colleges-and-universities

"I think [alternative rock becoming mainstream] made it worse [for bands]. It made it such big business. Made it harder to get played on most alternative stations. There was a lot of money to be made and they got a lot more focused and they started narrowing down their playlist to like twenty songs."

"Soon after punk hit, intense, speed-driven hardcore bands formed in California and New York and DC, and their fans built an infrastructure — a coast-to-coast network of clubs, mimeographed fanzines, college radio stations, record shops, and small record labels that would make indie possible. Some of them (Camper Van Beethoven, Pixies) sounded like the indie that would come after; some of them (Black Flag) didn’t. But the movement — whether called alternative rock, modern rock, college radio, or whatever — was now grounded."

"Fair Padua, nursery of arts."

"To watch a master of physical diagnosis in the execution of a complete physical examination is something of an aesthetic experience, rather like observing a great ballet dancer or a concert cellist."

"...doing that one full and complete...[practice physical] exam was amazing. It was like making pottery or woodworking-- detailed, precise, careful. It was my first inkling that medicine was not only a science but also a craft. Everything mattered, everything was important and told a story. The patient's hands-- their warmth and dryness or cold and wetness; their nails, palms, pulse; the texture of their skin and hair; the presence or absence of lymph nodes-- and that was just up to the elbow."

"[The master to the student:] I've a gift of my own, as strong as yours... I can detect a man in whom there may be a physician, and in you I feel a need to heal, so strong that it burns."

"[The student]...sighed ruefully, "I may end up no physician, for I am not a scholar".... [The master:] "Then you must build harder and faster than the others.""

"[The medical student to the master, in 11th century Persia:] But if you were able to look within the center of the earth, would you? [The master:] Of course! [The student:] Yet you are able to peer inside the human body, but you do not [due to restrictions against human dissection]."

"To study the phenomena of disease without books is to sail an uncharted sea, while to study books without patients is not to go to sea at all."

"Except it be a lover, no one is more interesting as an object of study than a student."

"Everywhere now the medical student is welcomed as an honored member of the guild. There was a time, I confess, and it is within the memory of some of us, when, like Falstaff, he was given to "taverns and sack [sherry] and wine and methelgins [mead], and to drinkings and swearings and starings, pribbles and prattles"; but all that has changed with the curriculum."

"Universities, like cathedrals and parliaments, are a product of the Middle Ages."

"It is...in institutions that the [medieval] university tradition is most direct.... the notion of a curriculum of study...tested by examination and leading to a degree, as well as many of the degrees themselves-- bachelor, as a stage toward the mastership, master, doctor, in arts, law, medicine, and theology."

"[Regarding the registration of Vesalius into medical school in the year 1533] Vesalius matriculated in the medical school...He was now termed a philiater, one devoted to medicine."

""Mr. Rapp [a medical student], what is the difference between an element and a compound body?" Mr. Rapp is again obliged to confess his ignorance. "A compound body is composed of two or more elements," says the grinder, "in various proportions. Give me an example, Mr. Jones." [A "grinder" is an outdated term for a person who coaches students for an upcoming examination.] "Half-and-half is a compound body, composed of the two elements, ale and porter, the proportion of the porter increasing in an inverse ratio to the respectability of the public-house you get it from," replies Mr. Jones."

"The white coats...were symbol and proof that medicine was a guild, with a strict hierarchy, with steps up the stairway that you took not when you felt you were ready, but when you were permitted....You had to learn what was necessary, as decided by those who went before you, those who knew. You had to go up the steps, learn in order, no skipping, slow."

"[An account of an American doctor who "went back to medical school" in Paris in the year 1836:] I get up in the morning at six o'clock and am at La Charité [hospital] by seven, follow Velpeau until eight, see him operate and lecture until half after nine, breakfast at ten at a café. At eleven I am at a school of practical anatomy, where I dissect until two. Then I attend a class of practical surgery until three; then hear Broussais and Andral until five; then dine. At seven I attend Helmagrande's class of midwifery, which lasts until nine; then I come to my room and read or write until eleven, when I retire."

"The hardest conviction to get into the mind of a beginner is that the education upon which he is engaged is not a college course, not a medical course, but a life course, for which the work of a few years under teachers is but a preparation."

"I didn't like university life much at Bologna. The subjects I studied - economics and business administration - didn't interest me. I wanted to make films. I was glad when I was graduated. Yet it's odd; on graduation day, I was overcome with a terrible sadness. I realized that my youth was over and now the struggle had begun."

"There is also much frustration about the supposed severe levels of white supremacy at this university. Yet, we are having this discussion on the campus of a university with a black vice-rector and a black rector and a black chancellor, in a municipal ward that has a black councillor, in a city with a black mayor in a province with a black premier, in a country with a black deputy-president and a black president. Despite this, we are somehow discussing how white people control everything."

"Let us leave nothing unmoved that will help us to become a independent people, and nothing more will be done than to ensure that our children receive a good education."

