Since the first Architecture schools were established in the U.S. over a century ago there have been instances when the country has questioned its own methods, values and identity. The perceptions of a university and, in some cases, of the school of architecture, as microcosms of the world gives economic, social and political issues an immediacy invaluable to a clear study of methods and values.(UNFORMATTED TABLE OR EQUATION FOLLOWS)$$\vbox{\halign{#\hfil&&\enspace#\hfil\cr e.g.,\quad&The Cooper Union&---Admission policies\cr&Harvard&---Architect and democratic ideals\cr&Taliesen&---Transcendence of agendas\cr}}$$(TABLE/EQUATION ENDS) Section (3) of this work lists and isolates what I think are the most pressing contemporary issues about which relevant questions and skepticisms should be raised. I propose that facets of these pressing global, national, and local problems and the skepticisms they bring to life, are present at Rice University and explain the development of its master planning, the activities encouraged, or sometimes discouraged, by its central quadrangle, and the prevailing methodology of its School of Architecture.