Provost Holden Thorp spoke about the nuanced intersection between business and university education as part of a lecture series aiming to delve into some of the more complex modern issues in higher education.

His lecture, titled “The University is Not a Business: Thoughts on How to Frame Higher Education for the Future,” was the fourth installment in the 35th consecutive year of the Master of Liberal Arts (MLA) Saturday Lecture series. The series as a whole delves into issues of diversity and inclusion, technology in higher education, entrepreneurship and innovation, and other aspects of liberal and professional education.

Thorp emphasized that, despite the increasingly blurred line between education and business in the digital age, Washington University is not a business.

He began by acknowledging that some universities that cannot make enough revenue or sustain their education type will turn to businessmen to run their institutions. This, he noted, does not always go well.

“This past month alone we have the president of Mount St. Mary’s [University], who is a hedge fund manager, who said at a faculty meeting that ‘they wanted to get the students that weren’t going to graduate out of the university quickly, so they needed to drown the bunnies and put a glock to their head,’” Thorp said. “So, you can imagine, this didn’t go over so well. This is the kind of thing that gets said at the hedge fund meeting but is not such a good thing to say at a faculty meeting.”

Thorp continued by explaining that education is not held to the same standards of success as businesses.

“Almost everyone can buy into the notion that the University does something that has a higher purpose than just turning out degrees and getting people jobs or only producing knowledge that we know what to do with that will only change the human condition for a short time,” Thorp said.

Steve Redinski, a St. Louis community member, appreciates said knowledge production and acknowledges the work that the University does.

“I love education, and when I went to school I was premed so I didn’t get to experience all of the things that would have helped me so much more than just taking science classes. I missed part of my liberal arts education, because they made me take all of these science courses, when I would have been much better off taking liberal arts courses,” Redinski said.

In his lecture, Thorp also outlined several points that he believes clearly distinguish the University from a business.

“We don’t take any of the money we make at the end of the year and give it to anyone. We usually about break even, and if we make a little money, we take it and invest it in basically the infinite list of things we want to do that we can’t fund. If a business returns profits to shareholders, then we’re certainly not that,” Thorp said.

Thorp went even further to distinguish that, unlike a business, Washington University cannot and will not fail.

“A business can go out of business, [but] everyone here is absolutely insistent that we are still going to be here 100 years from now, 200 years from now and 500 years from now,” Thorp said.

Thorp ended his lecture by acknowledging the importance of business as it relates to the University’s ultimate goal: knowledge for knowledge’s sake.

“I want everyone to understand why knowledge is beautiful, but unfortunately, it is obvious we are not at a point where everyone is ready to engage with us on that,” Thorp said.