Too many research universities?

6/15/2012: From the Chronicle:

A Missed Opportunity?

In his original proposal for the study, back in 2009, the then-president of the Association of American Universities, Robert M. Berdahl, said he’d like an evaluation of whether the country might simply have too many universities competing for its federal research dollars. …

With universities themselves divided on such programs, Mr. Berdahl’s successor at the AAU, Hunter R. Rawlings, who served on the panel before taking the AAU post, said he didn’t want to touch the subject of potentially limiting the number of research universities.

It may have been a missed opportunity, said William E. Kirwan, chancellor of the University System of Maryland. “There might have been an opportunity there to address that very point more explicitly,” Mr. Kirwan said, “and I think that would have strengthened the report.”