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What Are the Roots of the University? From antiquity, the most successful organized cultures have generally provided an environment in which individuals could congregate, advance and debate new ideas, and pass knowledge from one generation to the next. One of the best-known sites of such activity was the Academy created by Plato in Athens, in 387 BC.1 Such early universities focused on the arts, humanities, and philosophy. There being no telescopes, microscopes, and certainly no Earth-based particle accelerators, scholars could only imagine the inner workings of nature, struggling to relate abstract concepts to large-scale observations.2 Indeed, for centuries after the creation of the Academy, scientific thinkers were largely occupied with such abstract debates. The concepts derived during that period continue to exert a mighty impact on our understanding of nature, even to this day, and on the ethics, values, and logic that we now embrace. The invention of measurement tools, such as Galileo’s telescope in 1609, opened new pathways for research on the natural world. New, more specific theories could be tested by measurement. If the tests proved successful, the theories would be tested at an even higher degree of precision when improved tools became available. In this way human societies refined their understanding of the principles that governed the world around them. Plato’s Academy laid the groundwork for modern higher education.3 It placed a high premium on training talented individuals for public life, and helped define what it meant to be educated. It stressed the value of proof and hypothesis, and the importance of mathematics as a language for conveying complex ideas. It placed a high premium on discourse among scholars, and between scholars and their students. The Academy was closed in 529 AD by authorities who regarded it as a center of paganism.4 Its nine hundred years of service make it one of the longest-standing institutions of higher education in human history. But we should also bear in mind that it disappeared because it promoted the discussion of ideas that were not in keeping with the traditions of the day. No research institution of similar stature emerged until the tenth and eleventh centuries, when centers arose in the Arab and European worlds, respectively.5 Not only did these new universities embody many features of the Academy, but their curricula were built in large part upon the teachings of Plato and the other philosophers of his period. Among the earliest medieval universities was Al-Azhar University, founded in Egypt in 988, and the University of Bologna, established in Italy in 1088.6 In 1209, English scholars wanting to get away from the hostile residents of Oxford began to congregate in a former Roman trading post nearby, where they eventually founded Cambridge University.7 A young John Harvard entered Emmanuel College at Cambridge in 1627; he would later endow Harvard University, the first university in the United States, and provide a direct connection between the European educational tradition and its younger American cousin.8 One can argue that research has always been a part of the university’s mission. Plato’s Academy was originally designed to train individuals for public service by analyzing the outstanding issues of the day. The Academy’s modern descendants foster the natural drive to convey existing knowledge, and to extend the boundaries of that knowledge. The organization, extension, and interpreta93 CHAPTER 6 Universities 94 | BEYOND SPUTNIK tion of knowledge and human creativity are, and have always been, core university activities. In the nineteenth century, however, German universities specifically dedicated themselves to advancing scientific research ; many U.S. universities embraced this change, and began to restructure themselves accordingly.9 The new university model came at a time of major scientific advancement , and was fueled by society’s growing appreciation of technology. At some universities, the original university mission of training students took a back seat to the new fascination with research. Ernest L. Boyer, former president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, noted that in the course of “just a few decades, priorities in American higher education were significantly realigned . . . [as] the focus . . . moved from the student to the professoriate, from general to specialized education, from loyalty to the campus to loyalty to the profession.”10 Since the late nineteenth century, America has gradually pushed its college and university system to accept greater responsibility for the nation’s economy, and the welfare of its citizens. Indeed, the so-called land grant colleges made...

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