When people used to talk about institutions of higher learning, they spoke of the “ivory tower.” It was only architecture as metaphor, of course, for that idealized place of edification, elevated above the gritty reality of humdrum life. (At Princeton, though, there actually is an Ivory Tower—the 1913 Graduate College was once so dubbed because one of its donors was an heir of Procter & Gamble, maker of Ivory soap.)
But no one talks about ivory towers anymore—it’s elitist and outmoded. How can professors and students cloister together, living and learning, when 85 percent of U.S. college students are commuters—a figure that pre-dates Covid.
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