Universities are in some ways minor victims of the great mudslide that increasingly sees the vocabulary of exchange-value sweep aside the vocabulary of use-value in almost every area of life. It is becoming difficult to find a language in which to characterize the human worth of various activities, and almost impossible to make such assessments tell in public debate. Instead, contribution to ‘growth’ monopolizes the field. The public case for any proposal has to be couched in terms of the billions it will eventually add to the GNP. Whether the topic under discussion concerns the extension of
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