Academia Progresses "One Funeral at a Time"

Pick up any business magazine or how-to management book, and you’ll run into words like “nimble” and “move fast” on virtually every page. The ability to change direction and shift priorities in reaction to consumer preferences or competitor actions often makes a decisive difference in marketplace success. One can’t think of an enterprise less “nimble” than the modern American university.

Or a practice better designed to limit flexibility than tenure, which Columbia University professor and “Crisis on Campus” author Mark C. Taylor labeled as “the single most important factor preventing change in higher education.” A quick way to induce sobriety in a university board is to suggest they calculate the net present value of each of those tenure decisions they have been routinely approving. Depending on the school, it could come to several million dollars, and with some faculty hanging on and immune to dismissal into their dotage, it could be far more. The macabre old saw “We make progress one funeral at a time” comes to mind.