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From: dean@violet.berkeley.edu.UUCP
Newsgroups: sci.misc
Subject: Re: the trouble with universities
Message-ID: <2615@jade.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Thu, 26-Feb-87 00:17:20 EST
Article-I.D.: jade.2615
Posted: Thu Feb 26 00:17:20 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 28-Feb-87 03:17:19 EST
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Reply-To: dean@violet.berkeley.edu (Dean Pentcheff)
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Organization: University of California, Berkeley   Department of Zoology
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Summary: Quoted letter.

Relevant to the topic at hand.  You may not agree with it, but it raises
interesting concerns.

Quoted without permission from the New York Times "Letters" section, 2/23/87:
------------------------------------------------
College, Unfortunately, Is Nothing But a Product
------------------------------------------------
To the Editor:
	In 1914, John Alexander Smith, professor of moral philosopy at
Oxford University, told the members of the incoming class that if they
were diligent in their studies they could, at the end of their time
there, expect to have absolutely no useful knowledge.  They could,
however, expect to be able to recognize when a man is talking rot.
	The attitude was unremarkable.  College was then a haven for the
small minority of people who were truly seeking wisdom....  [Today,] Kids
go to college because Wall Street, itself gulled, will not hire the
undocumented tyro.
	This is silly, since compared with a period of apprenticeship, a
dose of amition and luck, a degree is not so useful in business....
	Mortimer Adler once asked a group of students how many of them,
were they to be guaranteed enough money to be comfortable for the rest
of their lives, would not return to class the following day.  Every hand
shot up.  He told them they might as well leave right away, since they
were wasting their own time and his.
	College not a product?  College is nothing but a product.  Were
it otherwise, Plato, Cicero and "all that" would not be at a discount,
and the higher education would be recognized as an avocation for driven
eccentrics rather than a way station for unimaginative children.

Bruce Allen
Kings Point, L.I., Feb 13, 1987

-Dean	(dean@violet.berkeley.edu)