in a cautious society and caution bred timidity…. That is whyrnthere was so much that was feminine in academic life, so muchrnjealousy, so much vanity, so much petty intrigue. The facultyrnseethed with gossip. Some of our best professors were so vainrnthat it was impossible to argue with them over any opinion theyrnhad made their own.” Not entirely different 100 years later,rnis it?rnThere are a few salutary phenomena. For the last 20 years atrnleast it appears that some of the best college and university studentsrnare not more “liberal” but more “conservative.” Also,rnsome of the best scholars, especially in the humanities, mayrnnow be found in small and generall}’ unreputed colleges andrnuniversities. Fifty years ago it was rare to find a hrst-rate man inrnKansas or Arkansas—this is no longer so today. There is also arnslow, but perhaps significant, seepage of conservative and neoconservativernscholars into higher academic positions, sometimesrneven in the so-called elite universities. Do not, however,rntake too much comfort from this latter phenomenon. A tendencyrnto ideologization, to professional and personal intrigues,rnto jealousy and exclusion, is as frequent among newfangledrnconservatives as among the most ossified old liberals. “Knowledgernwithout integrity,” Samuel Johnson wrote in Rasselas, “isrna dreadful thing.”rnThe greatest, and most enduring, American myth has beenrnEducation—ever since Emerson and perhaps even since CottonrnMather—often at the expense of the task of bringing uprncivilized children at home. In the 19th century, the most imposingrnbuilding in an American small town was a bank. In thern20th century, it was the public high school, where parents expectedrntheir offspring to learn how to drive and dance and learnrnthe rudiments of sexual contacts—in loco parentis. (This mayrnnow be a thing of the past, since so many of our public schoolsrnfulfill not much more than the function of custodial institutions.)rnBut in loco parentis now involves every educational institutionrnin America, from pre-kindergarten to graduaternschools. Education for learning—and, alas, often education ofrncivilized behavior—is cultivated in fewer and fewer homes.rnMost of the problems of American higher education are notrnonly inseparable from the problems of the dissolution ofrntraditional family and home life; they are the direct consequencesrnof it.rnThe problem of higher education in America is the problemrnof the degradation of democracy. The founders of this Republicrn(such as Jefferson) may have proceeded from an overestimationrnof the intelligence—including the learning capacity—ofrnthe people. But expectation is always preferable to distrust, asrneven gullibility may be preferable to cynicism. What has beenrnhappening in our “culture”—entertainment, television, indeedrnin all of our educational institutions—is a cynical underestimationrnof the intelligence, indeed of the learning capacity, of ourrnyoung people. The results are all around us. Just look at thernnames of the courses offered at some of our elite institutions.rnThis is not the place to illustrate, let alone list, the myriad imbecilitiesrnpracticed, taught, and institutionalized in some ofrnthese institutions during the last 30 years. Yet the prestige ofrnour elite institutions has not suffered much in spite of this. Asrna matter of fact, the sons of the best (and not onlv the richest)rnpeople of the world send their sons to study at Harvard or MITrnor Stanford: the sons of sheiks as well as those of Europeanrnprime ministers or of East Asian millionaires. There is a lessonrnin this somewhere—perhaps the one put starkly in one of LarnRochefoucauld’s Maxims, that the world awards the appearancernof merit, not merit itself. But this is a perennial humanrncondition, not a particularly American one.rnAt the same time, fewer and fewer rich or ambitious foreignersrnnow send their offspring to American colleges. For thernfunction of the American college changed even more drasticallyrnthan that of our graduate schools of specialized training. ThernAmerican college must now do—at best—what the Americanrnhigh school was supposed to do two or three generations ago.rnAt best: because the results are not encouraging. At the end ofrnthis chronological century the average college graduate—considerrnthat his parents are pushing him into schools earlier andrnearlier, so that this happens after 17 or 18 years of schooling—rnshows little adequate ability to read and write. In any case, therncollege has become nothing more than extended middlernschool, or private school at most; and the college degreernamounts to what a high school diploma was worth 40 or 50rnyears ago. The effects of all this spread beyond what is or whatrnis not in the college curricula. They are social. College Joe,rnBetty Co-Ed, and the Sweetheart of Sigma Chi are now periodrnpictures. “A Hamburger With A College Education” todayrnwould suggest a hamburger that is not more but less meaty—rnand tasty—than other hamburgers: perhaps one with reducedrncholesterol, or surely with salsa.rnThere are now hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, ofrnhigh school graduates who never had to read a book. There arernnow such college graduates, too. Of course the respect forrnbooks and reading and learning must come from elsewhere, asrnit has always: from the home—or, in these atomized and suburbanizedrnand dispersed habitations—from the desire for arnhome and for a family. So is the habit of reading and learningrninseparable from the desire for reading and learning. Let me repeat:rnthe problem of American higher education is not ideologicalrnor intellectual. It is social and moral.rn16/CHRONICLESrnrnrn