Abstract

The assertion is made that we are experiencing a major paradigm shift in what a university should be towards the idea that universities should make a profit. It will be the argument of my paper that this is the introduction of a one-sided obsession and not the advent of a new paradigm. A first premise to substantiate this central statement: These new entrepreneurial practices are very difficult to be harmonized with the older established tasks of teaching and basic research. This makes the notion of a major paradigm shift disputable because the claim of a new paradigm is after all that it will be more comprehensive and still include teaching and basic research. Moreover, indications are that economism will make the current situation of universities worse and not better. A seriously damaging example is the impression that the scramble for profit despoils universities of the ability to ‘think’. This seems hardly the hallmark of a new and emancipative paradigm. The last premise of the paper will speculate that the advocacy of the economistic university is not only because of a will to survive financially. There is an enlisting of universities in the service of an almost religious belief in the necessity of unending economic growth, a belief that skews the typical nature and contribution that universities can make to civilization.