A University of Maryland economist applauds the overthrow of U Va’s fearful, incrementalist president and looks forward to the initiation of the school’s faculty into the rigors of market life.
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After all, consider what hideous shape the place is in, market-wise:
A $5 billion endowment makes it the wealthiest public university, per capita, in the United States. Over 28,000 students applied for admission last year, a record high.
You only get results like these when faculty retreat behind ivy walls and trembletrembletremble at the rigors of the marketplace…
Not only that, but its impeccably kept campus has been named a UNESCO World Heritage site!
If no one steps in to stop this process, the University of Virginia will begin to look like a smelly pirate hooker before the week is out. With new market rigors and massive onlining, however, U Va will finally be able to compete with Everest College.
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Here’s a slightly different take on the marketplace at U Va:
A university governed entirely by wealthy businesspeople steeped in a culture of corporate strategy memos will reflect the peculiar perspectives of the modern rich. The financialized American economy has made vast fortunes for gamblers with poor impulse control who mistake a lucky roll of the dice for intelligence and virtue. It’s not surprising that the same kind of fast-twitch thinking would lead a group of homogenous financial patrons talking among themselves to lose patience with a career higher education administrator who was insufficiently galvanized by the latest columns from Thomas Friedman and David Brooks.
U Va’s trustees were afraid “That the university would be forced to get by with $5 billion in the bank.” And indeed that is a sickeningly paltry sum. Harvard is on its way to forty billion. What the hell is U Va thinking? If Harvard needs an endowment larger than the GNP of most countries, so does U Va.
June 21st, 2012 at 5:58PM
that “rigors of the marketplace” stuff just ticks me off. Right, I took out 60k in loans and spent a decade earning a PhD because I don’t like competition. Last position we had open, we had nearly 300 applicants, and I’m in a small field. If there’s a tougher marketplace than academic, especially given the price of even being able to compete in it, I’d like to know what it is. And I think faculty are not so much change-averse as bullshit-resistant. In other, er, “marketplaces,” there isn’t the (sometimes chimerical, but still) shared governance that allows us to call BS on “dynamic leadership.” Looking at the emails that were flying around UVA in response to barely thought out columns in NYT and WSJ, looks to me like the BOV is a little change-happy. Talk about damaging your brand.
June 21st, 2012 at 6:08PM
http://www2.dailyprogress.com/news/2012/jun/21/breaking-news-board-meet-reconsider-sullivan-ouste-ar-2005026/