What happens when the spaces we learn in teach us something different from the world we’re preparing to enter? At the University of Missouri, red brick and limestone columns have become inseparable from the image of “college.” They romanticize tradition and institutional past, but they also carry histories and hierarchies that extend far beyond aesthetics. Inside newly designed buildings like the Reynolds Journalism Institute and the Cornell Hall Trading Lab, students prepare for a workforce defined by digital networks and technological changes in their industries. Outside, much of campus still remains about legacy and an older version of professional life. That contradiction poses an even larger question about the “secret curriculum” we’re taught through our surrounding environments. Preservation can protect history, but when that history is embedded into the physical infrastructure of education, it also shapes what students learn and associate it with success and professional kn...