Universities are converting themselves from institutions of learning into money launderers. As conduits for grants and endowments, and as honeycombs of “centers” and “institutes” where activities are conducted which cannot be carried out in conventional departments organized by discipline, they offer both Left and Right a thousand ways to transfer wealth while hiding the precise nature of who and what is getting it.
Liberals, working mostly through the crumbling shell of what used to be the liberal arts, use universities to transfer wealth to unpopular left-wing causes which would have a hard time sustaining themselves on their own. Conservatives, working mostly through the sciences, use universities to enable business enterprises to reap the benefits of new technology without having to invest as much in research and development. And then there are those who don’t really care who gets the benefit, as long as the Great Nile of other people’s money is diverted from other regions and universities into their own.