Well at least we’re not alone.

A thoughtful blog post by Bert Olivier, professor of philosophy at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, on the roles of universities and professional training institutions. A sample paragraph:

What I am talking about is what seems to me to be the drift towards a narrowing down of the “function” of a university in the traditional, constantly self-renewing sense, towards an institution which merely serves the needs of the community as determined by current economic and social needs, by focusing mainly on the training of “professionals”. The fact that, since the merger of the PE Technikon, Vista PE and the University of Port Elizabeth, the institution (and others like it) has been known as a “comprehensive institution”, instead of a university, plain and simple (despite the fact that it bears the name of a university). The question that this raises is: Does the training of professionals at such a tertiary institution preclude the maintenance of the character of a university as an institution that encourages and cultivates critical thinking, or does it presuppose this character?