A
university is clearly functioning sub-optimally when its departments operate
with scant regard to any obligation to contribute to the good of the whole
(organization). A university’s administration makes matters worse by viewing
the university through the lenses of a business firm—seeking to remake what is
innately academic in the guise of private enterprise. Fundamentally, when an
organization’s management loses sight of the distinct basis of the
organization, it is bound to founder from the confounded identity. I had the
privilege of attending Yale, whose administration values and protects uniquely
academic norms and mores. Unfortunately, university administrations far away
from lux et veritas can lose sight of even the distinct academic basis
of a university, preferring instead to remake it into something else—a business
or, even worse, a conglomerate without a functioning headquarters. In this
essay, I discuss one example of such a university, far, far away from the heart and soul of academia,
yet where managers take advantage nonetheless of its good name.
The full essay is at "When a University Loses Its Way."
