It is not only the universities that have to understand that they are not the gatekeepers anymore. The people financing the universities should shine their lens and more importantly their crystal balls.

The bulk of the knowledge is not within the university walls anymore. Unfortunately economic development agents still think that knowledge and research capability mainly resides in universities. That might have been true 20 years ago, and still is in certain fields, but in the IT field universities represent a trivial amount of knowledge. Economic development strategies based around university centered clusters will lead to sub-optimal technologies being developped.

It is not only the Internet causing this breaking of the walls. There are probably more masters degrees and Ph.Ds outside of universities thant inside. Our small company had more Ph.Ds in the field of learning technologies than our local university did. Still the research/economic development agency would suggest that we would go see the lesser qualified university researchers.

Universities are great. There like a real world version of PlentyOfFish or something. Maybe some kind of daycare system for young adults or a buffering mechanism to increase employment stats. A few teachers showed me what excellence was.. but I am not too sure that the institution did the same.

I hate being linear..

Gilbert