After the Devolution: Notes on Rebuilding the Public University

Event Date: 

Friday, December 7, 2012 - 12:00pm to 1:30pm

Event Location: 

  • University of Texas at Austin
  • GEB 3.312
  • Lecture/Workshop

According to Newfield, public university officials all over the country are locked in a fatal embrace with their states' political and business leaders. These officials have a small set of solutions that they use repeatedly to deal with continuous funding and confidence declines. Unfortunately, all of their solutions make the problem worse. Newfield's paper will describe the devolutionary cycle that universities have created in which individually rational decisions add up to mutually-reinforcing disaster. It will then propose ways of breaking the spell of a failed paradigm, paying particular attention to the reconstruction of the meaning of the humanities disciplines.