Supply and Demand

Since this reintroduction of intellectual labour into the process of production corresponds to the immediate needs of late capitalist technology, the education of intellectual workers must likewise be strictly subordinated to these needs. The result is the crisis of the classical humanist university, rendered anachronistic not only for formal reasons (excessive numbers of students, backwardness of material infrastructure, changes in social background of students, which demand an above-average social expenditure in the university sector, and so on) and not only for overall social reasons (attempts to avoid the emergence of an unemployed intelligentsia; attempts to restrain student revolt, and to step up the ideologization of science for the purposes of manipulating the masses) but also and above all for directly economic reasons specific to the nature of intellectual labour in late capitalism; the constraint to adapt the structure of the university, the selection of students and the choice of syllabuses to accelerated technological innovation under capitalist conditions. The main task of the university is no longer to produce ‘educated’ men [sic] of judgment and property – an ideal which correspondended to the needs of freely competitive capitalism – but to produce intellectually skilled wage-earners for the production and circulation of commodities.

–Ernest Mandel, Late Capitalism, trans. Joris De Bres (Verso, 1978) 260-1

The Board of Governors on Thursday, April 21, unanimously approved Our University's medical education partnership with the University Next Door, and that is a truly wonderful thing for the future of OU. BOG approval is a critically important step that paves the way for us to seek additional state funding for this promising new program.

The Board's unanimous action is an endorsement of the value of this unique public-private partnership in the face of the rapidly escalating need for more physicians in Our State and around the nation. Current studies warn that the U.S. will face a shortage of 85,000 to 200,000 physicians by 2020 unless our universities develop ways to produce substantial numbers of new doctors - up to 10,000 more per year than are currently entering the profession.

Through this cooperative program, OU and the UND School of Medicine are creating the template for a new and more cost-effective way of educating physicians.

–The President of Our University, in a statement posted on the university website 22 April 2005