Education: Pitt's Big Thinker

Pittsburgh's steel tycoons—having razed slums, banished smog, tamed rivers, and put up a great medical center—paused seven years ago to mull over the stagnant University of Pittsburgh. The verdict: Pitt was a "trolley-car school" saved from obscurity only by a renowned football team and a bizarre 42-story Gothic skyscraper called the Cathedral of Learning. To revive Pitt, the tycoons resolved to spend $100 million, and to get the job done they hired as chancellor Edward H. Litchfield, who predicted that Pitt would soon emerge as "one of the world's greatest institutions." Pitt is...