Wednesday 12 November 2008

Thinking For Yourself

An important academic study is to be published next year showing that American undergraduates' political beliefs are not in fact influenced by those of the people who teach them. It is beyond me how this would surprise anyone. But in any case, so what if there were such influence? A university is not a school. It is an adult community.

The problem, which we will soon experience over here (if we are not already doing so), is the payment of the fees by the students' parents, who then rightly expect some sort of say over what they are buying, often having saved for 20 years or more for the purpose.

They do not have the simple public funding of degrees (conferring public responsibilities on graduates) in America for the same reason that we no longer have it here, namely that they have, as we now have, far too many universities, with far too many people at them. And look at the result.

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