March 15, 2002

Higher Ed Inc.: Avoiding the Perils of Outsourcing

By DAVID L. KIRP

"It is a good principle of educational administration that a college or university should do nothing that any other agency can do as well," declared former University of Chicago president Robert Maynard Hutchins 66 years ago in his book The Higher Learning in America. "This is a good principle because a college or university has a vast and complicated job even if it does only what it can do."

In that era of Mr. Chips-style paternalism, Hutchins's point wasn't so obvious. But Hutchins's

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