Uma curta história da universidade

Gary North explica: 
The first university, Bologna, was begun in 1088. It was a law school. It taught the newly rediscovered system of Roman civil law, as interpreted by Justinian in the sixth century. Then came the University of Paris in the mid-twelfth century and Oxford in the early thirteenth. They offered young men a chance at getting lifetime jobs in law, the church, or the state. In other words, they sold security.
The curriculum was formal: grammar, logic, and rhetoric to get in, plus arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. If you survived four years, you got to study theology and philosophy. Was any of this useful academically? Only if you planned to become a bureaucrat or other functionary.
The college system was created mainly for political and social control. It gave the church and the state a formal way to screen candidates for the highest levels of the enforcement system. The university was about power most of all.
The faculties had their own goals. They wanted independence. They got it. That is why graduation ceremonies involve caps and gowns. The robes symbolize authority. The universities were a separate legal jurisdiction. The faculty members could not be removed at will by higher authorities. There was a layer of protective legality and bureaucracy in between them and the source of their funding.
This was the sweetest of all deals. The faculties screened access by their own rules. They did not have to raise their funding. They had control over the curriculum. They had control over the students. They could not be fired easily. It was the bureaucrat's dream: control without economic responsibility.
Today, it's called academic freedom. It culminates in tenure: career immunity from everything except the worst kind of moral infraction...
The faculties have the sweetest career deal on earth: comfortable income, little work (once tenured), complete control in the classroom, graduate students who teach freshmen and do research that can be appropriated by senior professors, four months of paid vacation, a paid sabbatical year one year in seven, and free faculty parking lots. They get paid to read.
In the United States, the revenue flow into higher education is in the range of $400 billion a year. This is an immense industry. What does it produce? Myths, mainly. The main one is the myth of the educated student with an inquiring, open mind. The reality is closer to Animal House.
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