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What is the worth of study in university? The idea today seems in the main unconsciously held and so to be possible for us only to presume or at best infer from the scarce fragments observed here and there in the attitudes of professors and students; they seem to find the worth especially of social science in its practical utility. Practical utility here does not mean of course that of improving society supposedly based on the pursuit of truth, but that of managing life for one's own occupational promotion. The academic view of study once dominant in Japan, which ascribed value of science to its searching truth and assisting social progress, was proclaimed loudly by Marxist to be the attribute solely of Marxism, and then experienced uttermost decline with the sudden collapse of the doctrine as if it were the genuine part of this; its place is taken now by the utility view in the vulgar meaning observed above. The process of this transition, in fact, needed half a century. As far as the period of Post World War II concerns, it began eminently with the amazing increase in number of university students, in accordance with the rapid economic development since the declaration of 'Double Income Policy' by Ikeda Cabinet. Most students thus increased did not wanted study for truth and contribution to social progress, but that for their own promotion in their career. To them the permission to enter university was (and is much more now) the certificate to share in the higher and profitable positions in society, though at the same time they still consiously or unconscirsly retained in them a part of that study view of truth and social development with considerable, at the same time diminishing, respet for professors asserting this. However, 'University Tumult', the last flame of the Post War Students' Movement in Japan, made them despise the 'incompetent' (in the meaning of course of violence) professors and so the view of searching truth and assisting social progress. After that, their evaluation of universities expressed and formulated simply in so called 'difficulty grade' of entrance examination, and it began to influence directly the quality of university students so that professors were necessitated to take account of it as far as they wanted to secure the quality of their university students. And the expansion of the candidates forced the examination to change from that suited to investigate the ability enough for study in university, which demanded, on the one hand, of them to develop thier emotional and intellectual faculty, on the other, of professors to spend too much time and toil, to that suited only to see the memorizing and calculating ability, which asked the candidates to be accustomed to use only a peculiar piece of their ability and the professors little time and endurnce; the effect is that substantial lack of the faculty on the side students, which could sustain the study for truth and social improvement. 'The First Stage Entrance Examination in Common' authorized this decidedly. Some of the students thus educated became professors and some, who experienced U. S. education of graduate school, imported directly the pragmatism of recent years and made this prevail here in Japan appreciating various pieces of social technologies and these applications as the best of the study in university. This view has swelled over and swallowed all the universties in Japan. The state as this has many causes, and one of them, seated deeply and affected considerably others, may be the ever growing influence of the business world towards universtiy. Today, university looks like a servant of the business: in the educational sphere a mere organ for supplying human resources to this; in the research sphere a business itself finding and developing seeds for profit. Does the domination of the study view of pragmatism as scuh mean the elimination, because of the error and incompetence, of that of truth and bettering society? No! It is not so. The present situation is not the result of the criticism of the old view but rather of the ever growing egotism of business and of the political pressure of A mericanism named 'Globalism'. To prove the validity and fertility of the view should be our duty.
2003-12-25

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笠原俊彦
長崎大学経済学部

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