From James Madison's Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention, September 14, 1787:
Mr. MADISON & Mr. PINKNEY then moved to insert in the list of powers vested in Congress a power-"to establish an University, in which no preferences or distinctions should be allowed on account of Religion."
Mr. WILSON supported the motion
Mr. Govr. MORRIS. It is not necessary. The exclusive power at the Seat of Government, will reach the object.
On the question
N. H. no. Mas. no. Cont. divd. Dr. Johnson ay. Mr. Sherman no. N. J. no. Pa. ay. Del. no. Md. no. Va. ay. N. C. ay. S. C. ay. Geo. no
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/convention/debates/0914.html
***
Suppose the Madison-Pinckney resolution, instead of losing (6 - 4 - 1), had passed. In the first half century of the republic (and later) many distinguished Americans, including Presidents George Washington and John Quincy Adams, urged Congress to establish a national university to be located in Washington, DC. The chief objection raised by the opponents of the idea (at least after 1800) was that it was allegedly unconstitutional. The Jeffersonians--including Madison [1]--and later Jacksonians, who raised this argument interpreted the "general welfare" clause as only authorizing Congress to tax and spend for objects specified elsewhere in the Constitution. They also evidently believed that using Congress' power to legislate for the District of Columbia as a basis for establishing a national university there was stretching things a bit--even though Gouverneur Morris had opposed Madison's proposal as unnecessary precisely because he thought that the power over the District was sufficient to accomplish Madison's objective. OTOH, Roger Sherman was later to claim "that a proposition to vest Congress with power to establish a National University was made in the General Convention; but it was negatived. It was thought sufficient that this power should be exercised by the States in their separate capacity."
http://books.google.com/books?id=tuKFAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA362
Even with the constitutional uncertainties, the university was almost created: "In 1796, prodded by Washington's expressed wishes and by the urgings of the Commissioners of the Federal District, Congress considered the creation of machinery to set a national university in motion. The proposed legislation lost by a single vote, defeated as much by the failure of its proponents to provide a comprehensive working plan as by the fear of many congressmen that costs would be overwhelming and that the result might be an 'empty house,' standing in mute testimony to the profligate generosity of a gullible legislature...
"But the Jeffersonian era--the time that might have proved most propitious for the national university--was just ahead....The advocates in this era would have relied on the pursuit of knowledge, particularly scientific research, to lead seekers to an understanding of republicanism and a reverence for it.
"Aided by President Thomas Jefferson, the poet-diplomat Joel Barlow expounded this principle in his *Prospectus of a National Institution to be Established in the United States.* In 1806 a bill based on Barlow's prospectus was introduced in the Senate, where it failed to receive serious consideration. Ironically, Jefferson's own doubts about the constitutionality of a national university probably had much to do with its defeat. James Madison, his successor as president of the United States, had similar misgivings; unfortunately for the cause of the university, neither he nor Jefferson made an effort to marshal the support needed to secure a constitutional amendment.
"The charge of unconstitutionality was to be heard repeatedly from 1828 to the post-Civil War era, the next major phase in the history of the movement. When the eccentric English chemist, James Smithson, bequeathed property worth almost $500,00 to the United states government for a research institution in Washington, it seemed for a time that the money would be used to create a national university. but formidable opposition emerged when, in 1846, Congress opened debate on how to dispose of the bequest. Eventually, an institution devoted solely to research--the Smithsonian--was authorized by a vote fo 85 to 76." David L. Madsen, "The University of the United States: A Durable Dream," Journal of Higher Education, Vol. 33, No. 7 (Oct., 1962), pp. 353-360. (Unfortunately, this article at
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-1546(196210)33:7<353:TUOTUS>2.0.CO;2-E is available online only for subscribers.)
Madsen goes on to discuss the post-Civil War advocacy of the idea by John W. Hoyt and others (as he notes, "the vigor with which the private university presidents opposed Hoyt's efforts suggests their fear that Congress might be persuaded to create an institution that would be a formidable rival for students, faculties, and funds.") Indeed, as late as 1962, while praising the Kennedy administration's "efforts to bring culture to the capital," Madsen laments "the lack of a really first-rate graduate university in the nation's capital" and concludes that "The revival of interest in academic, governmental, and philanthropic circles suggests that the final chapter in the history of the national university has not yet been written. Who can tell? Perhaps in our own day the dream of so many American educators, statesmen, and private citizens will come to fulfillment in a University of the United States."
