While reading a paper from the Journal of Economic Literature on the formation of the now infamous Chicago School of Economics, I found this quote from Milton Friedman particularly good at summing up my feelings for it (especially as I write this after a full day at the Yale Law Library):

The University of Chicago…was the first major university, with possible exception of Johns Hopkins, that was not established primarily as either a finishing school for the children of the upper classes, or as a seminary for training clerics. From the very beginning, Chicago was established as a center of learning, devoted to advancing and transmitting knowledge. Harper’s vision led to the assembling at the University of Chicago of an exceptionally able and dedicated faculty…and for our purposes the critical feature is that they were dedicated not to training gentlemen for gentlemanly pursuits, not to spreading particular religious or ethical or social doctrines, but to the objective pursuit of knowledge…to science in the broadest sense.