"University, Inc. The Corporate Corruption of Higher Education" J. Washburn
Um livro muito oportuno, cuja leitura recomendo a todos os que se interessam pela missão da Universidade no mundo actual. Uma citação final, em adição às anteriores, para estimular a curiosidade:
[...]
The freedom of universities from market constraints is precisely what allowed them in the past to nurture the type of open·ended fundamental research that led to some of the most important (and least expected) discoveries in history. Today, as the line between academic and commercial science dissolves, as the openness of the academic culture gives way to a proprietary one, as professors are encouraged to think more and more like entrepreneurs, a question arises: Will the Paul Bergs of the future have the freedom to explore ideas that have no obvious and immediate commercial value? Only, it seems, if universities cling to their traditional ideals and maintain their independence from the marketplace. Only, that is, if higher education is appreciated not only for its potential use value but for its intrinsic worth. This will nor be easy in an age of dwindling public support for higher education, but the university is simply too important a public institution to be surrendered to the narrow dictates of the market. "The best reason for supporting the college and the university," wrote Hofstadter, "lies not in the services they can perform, vital though such services may be, but in the values they represent. The ultimate criterion of the place of higher learning in America will be the extent to which it is esteemed not as a necessary instrument of external ends, but as an end in itself."
[...]
(op. cit., p. 241)
Jennifer Washburn (2006). University, Inc. The Corporate Corruption of Higher Education. Basic Books, New York. (pp. 352)
Referências anteriores:
"Something to think about", 29/05/2009
"Something to think about", 22/05/2009