while obtaining an education at public expense, to take
a minimum of economics with the civic aim even if he regards it as in
no way to his individual advantage or if it has in his case no direct
vocational bearings. In the privately endowed institutions this policy
may be less clearly formulated, but it is hardly less actively
practiced. Indeed, the privately endowed institutions have been
recognizing more and more fully their fiduciary and public nature.
Their public character is involved in their charters, in their
endowments, in their exemption from taxation, and in their essential
educational functions. The proudest pages in their history are those
recording their services to the state.[15]

=Evaluations of aims of teaching economics in college=

_The cultural aim_ in economics is to enable the student to comprehend
the industrial world about him. It aims to liberate the mind from
ignorance and prejudice, giving him insight into, and appreciation of,
the industrial world in which he lives. In this aspect it is a liberal
study. Economics produces in some measure this cultural result, even
when it is studied primarily with the vocational or with the civic
aim. But in vocational economics the choice of materials and the mode
of treatment are deliberately restricted by the immediate utilitarian
purposes; and in economic teaching with a civic purpose there is the
continual temptation to arouse the sympathies for an immediate social
program and to take a view limited by the contemporary popular
interest in specific proposals for reform. Economics at its highest
level is the search for truth. It has its place in any system of
higher education as has pure natural science, apart from any immediate
or so far as we may know, any possible, utilitarian application. It is
a disinterested philosophy of the industrial world. Though it may not
demonstrably be a _means_ to other useful things, it is itself a
worthy _end_. It helps to enrich the community with the immaterial
goods of the spirit, and it yields the psychic income of dignity and
joy in the individual and national life. And as a final appeal to any
doubting Philistine it may be said that just as the cult of pure
science is necessary to the continual and most effective progress in
the practical arts, so the study of economics on the philosophical
plane surely is necessary to the highest and most lasting results in
the application of economics to the arts and to civic lif