It has taken Tony Bates four previous posts to get to this, the meat of what he has to say about the institutional response to the coming cost and enrollment crisis. This isn't the space for a detailed critique, and in any case, it looks like there will be more posts. But in a nutshell my response is essentially: to agree with his solutions you have to agree with his assessment of what a university (and a university professor) does. And I don't think I agree. For example, he proposes "a new classification of faculty, full-time teachers who have no research responsibilities" (this somehow to be done "within existing collective agreements", as specified in part 4). Similarly, the "the integrated design of whole programs" might be less ideal as an objective than may be supposed. Learning "how to find, assess, and appropriately use knowledge, and in particular, how to develop core skills such as critical thinking, independent learning, knowledge management, and problem-solving" is much less a matter of being taught these things as it is of experiencing them.
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