4 April 2015 A.D. The End of the University
4 April 2015 A.D. The End of the University Scruton, Roger. “The End of the University.” First Things. Apr 2015. http://www.firstthings.com/article/2015/04/the-end-of-the-university . Accessed 4 Apr 2015. Universities exist to provide students with the knowledge, skills, and culture that will prepare them for life, while enhancing the intellectual capital upon which we all depend. Evidently the two purposes are distinct. One concerns the growth of the individual, the other our shared need for knowledge. But they are also intertwined, so that damage to the one purpose is damage to the other. That is what we are now seeing, as our universities increasingly turn against the culture that created them, withholding it from the young. The years spent at university belong with the rites of initiation studied by the Victorian anthropologists, in which those born into the tribe assume the burden of perpetuating it. If we lose sight of this, it seems to me, then we are in ...