ladkin@kestrel.ARPA (Peter Ladkin) (03/05/86)
In article <582@hoptoad.uucp>, laura@hoptoad.uucp (Laura Creighton) writes: > In article <6470@cca.UUCP> g-rh@cca.UUCP (Richard Harter) writes: > >[..] The universities have always, from the > >founding of the first universities in the middle ages onward, served > >a dual function. One function is to serve a temple of wisdom -- a > >place where learning for the sake of learning is encouraged and > >supported. The other function is to prepare the young for their > >place in society. > > [...] As far as I know the ``other > function'' got into the game very late. From everything that I have > read it seems that universities were founded to be centres of wisdom. The following potted history is roughly right: In England, until the 19century, there were Oxford, Cambridge and Durham ( and London) which were centers of learning, and clerical training schools. In the 19thc, there was a vast increase in education and many others were established. The universities expanded to accomodate professional training (medics, lawyers, etc) so became partly vocational. In America, except for Yale and Harvard, things were similar. UC Berkeley had Mining, Engineering and Agriculture Schools, as did most of the land-grant colleges, thus starting out primarily as vocational institutions. So a) Most universities started out as being primarily professional and vocational training institutions, b) Older universities, of which there are very few, were centers of learning and clerical training, but added function during the watershed c) Most nowadays assume both functions So which purpose a university was founded to serve depends basically on when it was founded, and cannot reliably serve as a signal to its present functions. Peter Ladkin