"Proved Too Weak a Mold to Reshape the Aristocratic Students Whose Formative Years Were Spent Resisting Any Form of Authority"

"The contradiction that proved most damaging to the University of Virginia was the unmanageably ruinous culture of the school's elite student body. Despite receiving state funding, the exorbitant costs of bringing Jefferson's intricate designs to life meant that UVA became the most expensive university in the country in the early nineteenth century. It also discarded Jefferson's ideal of providing scholarships for poor students. As a result, only the sons of the wealthiest families could afford to attend, and they brought with them the unrestrained arrogance, petulance, and violence of Southern slave and honor culture."

At The Bulwark, Nicole Penn reviews Andrew O'Shaughnessy's The Illimitable Freedom of the Human Mind: Thomas Jefferson’s Idea of a University.