That said, he packages the idea in some really perverse free market ideology, which, in this case, imagines the university as a kind of factory that needs to run more efficiently.

I wrote an essay response here:
http://www.whyweworry.com/blog/2009/06/25/restructuring-humanities/

Good comment, and I agree with most of what you said – so long as we stipulate that the same principle applies to UC Berkeley, Harvard, Columbia’s Middle-East Dept., and other Utopian religious centers…

Only 3b is considered as a valid “enlightenment” model. It is the one that can be recast into a new form. Actually this is already pretty far along. Schools have lots of distance learning, continuing ed and have eliminated up to half of permanent faculty. They claim that this suits the needs of students more closely and provides the needed education.

Actually they are really pandering to goal 2 – credentials. For example, look at the K-12 teaching profession. One of the measures of how effective teachers are is to look at credentials which are easy to measure, rather than outcomes which are difficult.

Credentials are required in lots of fields, but the credentials have nothing to do with the task at hand, they are just a proxy for a belief that the applicant will be apt enough to perform the job.

GW Bush went to college for reason #1, the credentials were irrelevant and the learning unneeded, but family tradition is that you go the the old alma mater and act like a college boy for four years. This isn’t going to go away for those who can afford it (even if it’s at a state school).

There is evidence that finishing college is a marker for class rank as well and is used as a sorting mechanism in hiring just as credentials are. Here’s an interesting article which makes this case:
http://www.classmatters.org/2005_07/class-cultures.php

3a. Is mainly found in religiously-affiliated schools where the aim is to turn out “believers” who specifically don’t question dogma and thus become reliable members of their community. Keeping students away from other influences is a goal and outsourced education is too risky.

As I said you can’t change things if you don’t understand what is trying to be achieved.

While we might hope for high-minded visions, such as “honest storytelling optimized for consumption”, the overall recommendation to the Dean and Trustee’s was to blow up the old, siloed structures.

As many newspapers and magazines have recently proven, that is easier said than done!

These “new” ideas of technological universities are not really new, its what the Germans did to the University in the 1900s, and with the results of today. A unified and universal education is the way to restart things in the right direction.