Let a million flowers bloom

Instead what do we have? Educational institutions that value research over teaching; that focus not on firing students up but on getting back to the lab. The signs on their doors say it all: “Student consultations between 1.00 and 1.30 every second Wednesday.”

Our universities have become sheltered workshops for the academically gifted, each year, begging bowls out clamouring over themselves for more handouts. Always grizzling about how little money they have, they are not innovative enough to sustain themselves financially. That's a pivotal measure of academic innovation.

The great kudos in educational institutions comes not from innovation, not from dreaming up the next best thing since sliced bread, or inspiring their students to become great innovators, but from crunching more numbers through a stats package, getting a paper in a journal or being invited (by a mate) to give a talk at an overseas conference. All this has done is lead to dullness, a stifling of innovation, and the inevitable, back slapping, brown nosing and gravel rashing that accompanies it.

No more, Alas! the voice of Fame they hear,
The balm of Dulness trickling in their ear.
Alexander Pope, The Dunciad, book IV