Senior's "Last Hour"
 

The first of the important British Factory Acts (passed in 1833) placed a limit on the length of the working day. To this (and impending future Acts) British capital responded - together with the assistance of university-based political economists - by formulating the argument that all profit (every bit of it) was earned in the last hour of the working day. To reduce the working day would thus destroy profit and, with it, capitalism itself.
 
Below I quote Marx's reaction:
 
One fine morning, in the year 1836, Nassau W. Senior, who may be called the bel-esprit of English economists, well known, alike for his economic "science", and for his beautiful style, was summoned from Oxford [the university] to Manchester [the heartland of the British textile industry] to learn in the latter place the Political Economy that he taught in the former. The manufacturers elected him as their champion, not only against the newly passed Factory Act, but against the still more menacing Ten-hours agitation.
 
Now I have no intention of being a modern Nassau Senior. To do so would be the contemporary equivalent of advocacy of long working hours, not to mention the employment of children (no doubt we could develop some argument that work instilled moral properties like self-discipline and reliability in children; at the very least, it prevented their fate as street urchins). How do I (we) ensure that this cannot occur?
 
Marx also said something to the effect that if appearance corresponded with reality, there would be no need for science. As they do not, to mistake appearance for reality, and then to teach that appearance as reality, one is in fact teaching ideology instead of science. So we need to ensure that we pierce appearance to get at reality (I can promise you a lot of piercing, though I am more hesitant about finding reality).
 

This intellectual project requires a distancing from appearance, a separation of the former (Oxford) from the latter (Manchester). Universities are the one institution in society where this distancing is a property of its very organization (until, at least, the globalization of capital together with the decline of the state). Universities are the place where these sorts of intellectual endeavours are supposed to happen. Being a student is a privilege for it locates you in an institution where your primary responsibility is to engage in these intellectual pursuits. Take advantage of it!