From the founding of Harvard College in 1636 until the Civil War, American university education was mostly about sending pious and hopefully well-read gentlemen forth into the world. As Louis Menand, a Harvard English professor and literary critic, has written, what Americans think of as the university is of【C1】______recent vintage. In 1862 the Morrill Act created land-grant universities, broadening opportunities for those for whom college had been a【C2】______impossibility. Menand and other historians of collegiate curriculums【C3】______that at Harvard in 1869, Charles William Eliot became president and created a culture in which the bachelors degree became the key credential for【C4】______professional education — a culture that came to【C5】______the rest of the American academy. The 19th century also saw the rise of the great European research university; the German model of scholar-teachers who educated undergraduates while【C6】______their own research interests moved across the【C7】______. The notion that a student should graduate with a broad base of knowledge is, in Menands words, 'the most modern part of the modern university.' It was only after World War I, in 1919,【C8】______Columbia College undertook a general-education course, called Contemporary Civilization.【C9】______reading classic texts — from Platos Republic to The Prince to the Declaration of Independence, with the Bible and Edmund Burke thrown in【C10】______— and discussing them in the context of enduring issues in human society, every student was【C11】______to engage with ideas that formed the mainstream of the American mind. The【C12】______for the move reflected a larger social and cultural concern with【C13】______the children of immigrants into American culture. Robert Maynard Hutchins【C14】______a similar approach at the University of Chicago. The courses were not about rote memorization; they were(and are) 【C15】reading followed by discussion. They were(and are)required of all students, something that【C16】______Columbia and Chicago apart from many other colleges — and still does. World War II helped【C17】______the Harvard Report of 1945, an effort by Americas oldest college to provide a common cultural basis not only for its elite students but also for the rising middle class. Students were【C18】______to read, for example, the great books. As the decades【C19】______, however, the assumption that there was a given body of knowledge or a given set of authors that had to be learned or read came【C20】______cultural and academic attack. Who was to say what was great? Why not let teachers decide what to teach and students decide what to study? 【C1】 A．relatively B．unknowingly C．shockingly D．eventually