Student misunderstanding of Duke mission

In the front page article of the Sept. 28 Chronicle, a student, sounding rather like Willy Loman in “Death of a Salesman,” lauds his DukeEngage experience in China because of the networking opportunities it provided: “I got to meet the top-notch executives.” On the opinion page, a columnist wrote “A university is a business just like any other. It... must offer high consumer value relative to other ‘products’ in the marketplace.” These are profound misunderstandings of the nature of a University and the payoffs it confers on students. I hope that students who participate in DukeEngage for these reasons or attend Duke because of its success in “customer service” have chosen the wrong university. If they haven’t, then we are in serious trouble.

Alex Rosenberg, chair of the department of philosophy and R. Taylor Cole professor of philosophy