When Consumer Reports rates and compares cars, it measures them on the basis of categories such as performance, safety, reliability and value. It tries to measure "outputs"—in short, what the car does. U.S. News mostly looks at "inputs" (money spent, class size, test scores of students, degrees held by faculty), rather than assessing what the college or university actually accomplishes for students over the lives of their enrolment. If Consumer Reports functioned like U.S. News, it would rank cars on the amount of steel and plastic used in their construction, the opinions of competing car dealers, the driving skills of customers, the percentage of managers and sales people with MBAs and the sticker price on the vehicle (the higher, the better).

All administrators agree that "exit" data are much better than "entry" data. But schools have this information! The magazine would use it if it could. Why can't they get it? The schools in the study will often not let the information become public. Why? They say that such student information cannot be made public because it's confidential.

Balderdash! If the students were told the information was going to be made public, they wouldn't bat an eye. In fact, they would want the information made public. They could have used it themselves when they were planning to go to college. Clearly, the elite schools don't release this information because it would have a profound effect on the top twenty schools rankings. The better the students, the harsher the comments. I've taught the same course to random undergraduates and to honor students. The honor students invariably complain more. They have higher standards not only for themselves but for me.

—James B. Twitchell, Branded Nation: The Marketing of Megachurch, College Inc., and Museumworld

 We sat at a table in the corner, our reflections mirrored in the black of the plate-glass windows. Henry took out a pen and began to fill out Julian's evaluation.

I looked at my own copy while I ate my sandwich. The questions were ranked from one—poor to five—excellent: Is this faculty member prompt? Well-prepared? Ready to offer help outside the classroom? Henry, without the slightest pause, had gone down the list and circled all fives. Now I saw him writing the number 19 in a blank.

"What's that for?"

"The number of classes I've taken with Julian," he said, without looking up.

"You've taken nineteen classes with Julian?"

"Well, that's tutorials and everything," he said, irritated.

For a moment there was no sound except the scratching of Henry's pen and then distant crash of dish racks in the kitchen.

"Does everybody get these, or just us?" I said.

"Just us."

"I wonder why they even bother."

"For their records, I suppose." He had turned to the last page, which was mostly blank. Please elaborate here on any additional compliments or criticisms you may have of this teacher. Extra sheets of paper may be attached if necessary.

His pen hovered over the paper. Then he folded the sheet and pushed it aside.

"What," I said, "aren't you going to write anything?"

Henry took a sip of his tea. "How," he said, "can I possibly make the Dean of Studies understand that there is a divinity in our midst?"

—Donna Tartt, The Secret History

The average professor today is not a scholar. He is ready to do research only as long as it is necessary for promotion. Once he becomes a full professor and has tenure, he becomes disinterested in learning, because his world is a better hiding place from education than a place for education. Few professors are adequate teachers; they are not enough interested in either teaching or scholarship to do more than go through the motions.

—R. J. Rushdoony, Law and Liberty

In 1859 the State Superintendent of Public Instruction declared that "our present school system has furnished instruction to only 11,183 children out of 40,530; and to them for only five and a half months out of the twelve. If we do not take instant and effective means to remedy it these 29,347 neglected children will grow up into 29.347 benighted men and women—a number nearly sufficient at ordinary times to control the vote of the state, and in consequence to shape its legislation and its destiny." The legislature did not take "instant" measures of relief, and the 29,347 unfortunate ignoramuses were well along the road to maturity before the state's conscience troubled it.

—Louis B. Wright, Culture on the Moving Frontier

Folks that has brought up children know that there's no hard and fast method in the world that'll suit every child. But them as never have think it's all as plain and easy as Rule of Three—just set your three terms down so fashion, and the sum'll work out correct.

—Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

[Charlemagne] was so concerned  for the education of his sons and daughters that he never dined without them when at home, and he never journeyed without them.

---Einhard, The Life of Charlemagne

It is in astronomy that [Dante] appears chiefly as a scientific specialist, though it must not be forgotten that many astronomical allusions in his great poem, which now appear to us learned, must then have been intelligible to the general reader. Dante, learning apart, appeals to a popular knowledge of the heavens, which the Italians of this day, from the mere fact that they were a nautical people, had in common with the ancients. This knowledge of the rising and setting of the constellations has been rendered superfluous to the modern world by calendars and clocks, and with it has gone whatever interest in astronomy the people may once have had. Nowadays, with our schools and handbooks, every child knows - what Dante did not know - that the earth moves around the sun; but the interest once taken in the subject itself has given place, except in the case of astronomical specialists, to the most absolute indifference.

---Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy

Except among those whose education has been in the minimalist style, it is understood that hasty moral judgments about people in the past are a form of injustice.

---Jaques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence