Education: Mussolini v. Sousa

A sharp critique of overexpanded U. S. universities a year ago was Dr. Abraham Flexner’s Universities: American, English, German (TIME, Dec. 15, 1930). Critic Flexner, a onetime Carnegie Foundation expert, onetime (1925-28) director of the division of studies and medical education of the Rockefeller General Education Board, specially denounced Columbia and the University of Chicago for their widely advertised home-study courses. Dr. Flexner’s ideal college is a sober academe where only the wisest and most serious may study. Under his direction such a place will soon rise in New Jersey: the Institute for Advanced Study, built with $5,000,000 given by retired Storekeeper Louis Bamberger and his sister Mrs. Felix Fuld. From this, Dr. Flexner’s chief present concern, he took time last week once more to flay Columbia and Chicago. They, said he, “and many State universities, gointo the marketplace, advertising their wretched claptrap in newspapers and in magazines. Some of these activities are little short of dishonest.

“Cultural standards must somehow be upheld. . . . The universities of America must learn to play the part of Mussolini in these matters and not the part of Sousa.”