Are Universities Selling Their Souls?

A former president of Harvard writes in a new book about the dangers to academia by the profit imperative. Increasingly schools are chasing money at the the expense of… standards? Integrity? “How colleges and universities relate to the marketplace and the world beyond their walls is not merely an academic issue. These institutions are an engine of prosperity, training specialists and the workforce, advancing scientific discoveries and moving people up the ladder of socioeconomic advancement. It is increasingly difficult, though, to meet higher education’s insatiable financial demands through conventional means. The hunt for profits is not a new story.”