The bulk of the community derives no direct benefit from
them at all. Harvard, for instance, has an endowment of about five
million dollars, we believe, and the total number of the students is
only 1,200, while the population of the State of Massachusetts is
1,500,000, so that, even supposing all the students to come from
Massachusetts, which they do not, less than one person in every
thousand profits by the university.
The same story might be told of Yale or any other college.
Considered as what are called popular institutions--that is,
institutions from which everybody can or does derive some
calculable, palpable benefit--the universities of this and every
other country are useless, and there ought on this theory to be a
prodigious "outcry" against them, and they ought, on the principle
of equality, if allowed to exist at all, to be allowed to exist only
on condition that they will give a degree, or at least offer an
education, to every male citizen of sound mind. But nobody takes
this view of them.
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