What Is a University?

The aspirations that professors have for their students are critiqued in this analysis of modern universities. Noting the deterioration in the quality of a college education, it is argued that the universal ideal of wisdom has, in recent decades, been sacrificed for the mere acquisition of knowledge. A case is made for universities to rethink what they take for granted as a proper education and incorporate not only traditional subject matters—philosophy, science, literature, and art—but also the philosophies of life, nature, time, food, sex, and death.