ABSTRACT
Every decade has its issues. In the 1990s the paramount issue for higher education administrators, such as academic library directors, has been the struggle to maintain and expand services in a climate where traditional sources of funding are continuously threatened and where new revenue sources are hotly contested. Many believe that in order to maintain, adjust, and prosper, academic library directors, as well as other campus administrators, need to move forward as other consumer industries have and reinvent their orga nizations. To many outside of academia, particularly state legisla tors, the perception is growing that higher education hasn’t learned from the changes that have affected other consumer industries such as the automobile and steel industries, who have coped with market competition; airlines and railroads, who have dealt with changing consumer demands; and banks and Baby Bells who have shed workers because of technological efficiencies. In the coming de cade many see the number one issue confronting campus adminis trators to be how higher education, a “not-for-profit” culture, suc cessfully embraces “for-profit” principles.
