Higher education: beyond the bottom line

Steven Schwartz

“On the evening of 14 April 1912, the Reverend Ernest Carter conducted a religious service aboard a steamship headed for New York. Marion Wright of Somerset, England, who was on her way to get married, sang the final hymn. It was John Henry Newman’s ‘The Pillar of the Cloud’:

Lead, kindly Light, amid th’encircling gloom, lead Thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home; lead Thou me on!

These words were eerily prescient. Just as Marion finished singing, the Titanic hit an iceberg. Fifteen hundred and seventeen passengers were taken to a watery grave, but not Marion. She made it to America, married and lived to tell the tale …”