"The Wall Street Journal reports about how colleges are removing stacks of books from their libraries and making them more into social centers. The article suggests that this new breed of library makes sense because of the availability of online information. Reading within the article, I get the sense that we are seeing the effects of the corporatization of the University, where students are seen as customers..."
No, they're still employees, soon to be the "middle managed" of the 'American Way"[tm]. That's just the environment presented campus-wide to inform the students that they needn't "sell out" their expectations to get a sheepskin. This is what the heavenly job that awaits them looks like, what is to be expected. What they are paying HUGE sums of money for. A job that exists just for them (...and their latte...). Boy, won't they be disappointed when they end up in some windowless cubie working on production flowcharts for a mil-ind product they've never seen, and will never ever even have the clearance to be informed what that trillion dollar widget does! But the schools will have taken their money, and got them their 'cush' job, so there's no blame. Just a life of accumulating... Stuff... -- Leigh http://www.leighm.net "Well I ask you to consider -- if this is a firm, and if the Board of Regents are the Board of Directors, and if President Kerr in fact is the manager, then I tell you something -- the faculty are a bunch of employees and we're the raw material! But we're a bunch of raw materials that don't mean to be -- have any process upon us. Don't mean to be made into any product! Don't mean -- Don't mean to end up up being bought by some clients of the University, be they the government, be they industry, be they organized labor, be they anyone! We're human beings!" <http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mariosaviosproulhallsitin.htm>
