> Why should universities be like cities?

Well I don't know about should, but many are and that's the reality of how they evolved here (I'm not going to speculate as to why at this time). I personally like it and think they should (I've never lived in a town as well-managed and vibrant as my university), maybe others disagree and that's fine. But it's harder to disagree that's where we are right now.

> University students are adults, and their emotional issues are not the responsibility of the university any more than they are the responsibility of your employer.

They are young adults, which is when they are legally but not emotionally adults. There's actually still a lot of brain development going on at 18 (especially in the prefrontal cortex, which is essentially the part of your brain that makes you an adult), and that won't be complete until after we graduate them. I understand there are people out there with the position that as soon as you're 18 you should be kicked out of your parents' house and left to fend in the world for yourself. If that's your position then I can see how a university environment might seem like it's coddling.

But here's the thing -- we don't have the same mandate as employers. This is what I mean by corporate America wanting to impose their model on academia where it doesn't apply. Our mandate is to educate students, while an employer's mandate is to increase shareholder value. Our students are not employees and treating them as such is wrong.

One of the biggest difference between corporate America and academia is that our students live and learn in the same place, and often times they don't have cars, jobs, local family, or any other means of providing for themselves. Being part of a university as a student is a 24/7 deal for ~28 weeks a year. And when they do have jobs, they are part time or pay minimum wage due to their lack of education and experience. That's something that corporate America and the labor market has decided for us. Which is fine, I don't think that's unreasonable, but it means that we can't treat our students like employees who can fend for themselves with a salary as compensation for the work they do; the work they do is actually for themselves and for society, and generates no immediate ROI for us.

> All of the non academic services that a university provides are also provided by the private sector, and they would love to have you as a customer ... the students can go to any medical provider in the area

At one of my previous universities at least, we were the predominate medical provider in the area.

> Medical insurance can be bought through the ACA exchanges, and the students can go to any medical provider in the area (yes this system sucks, but it's not the university's job to fix).

The ACA hasn't been around forever, and when it wasn't we came up with our own system to provide students with
healthcare. ACA has made it so our students can be on their parent's plan, but not all our students have parents with health insurance that would cover them. Since we've already set up the system, we direct our student to that instead of the ACA. It's a much better system with far better care than they could get otherwise, at a cost cheaper than what they could buy on the ACA. AS you say, the ACA system sucks, and maybe it's not our literal job to fix it, but it is within our mandate to teach because the practitioners that our students visit are also students themselves (supervised by professionals). So it's a win for everyone. Yes it makes the university bigger but it also works for us so we keep doing it.

> The grant writing department is the only one of your examples that actually seems like the business of the university.

I could give more examples. For instance we have a whole office of academic advising. This is useful because then I don't have to do this. As a professor of CS, I don't know the ins and outs of the course progression in the department of X. I simply can't providing advising to students as well as they can on a full time basis. That office is not cheap, but it means that students are able to get through their 4 years here without turning it into 5 due to poor planning.

We have a whole office of academic development that helps with writing and tutoring. They augment my ability to teach by offering tutoring for my classes. Students appreciate this service and are always asking for it to be expanded.

I don't think I need to mention libraries. They are very expensive to maintain. As part of the library we have the IT department, which is a massive cost center. But I think we all here understand how important it is so it's never cited as something that should be cut or outsourced.

One of the biggest org charts in our institution is the office of students. Pretty much everything there is designed to directly service student needs, and it's probably pretty bloated at this point. I could see a whole bunch of stuff to cut, but then again I'm not a student anymore, so I don't know how much these things are appreciated. But it's important that they are in fact student facing, so they're getting what they paid for.

I could go on but this is long enough.