ABSTRACT
Academics like to repeat an old adage on the unique staying power of the world's universities. In the course of several centuries, universities have survived revolutions, wars, famines, reformations, societal reengineering, and economic depression. In one fashion or another, they remain. The nearest rival in longevity: the Catholic Church. And this has occurred despite numerous predictions of doom and failure— witness management guru Peter Drucker's prediction in the 1990s that bricks and mortar universities and colleges would soon be put into the dust heap of history, brought to an end by the assumption of cheaper forms of providing “educational services.” We are still waiting.
