American universities are organized on the principle of the nuclear rather than the extended family. Graduate students are grimly trained to be technicians rather than connoisseurs. The old German style of universal scholarship has gone.
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No sovereign, no court, no personal loyalty, no aristocracy, no church, no clergy, no army, no diplomatic service, no country gentlemen, no palaces, no castles, nor manors, nor old country-houses, nor parsonages, nor thatched cottages nor ivied ruins; no cathedrals, nor abbeys, nor little Norman churches; no great Universities nor public schools -- no Oxford, nor Eton, nor Harrow; no literature, no novels, no museums, no pictures, no political society, no sporting class -- no Epsom nor Ascot! Some such list as that might be drawn up of the absent things in American life.
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A society that thinks the choice between ways of living is just a choice between equally eligible 'lifestyles' turns universities into academic cafeterias offering junk food for the mind.
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Our major universities are now stuck with an army of pedestrian, toadying careerists, Fifties types who wave around Sixties banners to conceal their record of ruthless, beaver-like tunneling to the top.
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Why do so many young people literally die to belong to fraternities, sororities, and other college social organizations? The answer is complicated, but here is a starting point: Ever since the medieval universities were founded, young people have done whatever it takes to gain acceptance, to break with their past lives, to achieve a sense of power, to carve out a society of their own that isn't quite what their tutors and teachers had in mind. In the United States, hazing and drinking have been endemic since colonial days.
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In universities and intellectual circles, academics can guarantee themselves popularity -- or, which is just as satisfying, unpopularity -- by being opinionated rather than by being learned.
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Universities should be safe havens where ruthless examination of realities will not be distorted by the aim to please or inhibited by the risk of displeasure.
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America's founding fathers did not intend to take religion out of education. Many of the nation's greatest universities were founded by evangelists and religious leaders; but many of these have lost the founders concept and become secular institutions. Because of this attitude, secular education is stumbling and floundering.
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There is only one justification for universities, as distinguished from trade schools. They must be centers of criticism.
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It was completely 'guilty till proven innocent' instead of the other way around. It's a shame. . . . I've been reserving judgment until the trial. You'd think the administration at Duke, one of the finest universities in the country, would react the same way.
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In universities and intellectual circles, academics can guarantee themselves popularity-or, which is just as satisfying, unpopularity-by being opinionated rather than by being learned.
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Gowns, and pecuniary foundations, though of towns of gold, can never countervail the least sentence or syllable of wit. Forget this, and our A...
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The tendency to gather and to breed philosophers in universities does not belong to ages of free and humane reflection: it is scholastic and proper to the Middle Ages and to Germany.
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Universities are of course hostile to geniuses, which, seeing and using ways of their own, discredit the routine as churches and monasteries persecute youthful saints.
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Bookshops are universities anyone can enter.
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A metaphysician is one who, when you remark that twice two makes four, demands to know what you mean by twice, what by two, what by makes, and what by four. For asking such questions metaphysicians are supported in oriental luxury in the universities, and respected as educated and intelligent men.
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'You and I are being lied to by the animal research establishment when they tell us all this cruelty is 'necessary' for scientific research. We are being fed this lie by people who make a living of their practices behind closed doors at universities and scientific institutes: by people who are deeply interested in keeping things in this six-billion-a-year business just the way they are.'
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Colleges, in like manner, have their indispensable office,—to teach elements. But they can only highly serve us, when they aim not to drill,...
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To be sure, nothing is more important to the integrity of the universities than a rigorously enforced divorce from war-oriented research and all connected enterprises.
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Let's not burn the universities yet. After all, the damage they do might be worse.
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Universities incline wits to sophistry and affectation.
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One of the benefits of a college education is, to show the boy its little avail.
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Most subjects at universities are taught for no other purpose than that they may be re-taught when the students become teachers.
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