"The Government (Volksraad) of the Orange Free State, which is much smaller than that of the other states, are determined to uplift the standard of education in the Orange Free State to the same level of other wealthier states."

"We should steadily and surely strive to this goal, because if we educate the children of South Africa our influence shall reach far and wide, this influence shall bring about a unification and that is undoubtedly the calling of the Orange Free State."

"I came 8 000 miles to say, thank you, Vrystaat!"

"We have a very serious problem with our examination standards at both primary and high school. We also have a collapse of moral standards in society in general"

"The special task team found that there can be no historical interpretation of the statue and the space around it without relocation. This finding is supported by the university’s executive management. Members of the special task team will form part of the reconfiguration process"

"No hardworking student should be stuck in the red. We’ve already reduced student loan payments to 10 percent of a borrower’s income. And that's good. But now, we’ve actually got to cut the cost of college. (Applause.) Providing two years of community college at no cost for every responsible student is one of the best ways to do that, and I’m going to keep fighting to get that started this year."

"I think, as well (on what might be considered the leftish side), that the incremental remake of university administrations into analogues of private corporations is a mistake. I think that the science of management is a pseudo-discipline. I believe that government can, sometimes, be a force for good, as well as the necessary arbiter of a small set of necessary rules. Nonetheless, I do not understand why our society is providing public funding to institutions and educators whose stated, conscious, and explicit aim is the demolition of the culture that supports them. Such people have a perfect right to their opinions and actions, if they remain lawful. But they have no reasonable claim to public funding. If radical right-wingers were receiving state funding for political operations disguised as university courses, as radical left-wingers clearly are, the uproar from progressives across North America would be deafening."

"Most Americans are not aware how morally and intellectually destructive American colleges — and, increasingly, high schools and even elementary schools — have become. So, they spend tens of thousands after-tax dollars to send their sons and daughters to college."

"But today, to send your child to college is to play Russian roulette with their values. There is a good chance your child will return from college alienated from you, from America, from Western civilization and from whatever expression of any Bible-based religion in which you raised your child."

"And the people in the houses All went to the university Where they were put in boxes And they came out all the same"

"Colleges aren’t about training kids for the real world, or teaching them significant modes of thinking, or examining timeless truths. Universities aren’t about skill sets, either – at least in the humanities. They’re about two things: credentialism and social connections."

"In our society, there is an easy way to be perceived as intellectually meritorious: point to your degree. Those with a college degree all-too-often sneer at those without one, as though lack of a college degree were an indicator of innate ability or future lack of success. That simply isn’t true."

"The university system in 2014, it's like the Catholic Church circa 1514... You have this priestly class of professors that doesn't do very much work; people are buying indulgences in the form of amassing enormous debt for the sort of the secular salvation that a diploma represents. And what I think is also similar to the 16th century is that the Reformation will come largely from the outside."

"Nothing is more certain than that whatever has to court public favor for its support will sooner or later be prostituted to utilitarian ends. The educational institutions of the United States afford a striking demonstration of this truth. Virtually without exception, liberal education, that is to say, education centered about ideas and ideals, has fared best in those institutions which draw their income from private sources. They have been able … to insist that education be not entirely a means for breadwinning. This means that they have been relatively free to promote pure knowledge and the training of the mind. … In state institutions, always at the mercy of elected bodies and of the public generally, and under obligation to show practical fruits for their expenditure of money, the movement toward specialism and vocationalism has been irresistible. They have never been able to say that they will do what they will with their own because their own is not private. It seems fair to say that the opposite of the private is the prostitute."

"It is, Sir, as I have said, a small college. And yet there are those who love it!"

"I shall be as tender of the privileges of the University of Oxford as any man living, having the greatest veneration for that learned body."

"When we see a woman bartering beauty for gold, we look upon such a one as no other than a common prostitute; but she who rewards the passion of some worthy youth with it, gains at the same time our approbation and esteem. It is the very same with philosophy: he who sets it forth for public sale, to be disposed of to the highest bidder, is a sophist, a public prostitute."

"To offer one’s beauty for money to all comers is called prostitution. … So is it with wisdom. Those who offer it to all comers for money are known as sophists, prostitutors of wisdom."

