Corporate Takeover At UVA

A bit of advice from a pharma researcher to UVA « The Confluence

...UVA is now engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that university founded by T.J. himself and dedicated to the proposition of respect and reverence for the liberal arts can long endure.  I’m here to tell you that if Helen Dragas hasn’t been forced to resign yet you are losing.  It doesn’t matter at this point if Teresa Sullivan is coming back.  She may be a great administrator but this fight is not about her anymore.  It is about how your future is being compromised by the usurpation of your university by a bunch of rich people who think that their success in business makes them smarter and more equal than you are.  If you let UVA go under without a fight, similar power struggles will happen at other schools.  And they too will go down like dominos.  Before you know it, you will be run by a corporate president who will look after the shareholders’ needs.  There will be a marketing department who will design your curriculum based on what’s hot this year.  Your faculty will have to compete for their jobs and will spend (even) more time undermining each other at your expense.  And the cost of everything will go up.  It will go into some fund that will be used to increase the value of the endowment or take risks in Malaysia on some upcoming business initiative...