Nevertheless, many American universities are good, and have made a great intellectual contribution. But Dean Rosovsky is wrong in his explanation of that excellence. He attributes it to the fact that American universities are tightly controlled by a President under a Board of Trustees, and that they are highly competitive, with star salaries for star performers, much job mobility, and stringent reviews on the way to promotion. The presidential system is a good one for taking tough decisions, and in a business tough decisions have to be taken if the business is to remain economically efficient and survive. But academic efficiency is an elusive concept.
Tough decisions inhibit rather than stimulate intellectual growth.
Rather few tough decisions need to be made in the academic world. Even if they are the right decisions, which often they are not, the cost of grasping the nettle is usually greater than that of leaving the nettle ungrasped, to die away in its own good time. The presidential system is good for securing uniformity. But uniformity is not much needed in the academic world. A decentralised system, though not yielding uniformity, allows much more feedback, and thus better-informed decisions.