Cross posted from NAS.org From time to time we cite without comment various items from articles, books, websites, and other sources. We don't comment on these items (at least in words), but our readers may have something to add. Today's No Comment item is a newspaper clipping from 1962, entitled "Social Role of the University Discussed." The newspaper is a publication of Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada, and it refers to St. Dunstan's University, a Roman Catholic institution which closed its campus in 1967. Excerpts:
What is the university's fundamental social obligation? The university's obligation, he said, is to see that the individual has the opportunity to develop himself by providing a suitable climate for academic freedom which entacts the ability to choose what is good between alternatives. [...] The university, he said, has the obligation to set high academic standards and it does not have the obligation to educate all men of society. The fact that knowledge has increased in an unprecedented way requires excellence from its students and teachers, and a lowering of standards to educate all men is but a Marxist Utopian attitude.
