I don’t mean to minimize the concerns of adjunct faculty but it occurs to me that almost every time I post about any one of a whole range of subjects the responses are all interpreted from the point of view of a part-time professor. So when I raise a question about the pros and cons of the doctor of arts degrees the response is, “is it good or bad for contingent faculty?” The concerns of contingent faculty, however real, have got to take second place to the survival of the university itself.

This morning’s mail brought a letter from TIAA-CREF commenting on the state of the economic market: it is meant to reassure those of us who have our pensions invested with this entity. Important, of course, and what about university endowments? Not to mention the ability of parents and students to pay tuition.

Robert Brown, the president of Boston University, has called for an immediate hiring freeze and a moratorium on all construction projects. He is the first to do this but surely not the last. My own university, George Washington, has posted its first annual endowment loss in years. Its endowment had grown sharply in the recent past but lost 3 percent. As you can imagine, my former colleagues are concerned.

Meanwhile, the ability of college students to get financial aid is taking a licking. Pell Grants are reported to face a $6-billion shortfall. Obviously, this will affect students and the institutions they hope to attend.

While the ill fortunes of the global economy are reaching all aspects of campus life, the general economic model that propels the traditional university must be rethought. We cannot survive new threats with old techniques.

One hesitates to point out that some of these issues and proposals for what to do about them — how to make the academy more accountable and resource efficient — have been in the wind for a while. But when one suggests that perhaps we ought to think about making changes in the way we do business, we get lectures about “selling out.” For example, the notion of a three-calendar year B.A. degree earlier raised in this space was dismissed as academically unsound. Meanwhile, of course, students who don’t pay much attention to The Chronicle of Higher Education go their own way. Thus, while for many students college continues to be a four-year experience, a growing number are going on to do their undergraduate degrees in three years, even without the planning assistance of their institutions. They save money, get on to work or graduate school a year earlier, and it is reasonable to expect that more will go in this direction. Perhaps the students will lead the institution down the fast track.

Similarly, at Northwestern University the conventional three-year law degree is now being proffered in a compressed five-semester program. Northwestern is the only law school among the nation’s leaders to offer this option. But if it succeeds, as I expect it will, to attract some of the best and most motivated law students, how will others resist following? And, it is probably appropriate to point out that they have packaged all the ABA requirements for the degree into 2/3 of the time by introducing some summer classes and having everybody work a little harder during the rest of the program. Other law schools are being cautious, viewing this experiment with skepticism, but trust me, in a year or two, if they start getting letters from over-the-top college seniors thanking them for their admission but explaining that they prefer to go to Northwestern, the others will come around.

Lest you think that all is gloomy, I can’t help but note the name inflation that seems to be cheerfully spreading across academia. College after college, given almost any excuse whatsoever, is changing its name. The most recent that I’m aware of is Bentley College, which has always had my respect and regard. Located in Waltham, Mass., it’s been a first-rate business school and attracted some genuinely outstanding faculty and very good students. But who can resist gilding the lily? They are about to reinvent themselves as Bentley University. They are not alone in this exercise. I can only wonder what effect it has on reality, or perhaps, perception. Is a rose a rose by whatever name? And will we ever see Dartmouth University?

This morning’s Washington Post has a Blondie cartoon by Dean Young, in which Dagwood seated at his favorite greasy spoon reading the menu says, “Hey these prices have doubled since yesterday.” The counterman replies, “I know, I wanna run a more upscale dinner.” Dagwood says, “Well, there’s more to it than doubling the price of everything on the menu!” The counterman answers, “Oh, I know, I’ll get around to improving the food later on.” And then he concludes, “Rome wasn’t built in a day, you know.” And that is surely true.

If you want to see Rome, you have to look at Cambridge, Mass., where Harvard’s endowment earned 8 percent in the last fiscal year, taking them from $34.9-billion to $36.9-billion dollars. The previous year, their return was 23 percent. Lest you think that in the face of such returns benefactors have been deterred, I conclude with the observation that a Harvard Business School graduate gave Harvard $125-million last week to start a bio-engineering institute. And I confess, upon thinking about it, I feel it probably is a virtuous thing to have done. I’ll bet in the years to come we are going to hear great things resulting from this investment that will bring together experts from robotics, biology, and surgery.

So, what’s the take-away? We need to exclude Harvard from our discussion, and probably Yale, but everybody else really, really needs to think about what the state of the economy means to universities. If we want our universities to stay the same, then things have got to change.