What Should A University Be?

I doubt that there is a single university that is not thinking about this question. To answer it, you must reach the point where you can say, like Don Quixote, “Yo sé quién soy, y sé que puedo ser . . .”, even if you seem crazy to others at the time.           

In many ways, the choice of whether to be a business, a state agent, or an autonomous state within a state should be easy, because it is basically a question, as are most questions of self-determination, of preference.

But in absence of a habit of long-term thinking, many universities have become so detached from the implications of what they do to fully see who they are and what they’ve become, that their preferences may be hard to sort out. Political actors, with which the university is heavily burdened, may impede the process of thinking objectively about what is best for its independence: they may care only about short-term self-interests. This complicates the process of examining and understanding the whole, making hard but logical choices, and finding the correct organizational form (or forms), which come with varying implications for needed organizational work and for level of autonomy.