I know a false dilemma when I see it, and I see one in this article. One one horn of the dilemma, a criticism of the university system I have been making for a long time now: that it is essentially a cottage industry, unable or unwilling to adapt to the growing needs of students and society, resistant in so many ways to the opportunities offered by technological change. On the other horn of the dilemma, the proposition that the university must be run as a business, consolodating and rationalizing, attending to the bottom line, becoming customer centric, and probably, doing away with tenure. The latter picture looks attractive only because the former is so dismal. But when one looks at the scandals of Enron and Worldcom, the manipulations of Mircosoft, the feeble performances of Nortel and Corel, to name just a few, the prospect of running universities like a business seems like nothing less than the short road to ruin for the educational system. No, I think we must cling to what universities have become: an essential public service, part of the social infrastructure, and the beacon of hope for people not only here but around the world. That does not obviate the need for change, but it does dictate the direction in which change must go, and it is not toward Wall Street.
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