to fill. Also, government control increased because of student disorders.

Extrauniversity factors included the growing belief that university performance should be judged by how well it achieved political, economic ends. Unfortunately we lack a cross-national determinant of increased governmental control.

As for the extent of increased governmental control, it would help if one had a measurement of degrees of university autonomy. Still, the following results seem clear. The more decentralized political systems have less control over the universities. It also seems that government control over universities has been increasing due to the growing power of coordinating boards, which are supposed to help coordinate university policies with government programs in mind. Academic freedom and institutional autonomy over academic policy seem correlated positively.

Finally, four cross-national hypotheses can be drawn from the books under review. First, government exerts stronger control over important administrative appointments than over ongoing academic policy. Second, governments insist on direct control over appointment or ongoing governance. Third, strong university administrations were inversely related to strong ministerial rule. Fourth, government funding has dramatically increased, and while funding does imply control, there is not a one-to-one correlation.

Levy ends his survey by suggesting that the next step is to examine limits to the growth of governmental power and control over universities.

III

Economic Thought and Values

This set of summaries discloses the intimate connection between economic theory or history and political, moral, and religious values. The Keller study of business and legal history in America shows shifting legal and moral values interacting with business and economic growth. The closing O'Driscoll summary reveals the weaknesses of a wertfrei economic approach to law. The studies of Menger, Schumpeter, and Saint-Simon point out evaluations given to market and nonmarket economic approaches. Bauer's and Novak's summaries examine “the market in the dock,” or the alleged case against the free market.