Penis en Va.

 
The Decline and Fall of a Public University: How Status Anxiety Doomed the University of Virginia

Kevin Carey

...A university governed entirely by wealthy businesspeople steeped in a culture of corporate strategy memos will reflect the peculiar perspectives of the modern rich. The financialized American economy has made vast fortunes for gamblers with poor impulse control who mistake a lucky roll of the dice for intelligence and virtue. It’s not surprising that the same kind of fast-twitch thinking would lead a group of homogenous financial patrons talking among themselves to lose patience with a career higher education administrator who was insufficiently galvanized by the latest columns from Thomas Friedman and David Brooks...

06/21/2012 - 9:11pm EDT | skahn

I wish I had something original to contribute (like all the other commenters). Again, we are in a second Civil War (minimum of bloodshed, this time, as we are in a wimpy age). On this occasion, we need to go ahead and divide into two nations. One containing the aristocracy and plutocrats, with universities to suit; the other containing the plebes and peons such as us. Or is it such as we? See -- I am lacking a "decent" education.

UVA Board's Lazy Business Sense

David Karpf

... Large, well-run organizations don't make a habit of jumping on every new fad. Yet this is exactly what led to the abrupt firing of President Sullivan -- she apparently wasn't ready to chase headfirst after David Brooks's latest fancy.

... Behind all the silly jargon about "strategic dynamism," it appears the great tragedy of the UVA Board of Visitors is not that they've brought effective business sense into the Ivory Tower. It is that their business acumen proves stunningly lackluster.

This is governance through second-hand op-ed clippings. It is governance through rah-rah PowerPoint presentations. It is governance through Cliff's Notes and Wikipedia pages. It bears no resemblance to an effectively-run company, much less an effectively-run university.

The University of Virginia deserves better than this, in so many ways.

The Declaration of Independence

by KIERAN HEALY on JUNE 20, 2012

Charlottesville, June 19th, 2012

The More or Less Unanimous Declaration of the Board of Visitors

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for a Board to dissolve the administrative bands which have connected a President with a University, and to assume for themselves the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and the Bond Market entitle them, it is best to do it secretly, quickly, and in the middle of the night...