Some Reflections on New Universities

Abstract

It is sometimes said that, of all our social institutions, the university is the one most resistant to change. Indeed, the university has frequently been compared to the Church in this respect; both being considered among the least flexible of our institutions. That the university and the Church have much in common can hardly be denied, for each is devoted to the contemplative life, each has its traditions and rituals which support this view, each has a strongly entrenched and influential group of leaders in the faculty and clergy who wear symbolic gowns and have an air of ‘other-worldliness’ about them. It may be that among these characteristics are those which seem to have made the university and the Church less willing to adjust to changing social conditions and, as one wag suggests, to adhere in their internal management to the principle that ‘nothing new must be tried for the first time’.