ABSTRACT
The modern university valued academicism more highly as an approach to intellectual questions than did the liberal university which had clung to a form of humanism, however tainted by social privilege. Two important results flowed from this change. The university in an institutional form that would be approximately recognisable is not especially ancient. Cardinal Newman, the household god of the traditional university it should be remembered, believed that formal research was best undertaken in institutions other than universities. At this stage in its development the university had three main roles: First was the custodianship of an intellectual tradition derived more from the culture of social elite than the codification of scientific principles by a corps of academic experts. The first is that there may be a reaction against the academicism of the modern post-war university and a return to the humanism of the liberal university.
