Their Relation to Higher Educational Finance 
15 
ciate being dealt with in a firm manner, if the firmness is of a high type. 
They would rather be looked upon as young men who have a business 
to transact than mere boys who need assistance. 
Many objections will be raised against the introduction of business 
principles into Philanthropie works. To refute these objections it is possible 
to show that most of the great philanthropists were first great business 
men. It is difficult to decide in which role they have accomplished the 
greatest social good. Constructive philanthropy of the highest type 
approaches efficient business ideals. They approach, at times, each other 
so closely that they are often indistinguishable. 5 
The value to society of good business is so great and philanthropy so 
surrounded by risks that one should hesitate to advise the successful shoe- 
maker who is constantly striving to produce a better pair of shoes to trade 
places with the man who is endeavoring to give away large sums of money 
intelligently. The change might involve too many possible changes of dis- 
appointment, if not actual failure. 6 
Student loans cannot be divorced from the business of higher educa- 
tion. Higher education will have to assume a new form of administration 
and such administration will have to approach the best forms of business 
ideals. Our universities and Colleges are now taking only emergency 
measures and accomplishment is lagging far behind opportunity. They 
will have to adopt in an intelligent and earnest fashion more business-like 
methods of Organization in Order to adjust themselves to the rapidly chang- 
ing conditions of American life. Institutions of higher learning can meet 
these demands by radical reorganization. 7 The faculty must be faculty 
and the business officers must be allowed to be business officers. The 
President must be a unique individual. 
America has a different problem to meet in higher education than 
Europe. Ours is a young and rapidly changing society; Europe is an old 
and more or less static one. Since our universities and Colleges are failing 
to keep in advance of changing conditions, they must either take. bold 
and rapid steps forward, perish, or remain a remnant of the past—a haven 
for slumbering scholars. 
New financial policies will become necessary. The individual, at the 
time he receives his education, will be called upon to pay a larger Propor 
tion of the cost. If a sufficient amount of additional funds is to be secured 
to carry on the changed Organization, the objectives of the university and 
College will have to be shown to be useful, commercially sound, returning 
a reasonable rate of interest or some combination of these objectives. These 
values are not necessarily commercial values only, for usefulness may be 
6 W. E. Harmon, “Business versus Philanthropy”, Harmon Foundation Bulletin, Sept., 1925 
p. 4. 
8 Ibid., p. 5. 
7 Similar Statements have been attributed to Dr. R. Pound and Dr. A. Flexner in an 
Editorial in the New York World, Oct. 4, 1925.