Derek Bok Quotes

If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.

I think one thing that does cause unhappiness is protracted anxiety and worry.

Greater inequality in Europe has made people less happy.

There’s a great deal of difference between thinking reflectively about moral issues and achieving higher standards of ethical behavior.

Fewer than half of all university professors publish as much as one article per year.

Critics of American colleges typically attribute the failings of undergraduate education to a tendency on the part of professors to neglect their teaching to concentrate on research. In fact, the evidence does not support this thesis, except perhaps in major research universities.

I think it’s sort of an outrage that companies should have to hire firms to teach the college graduates they employ how to write.

I think the minority students that we admit to Harvard are every bit as meritorious as the white students that we admit.

I don’t think the alternative to Yale is jail by any means. On the other hand, there is a mass of research that does show that there are real advantages to your subsequent career in going to selective institutions.

The college that takes students with modest entering abilities and improves their abilities substantially contributes more than the school that takes very bright students and helps them develop only modestly.

Freshly minted Ph.Ds typically teach the way their favorite professors taught.

There is far too much law for those who can afford it and far too little for those who cannot.