The entire express purpose of universities being founded in the West in the first was not job training or political activism.
It was studying the Greeks and the classics. 😒
in the first place*
So many of the kids here go to and have gone to A$M
I am not impressed with it. One got an engineering degree there. He’s fine
The rest…?
Yes.
From Christian Science Monitor article
At the feet of Socrates
By Virgil Poling
Aug. 31, 1988.
“Near the entrance, in a secluded grove of olive trees, were two chairs carved from Pentelic marble. They were placed at the foot of a small hill, with a perfectly flat grassy area in front of them.
Tradition had it that this was where Socrates held many of his outdoor dialogues and one of the chairs was where Socrates sat. I imagined that the other chair had been used by one of his friends, perhaps Crito or Hippocrates, or even a visiting Sophist, perhaps Protagoras, while young students, most often his friends from the wrestling school, sat on the grass at the feet of the great teacher listening to his discourses and contributing their own ideas from time to time, or answering his questions as he gradually illustrated his method of arriving at the truth of the subject being discussed.”
The first European universities were monastic schools that then became universities.
Later universities were founded to study law.
The classics followed afterward.
The earlier medieval universities (12th and 13th centuries) were studying some works of Greek philosophy but in Latin translation. During the Renaissance knowledge of Greek became more common and many works of Plato and Aristotle were translated into Latin for the first time, making them accessible to a wider audience.