The University of Virginia fired its president for lack of ‘strategic dynamism’ and people are not happy. UVA professor Siva Vaidhyanathan writes at Slate what this means for UVA and for education.
The biggest challenge facing higher education is market-based myopia. Wealthy board members, echoing the politicians who appointed them (after massive campaign donations) too often believe that universities should be run like businesses, despite the poor record of most actual businesses in human history.
Universities do not have “business models.” They have complementary missions of teaching, research, and public service. Yet such leaders think of universities as a collection of market transactions, instead of a dynamic (I said it) tapestry of creativity, experimentation, rigorous thought, preservation, recreation, vision, critical debate, contemplative spaces, powerful information sources, invention, and immeasurable human capital.
A Rally at UVA right now for transparency in this process. Just thinking about this whole fiasco makes me tired, but sufficed to say that UVA’s leadership system basically combines the worst reductionism of high-finance with the worst tribute and spoils systems of southern aristocratic politics.
Don’t forget to read this terribly-written piece of propaganda written by one of the alumni attributed to be a mastermind behind the whole thing. If he were to wrap himself in Jefferson any tighter, it would violate Virginia’s ban on gay marriage.
