É sabido que Adam Smith, antes de se tornar o consagrado professor da Universidade de Glasgow, na Escócia, andou por Oxford, na Inglaterra, e de lá saiu com uma péssima impressão, achando-a medíocre, segundo seus padrões exigentes.
Eis o que ele escreveu depois sobre as universidades:
“The improvements which, in modern times have been made in several different branches of philosophy, have not, the greater part of them, been made in universities, though some, no doubt, have. The greater part of universities have not even been very forward to adopt those improvements after they were made; and several of those learned societies have chosen to remain, for a long time, the sanctuaries in which exploded systems and obsolete prejudices found shelter and protection, after they had been hunted out of every other corner of the world. In general, the richest and best endowed
universities have been slowest in adopting those improvements, and the most averse to permit any considerable change in the established plan of education. Those improvements were more easily introduced into some of the poorer universities, in which the teachers, depending upon their reputation for the greater part of their subsistence, were obliged to pay more attention to the current opinions of the world.”
Smith, Adam:
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
(p. 456). University of Chicago Press. Kindle Edition.
Ainda retiro esta informação do verbete sobre Smith na Wikipedia:
In Book V, Chapter II of The Wealth of Nations, Smith wrote: "In
the University of Oxford, the greater part of the public professors
have, for these many years, given up altogether even the pretence of
teaching." Smith is also reported to have complained to friends that
Oxford officials once discovered him reading a copy of David Hume's Treatise on Human Nature, and they subsequently confiscated his book and punished him severely for reading it.
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