„The pope is about to visit England, and is expected during the visit to announce the beatification of Cardinal John Henry Newman, the scholar, priest, and poet, who left the Anglican for the Roman Catholic Church in 1845, and who was to become the most important Catholic intellectual of his time. From 1854, for a period of five years, Newman was rector of the newly founded Catholic University of Ireland (now University College Dublin), and during that time he delivered lectures that were later published as The Idea of a University -- surely the most serene and beautiful vindication that we have of the old ideal of the scholarly life. (...)
I suspect that many middle-class parents, when it comes to deciding on their teenage children's future, entertain a picture of university life that is not entirely at odds with that painted by Newman. They will recognize the gap between Newman's ideal and the imperfect realities. But they will recognize that this gap does not necessarily represent a decline. Universities now admit women, and try as best they can to offer their benefits to people in all walks of life and regardless of personal connections or social class. Those changes will count, in most eyes, as improvements. And the resources available to a modern university are many factors greater than those enjoyed by the university described by Newman, which had next to nothing in the way of lecture halls, book-lending facilities, concert halls, and places of recreation.