AMID ALL the talk of Washington gridlock, burgeoning debt, and the rise of China and India, one American establishment looks like a beacon of hope: the university. It remains the engine of American innovation, and the envy of our competitors around the globe. But questions have begun to emerge about the quality of American college graduates, the shifts of foreign students to European and Asian universities, and the slippage in the global rankings of American schools.
There are many reasons for this. But to a surprising degree, US universities today are falling short because of a transformation within the nation’s academic community itself. Today’s great universities were built by members of the faculty who - contrary to the myth of the impractical professor - often turned out to be excellent entrepreneurs and managers. Yet, over the last half-century, America’s universities have slowly been taken over by a burgeoning class of administrators and staffers who are less interested in training future entrepreneurs and thinkers as they are in turning institutions of learning into cash cows for a growing academic bureaucracy. The character of higher education in the United States has changed - and not for the better.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Universities weakened under weight of bureaucracy - The Boston Globe
Author:Benjamin Ginsberg
