The Prime Functions of a University

 

A football team does not a college make. Nor a group of buildings, a library, the faculty, staff  nor students. What defines a University? John Henry Newman (1801-1890) defined the University as a “‘School of Universal Learning.’ This description implies the assemblage of strangers from all parts in one spot”; it’s professors and students representing knowledge of every kind. The University is “a place for the communication and circulation of thought, by means of personal intercourse, through a wide extent of country.” Books are a record of truth, an instrument of teaching. Conversation is the key. 

“[Y]ou cannot fence without an antagonist, nor challenge all comers in disputation before you have supported a thesis; and in like manner, it stands to reason, you cannot learn to converse till you have the world to converse with; you cannot unlearn your natural bashfulness, or awkwardness, or stiffness, or other besetting deformity, till you serve your time in some school of manners.”

“The novelty of place and circumstance, the excitement of strange, or the refreshment of well-known faces, the majesty of rank or of genius, the amiable charities of men pleased both with themselves and with each other; the elevated spirits, the circulation of thought, the curiosity; the morning sections, the outdoor exercise, the well-furnished, well-earned board, the not ungraceful hilarity, the evening circle; the brilliant lecture, the discussions or collisions or guesses of great men one with another, the narratives of scientific processes, of hopes, disappointments, conflicts, and successes, the splendid eulogistic orations; these and the like constituents of the annual celebration, are considered to do something real and substantial for the advance of knowledge which can be done in no other way.”

Photograph by Herbert Rose Barraud, c. 1885