Once upon a time, too long ago for any of us to actually remember, the American university prepared students for the real world--but the university was not actually part of the real world. The quiet campus was a place of detached reflection, where intellectual and social skills were honed away from the cares of work day reality: No more ( if such a place ever existed).

The American university is now aswirl in the currents of change--social, economic, and cultural. Like business and industry--or, for that matter, the professions--higher education i,s heset with rising pahlic skepticism and demands for accountability; escalating costs, and future uncertainty. Technology promises to alter the teaching and learning process in many positive hut also very revolutionary uavs. Faculty careers are less secure, predictable, or rewarding.

Higher education has responded perhaps too slowly, hut nevertheless in ways familiar to many business people: reinvention, right-sizing, marketing, team-building, and infusions of TQM. But new management awareness and techniques also reveal the extent to which universities are different.

For one thing, universities have multiple "bottom lines " that are hard to count. If "enlightenment is our most important product," it is also impossible to precisely measure. For another, public universities are so ensnared in the ganglia of state regulations that they fundamentally are constrained in how innovative they really can be. It takes many years for a faculty member to develop expertise in an area of knowledge, reflecting a significant long-term investment and a resource that cannot he readily allocated to meet shifting market demands. A curriculum is not an assembly line.

The Department of Management is in the thick of all thi.s, of course, and also a source of important management skills and information that is increasinglN relevant for higher education. We look to them to show us how to "do more with less" and how to "work smarter, not just harder! "

For all its differences, the university cannot exist apart, and thus we are now truly all in this tagether. And the biggest test af the Universitv of North Texas and the Department of Management will be in hou well we prepare our students to survive and prosper in the real world. Please let us knou hou we are doing.