Abstract
Comment on the review of Trouble in the University: How the Education of Health Care Professionals Became Corrupted (CS 45[4]:500–501)
Laurel Smith-Doerr and Timothy Sacco’s review of my book, Trouble in the University, contains a number of factual errors that I wish to correct.
The reviewers dismiss my work because they say it is not based on original research, by which they mean interviews. The Acknowledgements (p. vii) state my thanks to those I interviewed. Information on the day-to-day life of the university came from those interviews (e.g., pp. 50, 52, 53, 57, 58, 59, 60). The reviewers may have misinterpreted my discussion of why I had difficulty finding cooperative subjects (p. 133) to mean that I had done no interviews. Even if that had been the case, it does not mean that documentary sources cannot be the source of original research.
The reviewers criticize me for not engaging with the literature on higher education. On the contrary, my reliance on that literature is evident from the extensive references. If there is something crucial I missed, the reviewers should identify it.
The reviewers conclude that the university I studied was “bad” and deserved to be shut down. I made no such judgment, and it is unwarranted in light of all the competent professionals the university trained, the research done in its labs, and the health services provided. Nor was the university shut down. It lost its autonomous identity when its parts were redistributed to two other public universities. Charges of corruption provided a political opening for the state’s politicians to finally accomplish what they had tried to do for many years. As my conclusion makes clear, there was no evidence that the restructuring addressed the attributes that put the university at risk for corruption.