Nigel Thrift at The Chronicle of Higher Education, argues that we need to make a case for thinking of the University as a public good (without saying what the substance of this claim would consist of). A good place to start fleshing this argument out is a recent SSRC publication, Knowledge Matters: The Public Mission of the Research University (which includes a chapter by a couple of OU colleagues, John Brennan and Mala Singh). John and Mala belong to a research centre specialising in just these issues, CHERI, based at the OU, but not for much longer which is a great shame. Updates on the future of their research can be found here.