At first the scholars were generally monks but later they were increasingly secular and became absorbed into the centralization and absolutist state. With the rise of the territorial nation-state from the seventeenth century onwards, the university became increasingly more and more nationalized and gradually lost its transnational character. With this went a decline in its ecclesiastical function: knowledge became a free-floating discourse to be used for domination or emancipation" As an institution the university owed its tremendous power to the fact that it originated at a time when the moral and political power of the Church was in decline but when the modern state system had not yet emerged.[11]
Thus, "the university found itself in a powerful position and could monopolize the field of knowledge." As the "Age of Reason' descended upon the West, the universal ideology of Christendom that was so paramount in the medieval period shifted to one of rationalizing logic and experimental science. The Reformation and scientific revolution "greatly facilitated this shift in the function of the university." The university became the institution of knowledge, and as a result, was able to resist both church and state. However, in the transition into the modern period, with the rise of the nation-state, the state quickly sought to ally with the university, which increasingly came under state patronage. The state, whether the British Restoration government or French Absolute state, viewed the universities "as important institutions in the administration of society."[12]
As the nation-states developed, particularly in England, Spain, and France, the relative autonomy of the first universities started to be eroded. As one academic wrote, "universities throughout Europe in the course of the fifteenth century tended in the same direction -- towards the nationalization of Paris as of all other universities." The University of Paris, then, became subservient to the crown and, thereafter, universities increasingly became national institutions with the mission of "service to the state."[13]
The role for universities in training a new governing elite became increasingly important as the schools came under the control of new nation-states, municipalities and principalities: "Kings therefore emphasized the acquisition of advanced, secular knowledge and technical skills by students -- future public servants -- in order to build up efficient state bureaucracies." Close advisers to kings, princes, and republics would also be expected to be men with legal training from the universities. This era marks the transition from the medieval university to the early modern university:
the early modern university was far more socially responsive than the medieval university because of humanist professors' emphasis on ethical values for themselves and their students. Early modern universities continued to expand as a movement while making solid scientific and scholarly contributions. The newly consolidated state began to increase visitations, intervention, regulation (curriculum, subjects taught, and publications allowed), and appointment of chancellors.[14]
This was also the era in which these institutions increasingly moved toward professionalization in the modern sense, armed with a new "sociopolitical mission" as "an ideological arm of the state." As one writer explained it, "The state protects the action of the University; the University safeguards the thought of the state." Between 1500 and 1800, the university in Europe experienced an enormous expansion, even into Russia, which was untouched by the medieval university, and Europe had roughly 190 universities existing during this period. This era of early modern civilization, with the growth of the nation-state, and the imperial expansion into the New World, the Spanish even put in place state-controlled colonial universities across Latin America, the first of which was founded in Santo Domingo [today Haiti and the Dominican Republic] in 1538. These universities, overtly serving a colonial agenda, "prepared missionaries and jurists for the settlement of the New World."[15]
With the Enlightenment came a new form of nation-state, the Liberal Nation-State, which further influenced the changing nature of the university during this era. The Enlightenment era saw the further development of the university "under the auspices of the central and national state providing it with a system of knowledge, which was at the same time a system of power."[16] The aim was to put these universities "to work for the new liberal State and its economic needs."[17]
Fichte, who was considered one of the intellectual fathers of the Prussian mass schooling system, was also influential in the move toward a modern university system, and his goals were quite similar. Just as mass schooling was established to serve the state, Fichte felt that "the academics should be the new spiritual leaders of society." The main difference between this Enlightenment model of the university and the medieval one was marked by the shift from city to nation. As the Enlightenment had different effects in different nations, the relationship that developed between the nation and the university was different in each case. In Germany, the university became the cultural center of the nation, while in France its focus was more on producing an actual core of civil servants. In each case, however, the aim of the university was to serve the nation in some capacity, whether functionally, ideologically, culturally, or all of the above.[18]
With the development of the American university system, we still see the objective of serving the nation as inherent in this Enlightenment idea of the "modern university.' In America, the new schools were replacing the old, ill-equipped and elitist colonial colleges. The establishment of universities became a core mission of the founders, as ten key founders also founded academic institutions, including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, George Wythe, Benjamin Rush, William S. Johnson, William R. Davie, Abraham Baldwin, and Manasseh Cutler. Thus, many of the schools had inherent within them a "nationalizing' mission, a mission to serve the nation, though it may not be explicitly the State.[19]
