Academic tradition in a digital age

Contemporary institutions of higher education encourage veneration of the past through anachronisms their rhetoric and their design. This characteristic, however, owes less to scholarship or tradition than to a mood of nostalgia. Universities tend to have far greater longevity than institutions of government or commerce. They have managed to survive the Industrial Revolution and other upheavals with remarkably little structural change. Nevertheless, it is still uncertain how, or whether, they will adapt to a post‐industrial world.