One of the nation’s most important jobs in higher education will be ably filled by Dr. Alan Garber, who is leaving Stanford to become Provost of Harvard. Alan is a world-class physician, economist and health policy guru rolled into one and as much as it pains me to lose him as a colleague, there is no disputing Harvard’s wisdom in stealing him away from us. He will be an outstanding leader for Harvard and for higher education as a whole. Congratulations and good luck to Alan.
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Garber in, garbage out, eh?
The problem with institutions with such high (and often justified) self-regard as Harvard is that they find it difficult to think that any of their existing practices may deserve to be jettisoned. The article doesn’t give a hint whether Dr. Garber will be a conservative steward or an iconoclastic reformer. The Harvard Gazette’s press-release boilerplate like “working with the deans to leverage the strengths of the Schools in service of the University as a whole” doesn’t tell us much. What for instance is his take on whether Ă©lite universities actually add educational value remotely proportional to their fees, or just lower search costs for employers by credentialing pre-existing talent, and enabling their students to form career-supporting networks?