Full Title:
The Higher Learning in America- A Memorandum on the Conduct of Universities by Business Men
Excerpt:
“Whatever may have been true for the earlier time, when the American college first grew up and flourished, it is beyond question that the undergraduate department which takes the place of the college today cannot be rated as an institution of the higher learning. At the best it is now a school for preliminary training, preparatory to entering on the career of learning, or in preparation for the further training required for the professions; but it is also, and chiefly, an establishment designed to give the concluding touches to the education of young men who have no designs on learning, beyond the close of the college curriculum. It aims to afford a rounded discipline to those whose goal is the life of fashion or of affairs. How well, or how ill, the college may combine these two unrelated purposes is a question that does not immediately concern the present inquiry. It is touched on here only to point the contrast between the American college and the university.”
Source Citation:
Veblen, Thorstein. 1918. The Higher Learning in America- A Memorandum on the Conduct of Universities by Business Men. Essay. New York: B.W. Huebsch. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000568957