They turned one crisis into another that they preferred to solve. I don't think that strategy will work as well today. The problem is not research but teaching, and the question is whether universities will be willing to give that problem the same attention they've given research. If you listen to the fears of faculty or the opinions of the popular press, the most pressing danger facing higher education is that traditional students will be gobbled up by nontraditional and for-profit schools. Here's my own fear for higher education.
Technology is about to transform teaching in fundamental ways.
It could just mean that they've happily sold out, or that they haven't yet awakened to some pretty crass realities, but I don't think so. Almost all of them feel that they're doing good work, helping people, and expanding the reach of a field they still care about. But I think that's a mistake. Higher education is big and messy not because it has somehow failed, but because it is creative and expansive, generating new structures and new solutions to the problems of dozens of constituencies. That is something to be proud of-and it's a thought to keep in mind as we face a time that will call for still more creativity and more new solutions.