Future of the university

I saw an article in the New York Times and other places about the future of the University, and even the End of the University. I have a bit of a curiosity about this topic as Lecturer at Brandeis University. Here's a blog post from a Professor of Philsophy at Calvin College analyzing those articles and giving his own perspective, where he says:

I'm very sympathetic to trying to move beyond the department-as-fortress model which currently dominates higher education, despite all of our talk of interdisciplinarity. While we might have a veneer of cross-disciplinary collaboration, the department-as-fortress rears its ugly head whenever we start talking about curricular reform (say, revising the core curriculum of a college)-very quickly principled discussion of what constitutes a good education devolves into a matter of protecting faculty "lines" in "our" department. (from : The End of the University?)

Really interesting article, with a good insight at the end, which had not occurred to me:

"[…snip…] So one scholar will be considering biological issues, another political issues, another aesthetic questions, another ethical and philosophical issues and so. Sounds fabulous. But where did these scholars receive their training in biology, political science, and philosophy? […snip…]"