Think Right

Conservative journalist Paul Johnson is right in observing:

“Universities are the most overrated institutions of our age. Of all the calamities that have befallen the 20th century, apart from the two World Wars, the expansion of higher education in the 1950’s and 1960’s was the most enduring. It is a myth that universities are nurseries of reason. They are hot houses for every kind of extremism, irrationality; intolerance and prejudice, where intellectual and social snobbery is almost deliberately installed and where dons attempt to pass on to their students their own sins of pride. The wonder is that so many people emerge from these dens still employable, although a significant minority – as we have learnt to our cost – goes forth well equipped for a lifetime of public mischief making!”

“Universities? We’d Be Better Off Without Them”, The Australian, September 18, 1991, p.21.