The Wise University or The Worst Market Failure is in the Allocation of Resources to Systems Thinking

How should the university respond to the ever more complex global division of labour in the global economy? This paper argues that the appropriate response is to progress in an opposite direction. Instead of being a clever institution, with an ever more complex division of labour, the university should become a wise institution, with an ever greater capacity for systems thinking. The paper demonstrates that the costs of inadequate system understanding can be enormous, and a most striking example of this is the fallout from the credit crunch of 2007. It is arguable that there is a severe market failure in the allocation of resources to systems thinking. If the greatest priorities for public funding are those where the greatest market failures are found, then investment in system thinking should be a top priority for the wise university