A few observations on this subject:
(1) Given that Congress almost authorized such a university even when its constitutionality was in doubt, it may seem likely it would have authorized one had the constitutional power been clear. Yet one must be cautious here, because constitutionality was not the only problem, and one gets the feeling that some of the opponents of the university simply used the constitutional question as an excuse, and would have found another one if necessary. (Indeed, if everyone agreed that the idea itself was good, and that the only problem was whether the federal government was constitutionally authorized to provide for it, a constitutional amendment to clarify the matter would seem an easy solution.) For example, Martin Trow notes that George Washington's proposals sounded to members of Congress, "as to us, as a way of training an educationally qualified civil service. That is the last thing those early congressmen wanted; they wanted a weak central government and a spoils systems..."
http://cshe.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/shared/publications/docs/ROP.Trow.Weakness.2.03.pdf
There were other objections as well. For example, after the War of 1812, the "Old Republicans" and later the Jacksonians attacked the Monroe and John Quincy Adams administrations for "extravagance" and urged "retrenchment" and economy in government, and spending money for a national university would be an easy target for such an economy drive. Universities, moreover, were still widely considered "aristocratic." And as Madsen notes (p. 360), there have been perennial problems with the idea:
"How should a national university be supported? By federal funds exclusively? Or by supplementary contributions from private donors and foundations? What method of control and supervision could be exerted to prevent it from becoming a pawn of partisan political maneuvers or a cat's-paw of demagogues who would seek to direct the course of national thought?" One might add that in the pre-ACW era, the slavery controversy could hardly leave the University of the United States untouched. One can imagine attempts by outraged Southerners and their "doughface" allies to oust professors accused of "insulting the South" and advocating abolitionism and black equality in what was after all a slaveholding district. (In turn, abolitionists would demand that the University admit African American students.) And one can also imagine the later attacks on the University for harboring "pro-German" professors during World War I and "Bolsheviks" or "Communists" thereafter...
(2) "During Washington's administration a unique solution to the problem of organizing a university was suggested by the Swiss scientist, A. M. d'Ivernois, who proposed that the faculty of the University of Geneva, disrupted by war and revolution, be invited to emigrate to the United States. Although John Adams and Thomas Jefferson commended the idea, Washington judged it impractical and unwise. Support for a national university was still unorganized, and a firm commitment to the Geneva faculty could not be given at that time. He was fearful, besides, of incurring popular wrath over what could easily have been interpreted as an 'aristocratic' move, and one that might operate to the exclusion of worthy professors from other European universities. There were other considerations: How many of the Geneva men spoke English? Could their moral character be vouched for? Most important, were their political views sympathetic to the aims of the young republic?" Madsen, p. 355.
(3) Elkins and McKitrick in *The Age of Federalism*, p. 192, note that the whole question of a national university might have been seen in a different light had the capital remained at New York (which as they note was actually more "central" than Washington in the sense that it could more easily be reached *even from the South* than Washington could):
"One of George Washington's fondest hopes for his federal seat was a national university. The hope was shared by Thomas Jefferson, who had the happy thought that the entire faculty of the University of Geneva might be brought over and reinstalled on the banks of the Potomac. Nothing ever came of these fancies, nor was anything resembling higher education to appear in Washington for a long time to come. In New York on May 6, 1789, a week after his inauguration, President Washington attended the annual commencement of Columbia College, where his stepson had once studied briefly but which was not at that time an institution of great consequence. But it had at least once thing upon which futures are built, a prior existence. It already had a tradition of sorts that went back thirty-five years, a small endowment from Trinity Church and other sources, and among its alumni were men of some influence. They included the Chief Justice, the Secretary of the Treasury, the delegate who had penned the United States Constitution, and the Chancellor of the State of New York. If the support given in the 1790s by the city and state, which was not inconsiderable, had been continued into the nineteenth century, and if to this had been added no more than the moral support of the federal government, Columbia might indeed have become a national university, and one of the world's leading centers of learning, well before it in fact did."
