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... nothing is of more importance to the public weal, than to form and train up youth in wisdom and virtue. Wise and good men are, in my opinion the strength of a state: much more so than riches or arms, which, under the management of Ignorance and Wickedness, often draw on destruction, instead of providing for the safety of a people.
Benjamin Franklin to Samuel Johnson, August 23, 1750
Democracy has been given a mission to the world, and it is of no uncertain character. I wish to show that the university is the prophet of this democracy, as well as its priest and its philosopher; that in other words, the university is the Messiah of the democracy, its to-be-expected deliverer.
William Rainey Harper, The University and Democracy (1899)
Benjamin Franklin, in founding the University of Pennsylvania (then the Academy of Philadelphia), conveyed an expansive and highly democratic educational vision. While many colonial colleges were established to prepare the scions of wealthy families, Franklin's vision was far more egalitarian in nature (Brands 2000). He was also profoundly skeptical of classical education. As historian John Hardin Best explains,
Commenting in his usual pungent style, [Franklin] noted that Greek and Latin were the "quackery of literature." Further, he wrote that they were the "chapeau bras" of learning, like the hat carried by an elegant European gentlemen [sic], a hat never put on the head for fear of disarranging the wig, but always carried quite uselessly under the arm (Best 1962).
What set Franklin's notion of education apart was his insistence that a college draw students of ability from all social strata and actively and purposefully cultivate civic values in these students and provide them with the practical skills necessary to address the pressing problems of the day. In short, a central purpose of higher education was service to society and to the commonwealth.
Franklin's blend of pragmatic civic idealism proved prescient.
In the years immediately following the American Revolution, hundreds of colleges were founded with the express purpose of upholding the fledgling democracy (Rudolph 1962). In the nineteenth century, this sentiment found expression in the Morrill Act of 1862, which established land-grant colleges and universities. These institutions were intended not only to advance the mechanical and...