Yale Outsourced to Singapore

Higher ed is big business, and Yale is taking the next step and joining the globalization race to the bottom. Ivy League universities have been the biggest pushers of 'free trade' bunk, so it's no surprise they're hooked on their own dope. Yale is partnering with the National University of Singapore to open a new Yale campus in that booming Asian city-state. Eric Weinberger over at The Atlantic bemoans what Yale's new enterprise means for liberal arts education - and it's not good. Yale's new offshore campus will be paid for by the Singapore government, and he says that authoritarian government's lack of respect for personal and political freedoms does not bode well for academic freedom. But, as Weinberger points out, this latest project is strictly a business deal for Yale, a way to build their global brand. Yale President Rick Levin even compared the new Yale to Singapore Airlines. And so it goes. The corporatist totalitarianism of Madison Ave marketers and Wall Street bean counters long ago captured America's great universities. But now the universities have dropped any pretense that it is otherwise. The final irony is that while Yale teaches free trade dogma in New Haven, Singapore built its economic might by not practicing what Yale preaches.