From the Academy

That college and university life nowadays leads many students into curious courses, I need not bother to demonstrate, friends. Whether (despite the earnest efforts of faculty radicals and liberals) college permanently affects the politics of college graduates may be another matter.

True, there exists a tendency for young people who enter college to break in some degree with the conventions and customs and beliefs of the communities from which they came; this is nothing new. They may return to those customs and conventions after leaving the campus and maturing. Various sociologists have been attempting to measure the degree of influence that college exerts nowadays upon students’ social and moral opinions. The most recent effort of this sort to be brought to my attention is a piece by Dr. Theodore M. Newcomb, professor of sociology and psychology at the University of Michigan (an institution where there occurs today a good deal of breaking of the cake of custom—-if you hadn’t heard). Dr. Newcomb, who is the author of a recent book called The Impact of College on Students, more recently wrote for the Center for Research in Learning and Teaching, at Ann Arbor, a memorandum entitled “What Happens to Students in College?”

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Russell Kirk

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That college and university life nowadays leads many students into curious courses, I need not bother to demonstrate, friends. Whether (despite the earnest efforts of faculty radicals and liberals) college permanently affects the politics of college graduates may be another matter.

True, there exists a tendency for young people who enter college to break in some degree with the conventions and customs and beliefs of the communities from which they came; this is nothing new. They may return to those customs and conventions after leaving the campus and maturing. Various sociologists have been attempting to measure the degree of influence that college exerts nowadays upon students’ social and moral opinions. The most recent effort of this sort to be brought to my attention is a piece by Dr. Theodore M. Newcomb, professor of sociology and psychology at the University of Michigan (an institution where there occurs today a good deal of breaking of the cake of custom—-if you hadn’t heard). Dr. Newcomb, who is the author of a recent book called The Impact of College on Students, more recently wrote for the Center for Research in Learning and Teaching, at Ann Arbor, a memorandum entitled “What Happens to Students in College?”