“Jeff Yass's op-ed "Pouring Money Into the Ivy League Won't Solve Its Problems" (Oct. 9) is right on target, but to accommodate new academic ventures, we need the Schumpeterian "creative destruction" so critical to the emergence and triumph of competitive private enterprise capitalism in the U.S. and across the globe. The downsizing or near death of iconic brand names like Sears and Eastman Kodak helped free resources to finance the Anthropic, Nvidia, Apple and other leaders of recent economic progress.
The growing threat of closure is already forcing some existing colleges out of desperation to throttle the administrative bloat that had distracted them from their primary mission of discovering and disseminating knowledge and creative ideas.
Some institutions are also considering revising tenure provisions and are even rethinking costly intercollegiate athletic spending. Labor markets are making unemployable majors like gender studies undesirable for students. Some schools are asking professors to teach more and write fewer articles for last-resort journals. Talk is growing of having three-year instead of four-year bachelor's degrees.
Because of massive taxpayer and private philanthropic subsidies, market signals that lead to needed collegiate resource reallocation are weakened, but they are still present and beginning to work. I share Mr. Yass's enthusiasm for the University of Austin, but think the death of a few hundred existing schools will scare the rest into promoting less ideologically driven wokeness and instead focus on greater efficiency.
Prof. Em. Richard Vedder
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio” [1]
During the era of Communist rule, Lithuanian universities were weak, yet they were genuine universities. The people working there were committed to academic inquiry and trained professionals for Lithuania from among the best students available.
Thanks to the Conservative Kubilius and the Liberal Steponavičius, our universities have turned into diploma mills. They force talented students—who lack the funds for private tutors and thus fail to secure state-funded study places—to incur massive debts to Scandinavian banks. That money is then squandered by the universities.
The same applies to the money paid by migrants who come to Lithuania to work while posing as students.
Professors have churned out a multitude of minor "academic" journals in which they publish worthless "research papers" and cite one another.
Lithuanian universities lack both genuine research and real education. It is a mockery of the very concept of a university. They should be dismantled and rebuilt from scratch, and all the charlatans exported to Greece along with the Landsbergis clan. Better research is produced in the Polish provincial city of Białystok than at our beloved Vilnius University in our capital.
Lithuania’s higher education system, its quality, and the reforms implemented since the restoration of independence (particularly the 2009 science and studies reform associated with then-Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius and Minister of Education Gintaras Steponavičius) have elicited highly conflicting assessments within both society and academic circles.
There are several main viewpoints on this issue:
• The position of critics: It is argued that the introduction of the "study voucher" system, rising tuition costs, and the loan system have commercialized higher education, turning it into a "market" and increasing social exclusion. Criticism is also directed at the formal system for evaluating research output (the so-called "chasing of metrics"), which opponents claim prioritizes quantity over quality.
• The position of reform proponents: It is argued that the restructuring introduced necessary competition among universities, increased funding transparency, encouraged institutions to focus more on student needs and international research standards, and helped identify and refine the strongest study programs.
• International assessment: In international university rankings (such as the QS World University Rankings), Lithuania’s leading universities continue to face challenges regarding funding and research impact within the global context.
Without a skilled workforce, Lithuania cannot have a functioning economy. And without good universities, there will be no such workforce. The quality of universities is a matter of national survival. Expensive tanks—easily destroyed by drone swarms—will not help here. Step down from the podiums, tanks, balconies, and barrels. It is time to get to work.
1. It's OK if Markets Force Some Colleges to Close. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 13 Oct 2026: A16.
Komentarų nėra:
Rašyti komentarą