". . .the truly individualist and entrepreneurial scene today is the university. Having long enjoyed a bureaucratic haven from the individualist anarchy of commerce, the university man is becoming aggressively non-conformist. His intense book training makes this easy for him. But he has previously held back out of an instinctive sense of his authentic role. Today sparked by private grants from the big collective foundations the professor is able to function as a figure of private initiative and as an employee of labor. Today, in a word, the professor is about to assume the individualist role relinquished by the business community. Private enterprise having whirled itself in a new collective way with long-term goals. It is prepared to use its vast funds to subsidize the very individualism which it has outgrown."
Marshall McLuhan, Explorations, 1967, Something Else Press, Inc. New York
_________________________________________________
When he wrote these words McLuhan hadn't experienced the still growing feminism of academia, which has added another dimension to the changing relationship between the business community and higher education.
No comments:
Post a Comment