The Freeman 1972 - The Ludwig von Mises Institute

360 THE FREEMAN Juneadministration and elements ofconflict within recent decades. Perhapsthe most serious of these hasbeen the penetration of politicalpressures and the resulting clashof political forces within the academiccommunity.It is now widely acknowledgedthat the great majority of our collegesand universities have lostthe trust of the public. The waveof public indignation which wasdirected against them after theBerkeley riots in 1964 has beenfollowed by a wave of even moreominous public revulsion. Theseinstitutions are experiencing themost serious crisis of confidencethat they have faced in manydecades. They are no longer respectedas the quality institutionswhich they once were under sucheducator-statesmen as Charles W.Eliot and A. Lawrence Lowell ofHarvard University, David CoitGilman of Johns Hopkins, NicholasMurray Butler of Columbia, RobertGordon Sproul of the Universityof California, and James R.Angell of Yale University.Why the Degeneration?Why has this degenerationoccurred,and what should be doneabout it?One of the major casualties ofthe social and economic upheavalof our times is the principle ofauthority, or more precisely theprinciple of management. In industrythe claims of owners andboards of directors to the exerciseof management responsibilities arebeing repeatedly challenged. Ininstitutions of higher learning inthe United States the growingpressure for unionization of teachingfaculties and staffs and for involvementof students in the councilsof administration raise questionsas to the locus of power andthe right to exercise it.It is a well-known doctrine oflaw that the principal in a legaltransaction controls the actions ofhis agent within the context oftheir agreement and that, if theagent exceeds his authority, hisunauthorized action must be regardedas ultra vires or of nolegal effect.A major reason for the presentplight of institutions of higherlearning is that in the area ofeducation the essential relationshipof the agent to his principalhas been ignored. In many casesthe supporting body, as we havecalled it above, has neither exercisednor defended its responsibilityfor determining the scope ofthe education which it is financingbut has, on the contrary, allowedits agent· to assume by defaultfree-wheeling authority, withoften anarchic results. Similarlythe agents of the supporting body,who are expected to act as execut-