It is an absurd arrogance recently born that a University exists for the students.  It does not and should

 not.  Least of all a university exists for the administrative offices, a fact apparently forgotten by almost every 

minor functionary with a stamp pad and stapler.  A university exists for knowledge, not so much for its veneration

 as for its development and dissemination.  Therefore, a <I>university exists for the faculty, the seat of the 

development and dissemination of learning, and for students only in so far as they serve those ends</I>.<P>

	

	Every professor at one time or another has crossed the campus or walked through a classroom building

 during a vacation and noted, perhaps aloud, how pleasant it all is without students.  That's not my point here 

at all.  Students should however only be part of the university in so far as they serve knowledge, 

just as an administration can be no more than a handmaiden to the students and faculty.<P>

	

	And it must always be the process of learning.  The idea of training for a job, for a goal, a concept 

usually put forward as being practical, is in reality the grossest absurdity, all the more offensive because its 

proponents actually believe it themselves.  How much knowledge put forward under that banner is forgotten 

with impunity, must be forgotten by the student to succeed in the Real World, is useless because the student 

never has call to use it, is destructive because it numbs the students' curiosity and excitement?  Far too much 

for it to be called practical!<P>



Roger L. Welsch, "Mock Apple Pie: The Conventional Teacher in an Unconventional Educational

Program" in <U>The Centennial Experience: Faculty Perspectives of a Cluster College</U>, ed.

Gene Harding