If I were asked to describe as briefly and popularly as I could, what a University was, I should draw my answer from its ancient designation of a Studium Generale, or “School of Universal Learning.” This description implies the assemblage of strangers from all parts in one spot; – from all parts; else how will you find professors and students for every department of knowledge? And in one spot, else how can there be any school at all? Accordingly, in its simple and rudimental form, it is a school of knowledge of every kind, consisting of teachers and learners from every quarter. Many things are requisite to complete and satisfy the idea embodied in this description; but such as this a University seems to be in its essence, a place for the communication and circulation of thought, by means of personal intercourse, through a wide extent of country.
There is nothing far-fetched or unreasonable in the idea thus presented to us; and if this be a University, then a University does but contemplate a necessity of our nature, and is but one specimen in a particular medium, out of many which might be adduced in others, of a provision for that necessity. Mutual education, in a large sense of the word, is one of the great and incessant occupations of human society, carried on partly with a set purpose, and partly not. One generation forms another; and the existing generation is ever acting and reacting upon itself in the persons of its individual members.
John Henry Cardinal Newman
“What is a University?”
Historical Sketches, Vol. III
Knowledge is perhaps the chief good that can be had at a price, but those who do not already possess it often cannot recognize its usefulness. More important still, access to the sources of knowledge necessary for the working of modern society presupposes the command of certain techniques—above all, that of reading—which people must acquire before they can judge well for themselves what will be useful to them. Though our case for freedom rests to a great extent on the contention that competition is one of the most powerful instruments for the dissemination of knowledge and that it will usually demonstrate the value of knowledge to those who do not possess it, there is no doubt that the utilization of knowledge can be greatly increased by deliberate efforts.
FA. Hayek
The Constitution of Liberty