Are business executives in higher education a new phenomenon?
LB: Their presences is actually is terra cognita to those who have charted the progress of higher ed over the past century or more.* Businessmen assumed higher ed leadership from the clergy and academics as universities became larger and more complex. From the first there have been dire predictions, particularly concerning the tension between the values of universities (disinterested scholarship and the preservation and advancement of knowledge) and those of business (commercial imperative to earn profits for their shareholders). We see a similar tension today with businesses underwriting university research, the outcomes of which might be compromised by the commercial interests of the funding company. There also have been a number of conferences about the skills businesses want college graduates to possess, leading many to believe that business influence on college curricula is intensifying. *Most notably Thorstein Veblen in The Higher Learning in America: A Memorandum on the Conduct
