Stephen Downes

A professional can, as Tim Klapdor says, pick up their tools, find a new chair, and keep going. "The skill is his. The relationship with his clients is his. The craft he's spent years developing is entirely portable." Why isn't that the same with university professors? Klapdor explains this by saying each university is a unique machine, but I don't think that's it. True, "the academic, at their best, owns a body of work and the reputation that comes with it." But they don't own their own client list (and don't have the marketing reach to generate one), and they don't own the credential that they, uniquely, can confer.