If a student chooses to study at only one out of hundreds of different four-year schools, it matters little whether the internal workings of those schools can be mapped onto one another. But if, at the opposite extreme, a student chooses from among hundreds of schools for each course or even each class meeting, then the schools need to ensure that their definitions of course or class meeting , among other important terms, are the same. Ontological standardization, then, is what happens when separate organizations in a given institutional field are required to make uniform the most fundamental categories of their internal workings. Now, however, the same issue can arise in a wide variety of institutional contexts, even when separate organizations are not formally merging. Departments can design the curricula for their majors according to their own distinctive approach, and students can choose the program that fits best with their values and goals.
Universities can design their core curricula according to an overall educational philosophy.
A radical increase in articulation would threaten this flexibility. Allowing students to earn academic credit at multiple campuses is often a good thing. It can create financial tension between the campuses, but it also permits students to save money, discover new interests, or overcome imperfect high school transcripts. But if it becomes radically easier to transfer course credit between schools, thus effectively enabling students to assemble their college education a la carte from among the offerings of a large number of potentially quite different programs, then, I will argue, intellectual diversity may suffer. Observe, first of all, that articulation requires ontological standardization.