The Real University 

by Robert Pirsig



But this second university, the legal corporation, cannot teach, does not generate new knowledge or evaluate new ideas. It is not the real University at all. It is just a church building, the setting, the location at which conditions have been made favorable for the real church to exist.

Confusion continually occurs in people who fail to see this difference, and think that control of the church buildings implies control of the church. They see professors as employees of the second university who should abandon reason when told to take orders with no backtalk, the same way employees do in other corporations. They see the second university, but fail to see the first.

from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig

