What Bartholomae means when he says that students must "invent the university" is that the concept of invention must become alive for them within the terms of academia. Generally, no idea is a new idea. Therefore, Bartholomae suggests that, in order to learn with the potential of discovery, students must be given the opportunity to become "insiders" of academia; they are to move beyond test taking and simple summarization and speak or write from a place of their own original thought or invention.

Bartholomae also examined two bits of writing: one consisting of two paragraphs regarding football shoes and socks as a creative choice, the other, four paragraphs, containing the inspiration of music as the creative theme. He implies that the writer of the "Football Socks Revelation" (as I have just now titled it!) could, perhaps, use some verbal expansion to become closer to his own academic experience while the writer of "Childhood Song Writing... Not!" (also my own invention!) may not have been totally aware of how she was writing but it was a success none-the-less.