"On too many campuses, a new attitude about due process—and the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty—has taken hold, one that echoes the infamous logic of Edwin Meese, who served in Ronald Reagan’s administration as attorney general, in his argument against the Miranda warning. “The thing is,” Meese said, “you don’t have many suspects who are innocent of a crime. That’s contradictory. If a person is innocent of a crime, then he is not a suspect.” There is no doubt that until recently, many women’s claims of sexual assault were reflexively and widely disregarded—or that many still are in some quarters. (One need look no further than the many derogatory responses received by the women who came forward last year to accuse then-candidate Donald Trump of sexual violations.) Action to redress that problem was—and is—fully warranted. But many of the remedies that have been pushed on campus in recent years are unjust to men, infantilize women, and ultimately undermine the legitimacy of the fight against sexual violence. Severe restrictions were placed on the ability of the accused to question the account of the accuser, in order to prevent intimidation or trauma. Eventually the administration praised a “single investigator” model, whereby the school appoints a staff member to act as detective, prosecutor, judge, and jury. The letter defined sexual violence requiring university investigation broadly to include “rape, sexual assault, sexual battery, and sexual coercion,” with no definitions provided. It also characterized sexually harassing behavior as “any unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature,” including remarks. Schools were told to investigate any reports of possible sexual misconduct, including those that came from a third party and those in which the alleged victim refused to cooperate. (Paradoxically, they were also told to defer to alleged victims’ wishes, creating no small amount of confusion among administrators.)"

"GEOFFREY STONE, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, and its former dean, told me he believes that the integrity of the legal system requires rules designed to prevent innocent people from being punished, and that these same principles should apply on campus. But he is concerned that severe sanctions are being imposed without the necessary protections for the accused. As he wrote in HuffPost, “For a college or university to expel a student for sexual assault is a matter of grave consequence both for the institution and for the student. Such an expulsion will haunt the student for the rest of his days, especially in the world of the Internet. Indeed, it may well destroy his chosen career prospects.”"

"As Jeannie Suk Gersen and her husband and Harvard Law School colleague, Jacob Gersen, wrote last year in a California Law Review article, “The Sex Bureaucracy,” the “conduct classified as illegal” on college campuses “has grown substantially, and indeed, it plausibly covers almost all sex students are having today.”"

"There are no national data that let us know the prevalence of third-party reports, but they appear to be a significant source of allegations. The University of Michigan’s most recent “Student Sexual Misconduct Annual Report” says that the school’s Office for Institutional Equity “often receives complaints about incidents from third parties.” Yale releases a semiannual report of all possible sexual-assault and harassment complaints. Its report for the latter half of 2015 included a new category: third-party reports in which the alleged victim, after being contacted by the Title IX office, refused to cooperate. These cases made up more than 30 percent of all undergraduate assault allegations."

"And while some college administrators express concern about due process, that concern does not always appear to be top of mind, even though lawsuits are piling up. Some 170 suits about unfair treatment have been filed by accused students over the past several years. As K. C. Johnson, the co-author, with Stuart Taylor Jr., of the recent book The Campus Rape Frenzy, notes, at least 60 have so far resulted in findings favorable to them. The National Center for Higher Education Risk Management, one of the country’s largest higher-education law firms and consulting practices specializing in Title IX, recently released a white paper, “Due Process and the Sex Police.” It noted that higher-education institutions are “losing case after case in federal court on what should be very basic due process protections. Never before have colleges been losing more cases than they are winning, but that is the trend as we write this.” The paper warned that at some colleges, “overzealousness to impose sexual correctness”—including the idea that anything less than “utopian” sex is punishable—“is causing a backlash that is going to set back the entire consent movement.”"

"America’s top universities should abandon their long misadventure into politics, retrain their gaze on their core strengths and rebuild their reputations as centers of research and learning"

"A troubling paradox within the activist community, and increasingly among administrators, is the belief that while women who make a complaint should be given the strong benefit of the doubt, women who deny they were assaulted should not necessarily be believed. The rules at many schools, created in response to federal directives, require employees (except those covered by confidentiality protections, such as health-care providers) to report to the Title IX office any instance of possible sexual assault or harassment of which they become aware. One result is that offhand remarks, rumors, and the inferences drawn by observers of ambiguous interactions can trigger investigations; sometimes these are not halted even when the alleged victim denies that an assault occurred."

"Enter by this gateway and seek the way of honor, the light of truth, the will to work for men."

"The university, in a society ruled by public opinion, was to have been an island of intellectual freedom where all views were investigated without restriction. … But by consenting to play an active or “positive,” a participatory role in society, the university has become inundated and saturated with the backflow of society’s “problems.” Preoccupied with questions of Health, Sex, Race, War, academics make their reputations and their fortunes. … Any proposed reforms of liberal education which might bring the university into conflict with the whole of the U.S.A. are unthinkable. Increasingly, the people “inside” are identical in their appetites and motives with the people “outside” the university."

"By making social hierarchies and the reproduction of these hierarchies appear based upon the hierarchy of ‘gifts’, merits, or skill established and ratified by its sanctions, or, in a word, by converting social hierarchies into academic hierarchies, the educational system fulfils a function of legitimation which is more and more necessary to the perpetuation of the ‘social order’ as the evolution of the power relationship between classes tends more completely to exclude the imposition of a hierarchy based upon the crude and ruthless affirmation of the power relationship."

"You send your kids off to college. They love you. You walk away with a Cornell mom T-shirt. You are walking away going this is great, and come Thanksgiving, your kid tells you that you are an imperialist and a racist and a homophobe. That is not worth $120,000."