Our Vice-Chancellor

Visitors to universities are routinely given maps, maps which set out the campus in all its glory. These maps are usually both informative and rhetorical: after all part of their function is to produce a favorable gloss on the institution as well as providing directions. The maps also tend to be displayed at opportune points around the campus. And they are, of course, a vibrant online presence.

One of the tragedies of many Western economies is their rampant short-termism. The absurdities of the way in which corporations have to maximize quarterly results have been documented so often and at such length that they do not bear much in the way of repeating here. Suffice it to say that they put the interests of one part of the economy – financial investors – ahead of others parts in what are manifestly unbalanced ways.