I find this mildly hysterical, very sad, and a prime example of how people fail to understand their own power;
What IS a university? Buildings? The Quad? The football team? Logo shirts?
NO! A university is all about knowledge AND NONE OF THE ABOVE MATTERS AT ALL.
Who holds that precious resource? The professors. NO ONE ELSE. When is the last time an administrator taught a college course?
If professors are getting the shaft from the institution, all they need to do is walk the fuck out and start another one, and tell the chancellor who makes more than any of them while sitting on his ass to fuck off.
It only needs to happen once, and suddenly, other universities would scramble to find ways to value their staff A LOT better.
The fact that it never happens is more evidence in my mind that we have lost the American dream, we've trained our whole society to be sheeple. Even the knowledge workers.
I've been following developments at a nearby university with mixed feelings. Their engineering and science departments are growing and doing well while their ag and forestry departments have been under pressure. Liberal arts programs are treated as though they were a vestigial organ and simply allowed to exist as long as they are not a nuisance. In all cases the investment is in infrastructure and facilities. Investment in people to teach at the facility is a mixed bag with the most growth being in contract teaching, basically temporary workers. Because the professors are temporary, I question if they actually do more than just follow the program.
I actually don't think the best way to teach the up and coming knowledge work force would be as you suggest by an ad-hoc college formed by rogue professors who may be really good but would be hampered without the infrastructure provided by a funded university. For example, science and mathematics in today's world need to to be taught in fairly expensive facilities and use expensive equipment. At least at the junior-senior levels and up, they do.
Maybe liberal arts can be taught on-line but I still think the bringing together of people, both students and professors has as much value as the book knowledge. Learning how to share ideas, build relationships, work together, compete with each other are all things that I don't believe can be taught on line. Let's not forget that most business and political leaders come from this line of education, so we owe it to ourselves to give them as good an education as possible.
We, as in the people of my state and people in other states, are not investing enough in education. That's the real problem.
My jab was at the libertarian idea of the market setting prices. In universities, this creates a race to the bottom that cripples future growth for the economy.