1930年亚伯拉罕·弗莱克斯纳的《大学:美英德研究》(以下简称《大学》)由牛津大学出版社出版并引起轰动。在这本书中,弗莱克斯纳从理论上勾画了“现代大学的理想类型”,一种具有历史意义的大学模式——被他称为“纯学术研究中心”的现代大学。80多年来,《大学》一书成为高等教育研究领域引用率极高的文献之一。弗菜克斯纳的《大学》一书对大学的“适应”与“落后”,社会的“需求”和“欲望”,对大学的“入世”与“出世”等大学与社会的关系做了精辟独到的论述,开创了对大学与社会地位哲学探讨的理论先河。
In 1930, Abraham Flexner' s Universities: American, English, German was published at the Oxford University Press and caused a sensation. In this book, Flexner sketched the "ideal type" of modern university, which is a university model with historical significance - what he called "pure academic research center" of the modem university. For more than 80 years, Universities has become one of the highly cited literatures in the field of higher education research. Flexner had made some brilliant and original expositions on the relationship between the university and the society in Universities, such as "adaptation" and "backward", "what the society needs" and "what the society wants", "out of the world" and "into the worM" of the university, and his thoughts had created a precedent of discussion on theory and philosophy for the university and its social status.