IIRC, the intellectuals who comprised the Scottish Enlightenment were
> entrepreneurs. They had to attract and retain students. Smith said that this
> made the Scottish university better than the English unis where teachers
> didn't have to attract students in order to make a living.
>
Wojtek's comments only reflect things coming full circle, I believe. Someone more knowledgeable than I about academic history may tell us I'm wrong, but didn't the university system arise when independent, entrepreneurial scholars/instructors formed cooperatives in the Middle Ages? I always assumed that academia was part of the process Marx reported as an innovation in 1847:
"The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers." -- "Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen lytlað."