Universities Should Not Follow Corporate Example

To the editors:

I find it somewhat difficult to respond to Scott Resnick's "May I Take Your Order?" (Opinion, May 21), if only because it's not quite clear what Resnick is demanding. I suspect this is partly because his argument is composed largely of the platitudes of corporate consulting, such as "asking more and demanding less." It seems clear, however, than anyone who can write, without apparent irony, that Harvard should be "a 'Nordstrom's' of the higher education industry" has a gross misconception of the purpose of universities.

Resnick does not seem to understand that the cornerstones of the modern university, tenure for professors and financial aid for students, are crucial precisely because of how they counteract the imperatives of the market. Somehow, perhaps from the fact that Harvard often looks like a breeding ground for investment bankers, Resnick has concluded that Harvard is a "business" and that he is a "consumer." Nothing could be more wrong. In short, a university's purpose is to educate students, not to "serve consumers."

What really concerns me is not the educational philosophy of Resnick's editorial but its general attitude. When one has the chance to spend four years largely isolated from the demands of the modern economy, to study and to live with a few thousand other young students, it seems remarkably selfish to whine about "customer service." This is not to say that students should be cowed into gratitude and never ask anything from Harvard. One would hope, however, that when they do demand something, it might be for people other than themselves.

While I am not affiliated with the Living Wage Campaign, I think that its demands compare favorably with Resnick's heartless prose: "sour grapes employees...should be identified and retrained in the art of the customer service." At a time when corporate values seem to be encroaching on every aspect of American life, it is refreshing when Harvard is asked to show compassion and wisdom, to be something better than a business.

Harvard administrators and Faculty certainly need no convincing that the purpose of the university is nothing like that of a department store; Mr. Resnick's editorial will indeed draw "sarcastic chuckles" from them, and rightly so. But perhaps it will compel those who make policy at Harvard to check that their practice is in line with their ideals, and to realize with whom they agree when it isn't.

John T. Maier '01

May 21, 1999