If you put a frog in water and raise the temperature slowly, the frog will eventually be boiled alive. Invisible increments add up, and the outcome is bad for the frog. Education has to adapt to changing times. To adapt successfully, the frog should have noticed something wrong, got a thermometer, kept records and jumped. I argue that it is philosophical attitudes, habits and skills that can prevent our universities from being boiled alive.
Adaptation can be active and responsive or it can be reactive.
Reactive adaptation responds to surface changes without grasping their shape and logic, allows the terms of the relationship to be dictated entirely by the other party. Active adaptation tries to grasp the law of change, not to be led by the nose, but to grasp and even create the opportunities that change brings. The shapes of change rarely stare us in the face. But critical reflection can draw them out and place even them in perspective. Active adaptation requires the critical capacities which are the natural but not exclusive property of philosophy.