Two observations per William Pannapacker’s slightly tongue-in-cheek suggestion that colleges be reformulated in the mold of Benedectine monasteries:

1) This is exactly the premise of Neal Stephenson’s Anathem, which takes place far in the future of an alternative Earth where the monasteries have been around for thousands of years, persisting through the rise and fall of empires, and are devoted to the study of science and philosophy instead of God. Stephenson wrote the book to explore some tricky metaphysical questions he didn’t get a chance to write about in The Baroque Cycle, which given that the latter is like 2,000 pages long tells you something about Neal Stephenson. It’s well worth reading, particularly once you get through the first part and the science fiction and philosophy really take flight.

2) Pannapacker’s essay highlights the intense homogeneity of organizational structures in higher education. Our colleges and universities are diverse in many ways—size, wealth, and the academic profile of incoming students among them. And there are all manner of academic sub-sub-specializations and exotic areas of inquiry to explore. But the way colleges are built is really startlingly non-diverse—they’re almost all slight variations on the same departmental themes, with faculty credential requirements, credit-hour systems, calendar-based course scheduling, degree type, and administrative titling all working basically the same way. Someone really should start up some monastery-based colleges and 20 other different models besides. Stephenson’s model is actually pretty plausible, with monks committing to terms of various lengths while civilians can enter for shorter duration on retreat.