A University Is Not a Business (and Other Fantasies)
For those of us who are both products and supporters of a liberal arts education, Milton Greenberg's article in the current issue of the
EDUCAUSE Review,
A University Is Not a Business (and Other Fantasies), may prove difficult to digest. Representing a perspective that has already had an impact on higher education (and is difficult to ignore), I found the article thought-provoking and at times unsettling. Your comments on the ideas presented here are welcome.
A few excerpts from the article:
"...colleges and universities could use simple technology (i.e., a CD) to provide students with presentations by truly outstanding lecturers of regularly taught courses, with on-campus faculty serving as tutors and discussion leaders."
"I suggest that in light of the demographic and technological changes in academe, the academic calendar is irrelevant, the credit hour on which higher education values learning at fifty minutes per credit per week for fifteen weeks is irrelevant, and the personnel policies, the administrative structures, and even the physical plants—which rest on the calendar and the credit hour—are irrelevant. Whatever purposes these systems serve, there is certainly no demonstrable relationship to what and how people learn."
"Liberal arts, the staple of bygone years and part of the romantic tradition, now serve mainly as handmaidens to undefined "general education" components of technical or professional degrees."
"Each institution, in cottage-industry style, thoroughly decentralized, insists on doing what every other institution does: ignoring specialization or cooperation and ignoring technological applications to learning and other potential economies of scale."
"The technology revolution may indeed spell the end of the tenure system as it is presently administered."
"If higher education is to lead its own renewal, it must think about its people, its property, and its productivity in business terms."