Their Relation to Higher Educational Finance
55
manifests itself in politics. It is impossible to get a wise distribution of
funds among the various fields of learning because of group interests in
control of the public purse.
The Individual
The individual in our ideal scheme is asked to bear practically twothirds
of the cost of the dissemination of knowledge and one-half of the
cost of higher education, because he can hardly receive less than half of
the benefits which such trainiug has in störe for him, taking education as a
whole. If the training is in dentistry or in business, the individual is the
recipient of practically all benefits and so such training should be placed
near the CD line in Diagram II, which shows that the individual pays
practically the entire cost. In the case of knowledge with a political
purpose the individual should pay very little, society a large part, and
much of the income from philanthropy should be at present spent on the
advancement of learning in such fields. The political organization of
society has lagged far behind the cultural and economic; therefore, most
of the efforts of philanthropy should be directed toward the advancement
of learning in fields of political knowledge. In the wild dash for
economic conquest, the political and social organization has been left in
the background without a sufficient amount of new knowledge to be used
as a guide. 26 Philanthropy having furnished the knowledge in political
fields, society should bear the largest share of the cost of dissemination
since the benefit to be derived from the dissemination of political knowledge
is largely social. Only in so far as such learning has a slight element
of cultural or economic benefit to the individual should he pay for it
directly.
That knowledge which is acquired for cultural purposes should in
large part be paid for by the individual. Society should pay a fair portion
of it as long as the belief continues that the greater number of cultured
individuals there are, the better off society will be. Philanthropy must
come in to advance knowledge of this kind because society collectively and
the individual have a natural tendency to be dominated by economic
motives. In order to maintain culture therefore philanthropy must preserve
it and place it on the intellectual market at a reasonable price, thus
making it available for a sufficiently large number of people.
20 Mr. William S. Culbertson says on this point: “The conceptions of political and social
control prevailing in Western States today are, if not Aristotelian, at least those of the eighteenth
Century. The material progress of Western civilization has been effected at an unprecedented rate
and is still rushing forth to new conquests. Eiving in a new material world, we lack a Science
of government capable of Controlling lts destructive tendencies or of turning its achievements to
social ends.” International Economic Policies, pp. 8-9.
