University Life - 1700's

I very much recommend this book:

Phillipson, Nicholas, 2010. Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life. 1st Ed. Yale University Press.

I am about 25% through the book and it gets better and better.

The descriptions of academic life when Adam Smith attended the University of Glasgow and Oxford are extremely interesting. The functioning of the modern university differs little from the accounts of Scottish and British universities during the early 1700's.

Learning more about the Scottish Enlightenment should be a prerequisite for all in Western Culture. The base of the American system of intellectual thought about commerce was very much influenced by folks like Adam Smith who lived and worked during the Enlightenment.