Two Points on Universities

There's going to be a new 'School of Government' at Oxford funded by a big donation. They had someone on the radio this morning as a cheerleader, and she was asked what exactly this school is going to do to teach people how to be global leaders. What makes it better than the other courses, especially PPE, that are already offered? It was a classic John Humphys interview; Professor Woods did not by any means have a satisfactory answer. It seems the clearest case yet where status signalling is the real function of the contemporary university.

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An absolutely spot-on statement of the purpose of university, near to the end (about 23m38s) of a programme about Hasidic Jews:

"What's the point, you end up with a lot of debt and you may not get a job out of it anyway - what good is university?"

"The purpose of university is to encourage students to think, to be critical, to be informed. That's the purpose of university education and to deprive children of that opportunity, I think is a scandal."