http://books.google.com/books?id=9RyG29bER3QC&pg=PA192
(In a footnote on p. 791, Elkins and McKitrick add that "the University of Geneva scheme was not as harebrained as it might seem--or rather would not have been, had the geographical context for it not been what it was. A new and hostile political regime in the city of Geneva had placed the entire faculty in jeopardy, and it was one of their own spokesmen, Francois d'Ivernois, who in 1794 broached to Jefferson the idea of their migrating to America as a body if they could be assured of the necessary support there. But Jefferson's soundings, both in the Virginia legislature and with Washington himself, made it starkly evident that no such support was conceivable, facilities for accommodating them in the Potomac area being non-existent and the youth of that region being in no way prepared to receive the caliber of instruction offered by that learned company. The case might have turned out quite differently had it been enacted in an urban setting such as New York."
http://books.google.com/books?id=9RyG29bER3QC&pg=PA791)
(4) For an argument that it was a Good Thing that the drive for a University of the United States failed, see Martin Trow, "In Praise of Weakness: Chartering, the University of the United States, and Dartmouth College."
http://cshe.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/shared/publications/docs/ROP.Trow.Weakness.2.03.pdf
"Despite efforts to bring the issue back to the Congress by all five of Washington's successors right up to Andrew Jackson,8 who of course would not hear of it, a national university was never created. While suggestions to create a University of the United States were not accompanied by proposals to give it a monopoly over higher degrees, it would surely have been, in colonial terms, 'the Government's university,' and as such would have had profound effects on all of American higher education. Its standards of entry, curricula, educational philosophies, and forms of instruction would have provided models for every college or 'seminary' which aspired to send some of its graduates to the university in the Capitol. A University of the United States might well have established national academic standards for the bachelor's degree, for the qualifications of faculty, even conceivably for entry to higher education, and in these ways have greatly influenced the character and curriculum of secondary feeder schools. Eventually a national university might have shaped and constrained the growth of graduate education and research universities. It would surely have been the central instrument of Federal government policy regarding higher education in the Union. Therefore the defeat of the idea of a University of the United States was arguably the most important policy decision affecting the role of central government in American higher education, determining or at least conditioning the character of all future Federal government interventions.
"Like a character in a zombie movie, you couldn't kill the idea--it kept coming back to life throughout the century...
"The failure of the University of the United States and the success of Dartmouth College in its appeal to the Supreme Court were both victories for local initiative and for private entrepreneurship. The first of these set limits on the role of the federal government in shaping the character of the whole of American higher education; the second even sharper limits on the power of the state over private colleges. Together, these two events constituted a kind of charter for unrestrained individual and group initiative in the creation of colleges of all sizes, shapes and creeds. Almost any motive or combination of motives could bring a college into being between the Revolution and the Civil War; and thereafter its survival depended largely on its being able to secure support from a church, from wealthy benefactors, from student fees and even perhaps from the state. The colleges thus created were established relatively easily, but without guarantees of survival. And as a result, there arose a situation resembling the behavior of living organisms in an ecological system--competitive for resources, highly sensitive to the demands of the environment, and inclined, over time, through the ruthless process of natural selection, to be adaptive to those aspects of their environment that permitted their survival. Their environment also has included other colleges, and later, universities. So we see in this frog pond a set of mechanisms that we usually associate with the behavior of small entrepreneurs in a market: the anxious concern for what the market wants, the readiness to adapt to its apparent preferences, the effort to find a special place in that market through the marginal differentiation of the product, a readiness to enter into symbiotic or parasitic relationships with other producers for a portion of that market. That is, to this day, the world of American higher education...
"American policy for higher education over two centuries has in the short term subordinated issues of academic quality to the overriding consideration of institutional survival. That led in the short term to the proliferation of weak institutions, and, of necessity, to the diversification of the sources of institutional support. And that in turn has been a surer basis for the autonomy of our institutions than the pleasure of the state or of tradition. American doctrine in higher education, as in much else in its national life, has been, 'Something is better than nothing,' trusting to time to correct and improve the modest initial establishment."
Any thoughts?
[1] I was going to say that Madison's objection was "ironic" given his original advocacy of such a university at the Convention, but of course it wasn't; he had advocated a provision specifically authorizing Congress to create a university precisely because he doubted that it would otherwise have that power.