Access to higher education was and is an essential factor in the economic and social mobility of minority groups within the United States. Prominent among the groups to take advantage of educational opportunities were Catholics and Jews, the children and grandchildren of the Irish immigration of the mid-19th century and of the “New Immigration” from eastern and southern Europe at the century's end. Today, however, other groups — blacks, Hispanic-Americans, Indians, and Orientals — are knocking on the door of admissions offices at colleges, universities, and professional schools. It is still too soon to assess their rate of educational mobility and determine whether it will parallel or even exceed that of Jews and Catholics. The role of quotas, both discriminatory and benign, have played a crucial role in retarding and encouraging the educational mobility of both the earlier and contemporary aspirants to advanced degrees. In studying this area of educational and social history, the focus has been limited, at least for the time being, to elite private institutions, to the so-called Big Three of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Although admission and assimilation at these colleges would be more difficult than at most public institutions, once attained, success would be noteworthy and could help to open doors elsewhere.

The pivotal role of the scribe in the development of Mesopotamian culture can scarcely be exaggerated. His was the cohesive force that helped preserve and enrich one of mankind's very earliest civilizations throughout its long historical career, that impressed upon it its unique form and character, and that maintained and revitalized its vast body of traditions, customs, and ideals over the span of almost three millennia, doing so in spite of repeated social, political, and intellectual changes. With the deployment of the first practical system of writing — an innovation which obviously lent societal mores a permanence and continuity heretofore lacking — the scribe emerged early as a central figure in the workings of Mesopotamia. Thus armed with a means of fixing thought on clay, it was inevitable perhaps that the tablet-writer should come to occupy a strategic position in his several roles as temple functionary, court secretary, royal counselor, civil bureaucrat, commercial correspondent, poet, and scholar. The role and importance of the tupšarru, it has been rightly observed, might be likened to those of the clergy in medieval Europe; his lore, tupšarrūtu, to that extensive body of knowledge, skills, and savoir-faire covered by the Islamic term adab. Any holistic appreciation for the Mesopotamian cradle of civilization, arguably, will accord pre-eminence to the scribe and his craft in ancient Near Eastern society.

In 1682 Louis XIV made the important collège (secondary school) of the Jesuits, formerly called Clermont, a royal foundation, and it assumed the name Louis-le-Grand in honor of its illustrious patron. Those fathers continued to hold the school until April 1762 when the Parlement of Paris, the realm's most important court of law, forced them to cease instruction. In the following August the Parlement went further, dissolving the Society of Jesus within its jurisdiction and forcing the fathers to abandon the collège. During those eighty years, and even beyond, the collège itself was, in comparison to other such institutions in France, as “great” as the appellation of its patron. It was large (having nearly 3000 students prior to 1762, although fewer than 600 after that date) and prestigious (having many famous students, including Voltaire and Turgot prior to 1762 and Maximillian Robespierre after the Jesuits departed). It was, in short, one of a handful of very important collèges of the realm, along with such others as Mazarin (Quatre-Nations) within Paris and La Flèche and Juilly outside it.