The Humanities have traditionally held an important place in university's curricula. Their import actually used to make all the difference between a university degree and an institute of technology one. Times have changed. Since the late seventies, Hayek's "Chicago School" of economics has fostered a new agenda that basically has no patience for old-fashioned cultural issues lacking immediate cash value. Like all other public organizations, universities had to adapt and their well-documented transformation is now almost complete (Newfield in After political correctness: The humanities and society in the 1990s, 1995; Readings in The university in Ruins, 1996; Woodhouse in Selling out. Academic freedom and the corporate market, 2009). Institutes of higher education stand as solid pillars of the "knowledge economy," but the more they became attuned to the requirements of the "market," the less they could fulfil their initial agenda, which was to contribute to the common good and to foster personal growth, as well as granting some form of skillful practice. This paper is made of three main parts. After a short reminder on the current state of academic affairs, A. N. Whitehead's (1861-1947) pedagogical vision is sketched, then his methodological recommendations are introduced, and eventually his emphasis on "duty and reverence" analyzed.