An autonomous degree-granting institution organized around academic disciplines. The term, deriving from the Latin substantive denoting the all-encompassing totality of the universe as such, apparently came to designate this circumscribed pedagogical entity without IRONY. The university summons a community for the disinterested pursuit of truth (though participation in such communities involves, for some, paying large sums of money; others, by contrast, are handsomely remunerated). Elements of Enlightenment kitsch do at times make appearances in the representation of this enterprise as a whole: heroic and innovative scholars; attentive and curious students; reasonable discussion motivated by the prospect of consensus—or, in recent years, inclusion. To the extent that the university successfully advertises this image, it could be said to conceal the elaborate bureaucracy—operated by administrators, trustees, donors—that has quietly and prudently transformed some of these institutions into such lucrative enterprises that their status as non-profit organizations has become a matter of legal dispute. There may be said to exist a “high” and a “low” explanatory narrative for the significant transformations undergone by universities in the past century. The latter account, while less easily assimilated to the university’s ideals, may well be more important to its past, present, and future, in that it focuses on that sordid particularity that so often gives the lie to utopian universality: cash money. As the essential dynamic explinans within the low narrative of university development, money (and the attendant fiscal preoccupations associated with its presence or absence) may adequately explain superstructural change that otherwise seems contingent or obscure. Examples might include an African American Studies program struggling for years to acquire departmental status, or the politics department reinventing itself as a pseudo-scientific institution pedaling rational choice analytics. On the one hand, such on-campus developments can be said to reveal something about academic trends, values, and discoveries. A look in the other hand, however, exposes a fistful of greenbacks being deployed in the promotion, management, and, crucially, the financing of these alterations. Within a university, departments must fight for a limited pool of funds based on the number of undergraduate students they attract and enroll. Also germane in this quiet tournament: the prestige of departmental faculty and, to a lesser extent, associated graduate students (insofar as the reputation of scholars—whatever the sharp limitations on their “fame”—redound to the universities that employ and produce them). Departments further compete for research funds made available on the basis of government interests and corporate needs, in that state and corporate entities ultimately earn and allocate the resources that support university construction and expansion. Such incentivized behavior in the “marketplace” of ideas surfaces the business realities of university life. And yet, universities do remain significant (potential?) sites of resistance to the increasingly pervasive incursion of market forces into every aspect of individual and collective existence. Which brings us to the aforementioned “high” narrative for university change. Stated succinctly, this account insists upon the pioneering role of universities in: 1) fostering progressive social change (gender equity, civil rights, healthcare innovations, etc.); 2) providing the principled theories grounding such developments; and 3) generating the positive knowledge (of both humans and nature) upon which (1) and (2) are predicated. It is possible to argue that many of the shifts seen in the organization of research and teaching within universities over the last century have proceeded from the exigencies attendant upon the pursuit of the goals above. That it is possible to make this argument, however, does not make it true.