Degrees of failure: why it’s time to reconsider how we run our universities

Among the world’s major institutions, only the Catholic Church has operated, uninterrupted, for longer than the universities. They are the source of how we think and what we know, and have formed western elites for centuries. They still do, but in the last half-century they have been transformed—in size, but also in their social impact and political importance. In England most universities have been enjoying a glorious 21st century.…