Page:Theory of Business Enterprise, The (Veblen).djvu/397

384 In the endowed schools there is, moreover, an increasing introduction of business men and business methods into the personnel and the administrative work. This is necessarily so since these schools are competitors for students and endowments. The policy of these schools necessarily takes on some thing of the complexion of competitive business; which throws the emphasis on those features of school life that will best attract students and donors. The features which count most directly in these directions are not the same as would count most effectively toward the avowed ends of these schools. The standards which it is found imperative to live up to are not the highest standards of scholarly work. Courtesy as well as expediency inclines these schools to cultivate such appearances and such opinions as may be expected to find favor with men of wealth. These men of wealth are business men, for the most part elderly men, who are, as is well known, prevailingly of a conservative temper in all cultural matters, and more especially as touches those institutions that bear on business affairs.

A more far-reaching department of the educational system, though not technically rated as such, is the periodical press, both newspapers and magazines. This is a field of business enterprise, and business principles may be expected to work more consistently and to a more unqualified