American Higher Ed Never Figured Out Its Purpose

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A young man, not quite 18, entered Williams College in the fall of 1869. His study plans for the next four years were made for him. As Edward A. Birge wrote in The Atlantic 40 years later, in 1909, “The college offered a simple, homogeneous course of study,” which each student was bound to follow. It began with classical languages and extended to history, mathematics, and lectures in the basic sciences. Along the way, there was a great deal of composition and rhetoric, writing essays by hand and delivering “orations” before the college. As Birge recalled, he and his classmates had not come to Williams for jobs training; rather, they had come for “somewhat vagu