I just gave this answer on a survey....I think it might be of interest (especially the last paragraph).
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I'm a scientist and an engineer with a strict materialist natural philosophy. That is, I believe that everything we see and experience is the result of natural processes; there aren't any supernatural agencies governing the behavior of the world. But in spite of my strict materialism, I realize that not everything that is important can be quantified and not everything that is quantifiable is important. In a civilization, the welfare of its people should be more important than anything else.
The University leadership (and the Government) are currently caught up in a cult-like belief in the "Free Market" forces of "economic rationalization" and industrialized models of "productivity". They have made deliberate choices on their spending priorities: reduced money for staffing, while spending hundreds of millions on new buildings. But higher education isn't a factory process with precise metrics of productivity that can be optimized. Higher education should be about personal growth, not focused on more efficient product throughput.
If society becomes completely organized around a model of industrial output, then it will produce a civilization that is completely focused on industrial output. Many of the core values of human civilization such as compassion, justice and mercy will become expensive luxuries; they will be sacrificed in the quest for ever increasing productivity.
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Editorial Comment: I realize now that I should have revised the last line:
Justice and Mercy are expensive luxuries that have been sacrificed in the quest for ever increasing productivity.