ABSTRACT
The social and economic arguments that were used ten years ago to justify this nearly universal expectation of substantial expansion have not, of course, lost any of their intellectual force. The conservatively inclined fear that universities in particular will be forced to follow a consumerist path that may compromise their intellectual integrity and erode academic freedom. The modern university as the expression of its age, in Flexner's phrase, is much less insulated from the mood of society than was its liberal predecessor. The growing tension between academicism and instrumentalism is also a source of pessimism about the future of the modern university. The crisis of the modern university, if such is a fair description, is to found much more in these conflicts and tensions within intellectual life than in the present cuts in public expenditure on higher education or the future threat of demographic decline.
