There are presently 6.7 million students in some 2200 American institutions of higher learning. Their numbers have doubled in the past ten years and will double again in the next ten.

This statistic alone indicates that the university is no longer a shady retreat where scholars and students leisurely engage in the search for truth. The university has become a major power in our societal life. It shares with society in general a frenzied dynamism, the pursuit of immediate objectives, a labyrinthian structure and the lust for prestige. One couldn't imagine a university without, for example, a well-staffed public relations office. The American university today is in almost all senses of the word a new university.