斯蒂格勒(George J. Stigler, 1911-1991)是1982年经济学Nobel奖得主，其回忆录只有两百多页，而且是那种海外很少见的小开本。这与经济学名家Friedman (1912-2006)或者货币操控者Greenspan (1926-)那般鸿篇巨制的自传截然不同。他不像Friedman或Greenspan那样长寿，是否与回忆录写得太短有关？该回忆录初版于1988年，我看的是2003年重印的版本。似乎是完全重印，里面的语法错误都没有改正。

虽然我有不信任不长寿学者的偏见，但Stigler可以算个例外。向来喜欢阅读Stigler比较通俗的书，如《知识分子与市场》和《经济学家与说教者》。既赞赏他的观点，也欣赏他的写作风格。该回忆录篇幅虽小，却字字珠玑，我读后受启发良多。关于大学、学者、学术研究、经济学等诸多方面，作者在似乎信手写来的文字中就处处闪耀着真知灼见的思想火花。这其实也是通例。任何行当的顶尖专家，其实都是思想家。反而是以有思想自诩的人，往往不仅没有专长其实也没有什么真正的思想。在我看来，没有思想不会是学问大家，没有学问更成不了思想家。旧话“不通一技莫谈艺”或许也是这个意思。回忆录原文英文抄录，有些省略号是我所加。中文都是我的随感、概括和解释。

Stigler对大学教育深刻的洞见，简单说，大学就是大家一起学。现在似乎已经是高校中的常识。学生们在朝夕相处间互相学习。“I am convinced that at least half of what one learns at a college or university is learned from fellow students. They live together and they argue among themselves with a vigor and candor that are inappropriate in discussions with faculty members, even tolerant ones. If one could attract good students without a good faculy, one could run a fine university very economically. (p. 26)”这也说明了明星学者、大牌教授的实际作用，只是吸引学生，而非教育学生。因此，教师对学校真正的贡献就是自己成名成家，学校也会对真正的贡献给予实际的激励。有些学校的管理者任性想另辟蹊径，迟早会付出毕业生质量下降的代价。只是这种代价显现比较慢，毕竟品牌的改变非一朝一夕。

上述洞见的逻辑推论就是学术出身，特别是研究生院的出身的重要性。“The better students, moreover, are at the better schools. Most important scholars I have known received their training at major graduate schools, no matter how ordinary their undergraduate education. …in the leading graduate centers the students learn primarily from one another. They learn to impose higher standards upon themselves, both in the selection of problems to work on and in the adequacy of the solutions they provede to these problems. Bull sessions are more effective method of teaching and learning than classroom lectures or discussion. …I don’t think that the successes achieved by the graduates of the major schools are due simply to an old-boy network. (p. 36)” 当然，有恰当的指导还是必要。作者坦陈自己选课走过的弯路，过少的数学过多的所谓应用性课程，特别是本科生阶段。“Neither of my parents was well-educated, and that meant that the college courses I had taken were not only self-chosen but uninfluenced by a family culture such as that, for example, in which my sons were to be inevitably immersed. That absence meant a lot of foolish reading, an overemphasis on taking ‘applied’ courses…, and avoidance of mathematics. (p. 15)”

Stigler怀疑所谓大学的公益性质，毕竟大学中的各科学者都有自己的利益。“The public acknowkedged benevolence of academic institutions and personal is a source of wonder to me. The public’s attitude is illustrated by the fact that a federal judge may teach at a university, but is denied other forms of nonjudicial employment. Could this attitude have survived from the time when the chief function of colleges was to train young clergy? The attitude has survived the obvious self-serving eagerness of the physical scientists to spend half of the nation’s income if given the chance. The social scientists would settle for what the physical scientists are already getting, thus displaying proportionate greed. (p. 125)” 作者支持他上述观点的实例是其论证美国不缺科技人员的报告受到科技专家的阻拦而未能出版。他是通过研究收入水平变化发现这一点。“…there was no apparent shortage of scientific personnel in the Uinted States, judging from the fact that their earnings had not risen—and indeed, had fallen—relative to earnings in other professions.”因此，教授其实也是特殊利益集团中的一种。“…professors of engineering (or any other subject) are just as eager as dairy farmers to protect their own particular interests and that university presses have their moments of weakness. (p. 173)”特别是，“Professors—perhaps all nonporfessors also—love to parade their virtue. (p. 132)”，而且，教授自吹自擂的本事或许比其他行当的人更强。

Stigler注意到高校内各系科的水平参差不齐。“… the strongest departments usually contain at least one mediocrity; the strongest universities have at least one department of embarrassing quality; even the weakest institutions have seldom been able to avoid all strong appointments. (p. 30)”但他认为系科的水平取决于该系科的教师，“If the faculty wants high quality strongly enough, it can get it; and if it doesn’t care enough, it will settle for mediocrity. (p. 42)”这在需要实验的科学或工程学科未必适用。

Stigler认为大学中的人际关系比较简单。只要学有专长，行为举止的怪异可能被接受。“Uinversities cater to more highly specialized human beings than most other callings in life. If X is a great mathematician, he will be more or less silently endured even though he dresses like a hobo, has the teble manners of a chimpanzee, and also achieves new depths of incomprehensibility in teaching. His great strength is highly prized; his many faults are tolerated. (p. 31)”当然，这毕竟不是优点。对职业还是有消极影响。“I should not exaggerate the virtuouos single-mindedness of the university’s search for scholarly ability. Because of personal characteristics or behavior a naverick type like Thorstein Veblen or Abba Lerner found it much harder to receive the recognition his scientific abilities deserved. (p. 31)”只是大学比其他行当相对更能容忍性格怪异的学者。

Stigler把大学比喻为中世纪的修道院。“A university community has been an enclave in modern society, a group of teachers who live in important respects like members of a medi monastery. Surely not in vows of poverty and chastity, but nevertheless in a continouously intimate relationship in which nonacademicians play relatively unimportant and transitory roles. (p. 180)” 这种比喻更适合传统大学(例如传说中的西南联大)，其中教师间的关系更为密切。“When professors’ whole lives were spent in residence, so to speak, their important social as well as intellectual associations were university bound. Each professor knew most of his (and rarly, her) seniou colleagues, whatever their fields of study, and certainly he knew well the juniou colleagues wichin his department of study. Living in such constant intimacy, strong frienships and sometimes strong hostilities emerged. (p. 181)”这种环境里，学校里遇到对头是件很麻烦的事情。“Most people find close and continuous prosonal argument extremely debilitating, and perhaps unhappy marriage apart, most people find tolerable ways to escape such situations—changing jobs or places to live, for example. (p. 190)” 现在情况有了变化。学校更大、教授更多从事校外活动。“The situation has been changing in the great urban universities (and most great universities are in or near large metropolitan communities), as more and more of the professors are engaged in consultation and other outside activities, so that on any given week day possibly one-tenth of them are away form the university. Fifty years ago, that kind of external activity was most unusual among the professors; they spent their days and their nighyts in company with one another. (p. 180)”