Nicely put. The title might be intentionally clickbaity, but it’s should strongly remind us of Chesterton’s fence.
I can imagine many alternatives that might appear better than universities in today’s world with contemporary assumptions, but it is totally unclear whether any of them (especially VC-funded startups) might survive over significant timescales (minimum one century) — protecting human knowledge and hosting a fecund environment for the human intellect. Universities are conservative almost by design (and I don’t mean politics), and that’s what has helped them survive so long in symbiosis with increasing knowledge and changing social mores. Historically, they have been very good at adapting (slowly), unlike modern businesses which are so rigid that their trajectory typically involves getting killed/consumed by an upstart in a matter of decades. To the extent that universities have serious problems, a lot of can be traced to trying to run them like businesses.
I can imagine many alternatives that might appear better than universities in today’s world with contemporary assumptions, but it is totally unclear whether any of them (especially VC-funded startups) might survive over significant timescales (minimum one century) — protecting human knowledge and hosting a fecund environment for the human intellect. Universities are conservative almost by design (and I don’t mean politics), and that’s what has helped them survive so long in symbiosis with increasing knowledge and changing social mores. Historically, they have been very good at adapting (slowly), unlike modern businesses which are so rigid that their trajectory typically involves getting killed/consumed by an upstart in a matter of decades. To the extent that universities have serious problems, a lot of can be traced to trying to run them like businesses.