What was your uni like?
Parties with casual yet dictatorial professors?
Most of us go to university and college and find something that looks like a lawless, unruly form of school where the lecturers and professors are the biggest outlaws. And so we go out into the world thinking of universities as schools with no business-imperative and no business-sense.
The business of universities
Nothing could be further from the truth. Universities are businesses, or enterprises; but with a business model that is so opaque, few people understand it, unless they have worked in one for quite a while. If you do business with universities, if you are in a knowledge business, if you have to hire graduates to get work done, you might like to read this brilliant description of university business models.
As greedy as bacteria
“As organisms in a system, universities evolve. They eat up smaller institutions to dominate a niche, or split of side campuses to enter new spaces. They relentlessly share their DNA, as Universities heads look over their shoulders and shamelessly copy the innovations of others. Universities fight for resources, funding, students among themselves, where a Society usually co-opts all of the resources in it’s zone of control and operates without competitive challenge.”