Severe criticism of both the public school and the university is common. There is much talk about capitalistic influence, and the denial of academic freedom by prominent business men who contribute to endowments and constitute boards of trustees. In so far as this criticism comes from professional radical propagandists it need not be taken very seriously. Such persons merely want their own propaganda included in the curriculum. University presidents no doubt often play politics and do other things common to professional money-raisers. Faculties are often little more than pedantic trade unions, and if we are to judge the colleges of the country by the number of first-rate scholars who graduate from them or by the extent of their influences as a whole on the cultural standards of the country, we may well question whether higher education in America succeeds any better than the public school. But I wonder why so much criticism is directed at trustees and faculties and so little at the students. The habit of constantly denouncing someone because we are not better educated is rather ludicrous. If our people really desire education they can have it. If I am dissatisfied with my ignorance, I may seek knowledge at any time, and no one else, in or out of college, can ever gain wisdom for me. Anyone who has kept up his interest in his education after graduation knows that what is learned in school and college is at best a small part of it--merely the beginning of an education. Anyone who does not continue his studies through the years of a busy life and thinks that the brief introduction to the tools of scholarship which he received in his adolescence is education, should apologize to his college, not criticize it. Granted that there is much bad teaching, there is more bad studying,--or I should say, hardly any studying at all. Professor James Harvey Robinson used to say, “A college is a place where there is much teaching and no learning.” Is it not possible that a large portion of the population cannot be educated? Such persons are not all necessarily dull, they may be naturally uninterested in education, and it is likely that many enter institutions of learning with the mistaken notion that it is education they desire, when what they really want is success, a good time, and a little training in what they think are the manners and ways of speech of polite society. The finishing school once supplied this need; now the colleges have to do it.