The distant predecessors of colleges and universities go back in the West to the Greek academies of the fourth and fifth centuries bce. In these academies, young men from the governing classes studied rhetoric and philosophy (and $@#*^%#@#ldquo;lesser$@#*^%#@#rdquor; subjects) as training for public life (Marrou 1982). In the East, the roots of higher education go back to the training of future government bureaucrats at the feet of masters of Confucian philosophy, poetry, and calligraphy. In both East and West, a tight relationship existed between social class, literate culture, and preparation for public life.