Anthony T. Kronman's EDUCATION'S END Mentioned in Inside Higher Ed

On College Costs, Be Careful What You Wish For

By William G. Durden
Inside Higher Ed, December 10, 2007

... If higher education institutions wanted to contain escalating costs and price, they could also look to a second business model that would, in essence, put a “cap” on new knowledge. When American universities were first founded, the course of study was an unchanging corpus of knowledge that was judged finite and comprehensible in its totality. This position was inherited from our European predecessors and practiced there for centuries. In the words of Anthony T. Kronman in his recent book, Education’s End, “The classicist view of antiquity was essentially static. It paid little or no attention to its historical development ….[M]eaning and value of that world …[ resided] … in a set of timeless forms, transparent to the intellect and permanently available as standards of judgment….” Indeed, such a static view of knowledge and its the accompanying “business model” kept cost — and tuition — down by ignoring that pesky cost driver, new knowledge.

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