In college I never realized the opportunities available to a pro athlete. I've been given the chance to meet all kinds of people to travel and expand my financial capabilities to get ideas and learn about life to create a world apart from basketball.

It is curious that with my somewhat antinomian tendencies I should have gone to Trinity Hall - which was and is before all a Law College - and should thus have been thrown into close touch with the legal element in life.

I worked as a lawyer as a member of the teaching staff of a technical college and then I worked principally as legal adviser to Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers Party.

Instead California is one of only 10 states that provides in-state college and university tuition to illegal immigrants. That's grossly unfair to a legal high school student who moves out of California for a year then returns to attend college.

Every year some 65 000 high school students - many of them star students and leaders in their communities - are unable to go to college or get a good job because they have no legal status.

I'm afraid I talk a lot too much perhaps. I should have been a lawyer or a college professor or a windy politician though I'm glad I am not any of these.

It wasn't until I went to college that I met the theatre people and began to admire them because they were learning a trade that was guaranteed to make money!

To the Kenyan families school doesn't really matter because none of them are going on to college. Almost all of drop out of school and so they're spending their time learning things that are important to them.

Ignorance of what real learning is and a consequent suspicion of it materialism and a consequent intellectual laxity both of these have done destructive work in the colleges.

The lopsided attitudes of college professors pose a serious challenge to learning because students are so susceptible to becoming lopsided sheep.

During the days of segregation there was not a place of higher learning for African Americans. They were simply not welcome in many of the traditional schools. And from this backward policy grew the network of historical black colleges and universities.

I am involved with 'Write Girl ' which is such a great organization because they go into inner city schools and work with underprivileged girls to pair them up with other writers. And it gets them learning to express themselves and become familiar with their own voice. They have a 100% success ratio getting those girls into college.

One goes through school college medical school and one's internship learning little or nothing about goodness but a good deal about success.

Instead of going to college I spent my time out on the road learning how to be a better musician.

Jazz is the big brother of the blues. If a guy's playing blues like we play he's in high school. When he starts playing jazz it's like going on to college to a school of higher learning.

Year after year President Bush has broken his campaign promises on college aid. And year after year the Republican leadership in Congress has let him do it.

Education is a private matter between the person and the world of knowledge and experience and has little to do with school or college.

I have an incredible amount of basketball knowledge and I think a lot of that is derived from having a Hall of Fame college basketball coach who was very knowledgeable of the game and I had a great high school coach who was also very knowledgeable.

You go to college not only for the latest knowledge but also to meet people from different backgrounds. That's the genius of the American higher-education system compared with the Europeans'. We don't simply skim the elite.

Almost every college playwright or sketch or improv comedian was sort of aware of Christopher Durang - even kids in high school. His short plays were so accessible to younger people and I think that was inspirational to me.

The openness of rural Nebraska certainly influenced me. That openness in a way fosters the imagination. But growing up Lincoln wasn't a small town. It was a college town. It had record stores and was a liberal place.

However my parents - both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing quirk that would never pay a mortgage or secure a pension.

I often have said that to be a college president you need a thick skin a good sense of humor and nerves like sewer pipes.

When I was at college I worked in a department store called Brit Home Stores which is a pretty lackluster department store selling clothes for middle-aged women. My job was to walk the floor and find anything that was damaged take it to the store room and log it.