At the turn of the 20th century, there was a great debate on the missions of the new distinctly American universities. There were profound social, political, and economic changes that had occurred in the post-Civil War period, as America experienced its Industrial Revolution, rise of the corporations, and with that, the Robber Baron industrialists, who increasingly took over the political culture of the nation, which was increasingly centralizing, increasingly imperialistic, and with the labour class exponentially distrustful, resentful and resistant to the new dominant capitalistic powers that emerged. This was further checked by an increasingly educated middle class, informed largely by the rapid new developments in communications and technology, who were also becoming wary of the excesses of Big Business, but at the same time, worried about the threat of rebellion from the lower classes. In short, it was a socially explosive situation, in what came to be known as the Progressive Era, as middle class reformers took the stage in advocating and implementing major social reforms to establish a more stable, lasting society. Thus, the new modern American universities were to combine the ideals of research, teaching, and public service, as many believed the schools should "advance basic knowledge and provide the technical expertise required by a modern industrial society."[20] Thus, as Scott wrote:
Faculties in the new applied sciences, emerging social sciences, and even an important minority in the humanities believed strongly in the social utility of their disciplines. Professors in the social sciences were often committed to public service. To this end, schools of political science were established at Columbia, Michigan, and Wisconsin during the 1880s and 1890s. At the same time, within departments of economics and sociology, there were devotees of social utility. Psychology, which was then a part of philosophy, also developed a faction devoted to utility (pragmatism). Social scientists served their society in the capacity of experts, which also involved research. By 1900, the "useful" university was establishing such untraditional fields of study as business administration, physical education, sanitary science, and engineering.[21]
The Robber Baron industrialists of the late 19th century -- Morgan, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Astor, Vanderbilt, Harriman, etc. -- were unquestionably the dominant powers in the country. They controlled the economy, hundreds of corporations, had hundreds of millions or billions in wealth, the banks, bought the politicians, directed foreign policy into an increasingly imperialistic direction, and thus, they saw it as essential to cement their control over society through social institutions, as the masses were hateful of them and needed to be properly controlled. Social control became the major concept of interest for elites and middle class reformers.
In this era of social control, education became increasingly important, not only in terms of mass schooling, which experienced many reforms, but also in terms of the university system. As Andrew Carnegie wrote in 1889, at the top of the list of "charitable deeds" to undertake was "the founding of a university by men enormously rich, such men as must necessarily be few in any country." It was in this context, of robber barons seeking to remake education, that we see the founding of several of America's top universities, many of which were named after their robber baron founders, such as Stanford (after Leland Stanford), Cornell (after Ezra Cornell), and Johns Hopkins, who owned the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad.[22] This new class of industrialists, who emerged out of the Civil War in America, "challenged the position of the old propertied, pre-industrial elite. This struggle crystallized in particular around the reform of the educational system that had legitimated the old elite's domination."[23] The modern university was born out of this struggle between elites, with the old educational system based upon religious and moral values, "and the making of gentlemen," while the "new education" focused on "the importance of management or administration" as well as "public service, [and] the advancement of knowledge through original investigation."[24]
John D. Rockefeller founded the University of Chicago in 1891, and the President of the University, "initiated a new disciplinary system, which was enormously influential." Ultimately, it "led to the formation of the department structure of the American university, which was internationally unique," and was later exported around the world "with the help of American foundations."[25] This disciplinary system consisted of separating politics from economics (rejecting the notion of "political economy' and its "ideologies'), as ideology was "deemed unscientific and inappropriate in social sciences and political scientists have increasingly seen their function as service to the powerful, rather than providing leadership to populist or socialist movements."[26]
There was an obvious desire to "foster the teaching of practical knowledge and skills serving the development of commerce and industry, against the prevailing academic traditions." However, it also allowed for "a way of diagnosing the social upheavals caused by the accelerated shift from a still largely agrarian society to an industrial mass society" of which they were the dominant class. In particular, the labor unrest of the 19th century was especially prevalent in the minds of the dominant class. Since "social reform was inevitable," these industrialists "chose to invest in the definition and scientific treatment of the "social questions' of their time," and subsequently, they "promoted reformist solutions that did not threaten the capitalistic nature of the social order," and instead constructed a "private alternative to socialism."[27] In other words, it marked the construction of a highly corporatist society, merging state and corporate power through institutions, individuals, and ideology.
The Social Sciences and Social Control
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