Give Power to the Students

Higher education in this country is in bad trouble. To begin with, it’s often no more than euphemistically “high.” Under suspicion come: the quality of education being received; and the academic qualifications of some students attending any given institution (i.e., some students now at Harvard—or Yale, or Stanford, or, especially, our politically captive state universities—do not belong there).

Second, and related, an inverse snobbishness has been attached to, with the consequence of blurring, the useful distinction between, on the one hand, liberal arts and higher scientific education (dub this scholarly education learning: for the sake and love of knowledge) and, on the other hand, that training or pragmatic education aimed primarily at developing the skills of self-support (trade and technical schools of all levels, from engineering and accounting down to simple mechanics); a distinction that ought to be encouraged instead of being wrapped in the wool of ideological egalitarianism, in order to avoid, equally, the cheapening of scholarly temples and the frustrations of students who are not equipped for that species of education; these factors both tending to exacerbate the currently explosive campus atmosphere.

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F. Reid Buckley

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Higher education in this country is in bad trouble. To begin with, it’s often no more than euphemistically “high.” Under suspicion come: the quality of education being received; and the academic qualifications of some students attending any given institution (i.e., some students now at Harvard—or Yale, or Stanford, or, especially, our politically captive state universities—do not belong there).

Second, and related, an inverse snobbishness has been attached to, with the consequence of blurring, the useful distinction between, on the one hand, liberal arts and higher scientific education (dub this scholarly education learning: for the sake and love of knowledge) and, on the other hand, that training or pragmatic education aimed primarily at developing the skills of self-support (trade and technical schools of all levels, from engineering and accounting down to simple mechanics); a distinction that ought to be encouraged instead of being wrapped in the wool of ideological egalitarianism, in order to avoid, equally, the cheapening of scholarly temples and the frustrations of students who are not equipped for that species of education; these factors both tending to exacerbate the currently explosive campus atmosphere.