The result is universal opportunity to get creative literary and artistic work out to the global population, unbridled by any of the past barriers of publishing and distribution costs, small-minded reviewers cliques, publishers, distributors, or retailer prejudices and conventions, even cultural and political restrictions! Readers and viewers now have access without the censorship of markets, despots, and arts elite to filter and reject. Art, film, and literary criticism is also open to all to voice their analysis and help popularize or launch healthy discussion beyond the confines of narrow literary groups, film schools, and censored letters to the editor.

On the other hand, all this freedom and access comes at a cost. Newpapers, magazines, and publishing houses are disappearing as employment for photographers, short story writers, and critics as the web publishes unpaid writers and unlicensed reproductions go out into the ether. The entire music industry has come crashing down, so that new artists had to return to traveling the concert circuit (often at campuses) to survive by t-shirt merchandize sales.

What does that do the humanties debate? it used to be arts/humanities vs. social/life/physical sciences. Today, the latter group is dying (except for bio, supported by big pharma money) while creative writing, arts, and music employment at big corporations and dot com startup is bigger than ever! — Half the movie hits are CGI, and demand is great for music for the huge video gaming industry and ad themes. As we’ve moved from brick and mortar to web retailing and virtual business, new hires have to write these websites and facebook pages.

So, the humanities/arts debate belies the continuing resource allocation issues of campus power politics. Contempt for modern or commercial by protected academics. Lit profs forced to teach composition classes. Adjuncts dominating the meat market of teaching these areas. Music departments draining the resources of colleges, and cross-subsidized by the lucrative and crowded business classes.

A president who marginalizes shared governance, who disparages tenure, or who sits silently by while outsiders disparage the faculty, will find themselves standing alone when they try to advocate for an important change or against devastating cuts. 

Martin seems to have been doing an unusually good job of earning faculty loyalty at UW, and maybe could have pulled her plan off had she waited a few more years.

Clark Kerr generally had the loyalty of his faculty, from whose ranks he rose, and while that didn’t save him from being fired by an extremist governor, it certainly gave him a strong platform from which to speak.

Immature. False dichotomies. Straw man.

Perhaps a missing point here is that potential students, especially from outside the UK, might be misled into thinking that they will be awarded a degree by the NCH, when it bears the relation to the actual degree awarder as Kaplan’s LSAT prep does to Harvard Law School.

If Grayling et al. had the courage of their convictions, they would found an alternative university (or even just a university college) rather than a crammer.