What if I told you I was going to “reconceptualize” our public research universities into “New American Universities,” “comprehensive knowledge enterprises” committed to “perpetual innovation?” You’d probably smack me across the face and tell me to stop speaking gibberish. I wouldn’t blame you. But if I was Michael Crow, the president of Arizona State University, and you were a member of ASU’s board of trustees, you would be paying me lots of money to say such outlandish things to lots and lots of people.

Arizona State is the nation’s largest public university in terms of enrollment, spanning four campuses in and around Phoenix, Arizona. Since Crow became its president in 2002, it has grown by about 20,000 students. Moreover, thanks to Crow’s catch-phrases and excellent PR work, ASU has been a subject of discussion at academic conferences around the globe.

To be sure, Crow has done some good things at ASU. But probably more than anything, researching for today’s Pope Center article on Arizona State has left me more cynical about the claims of university promoters about the greatness of universities. What has made me cynical is not so much the disconnect between the rhetoric and the actual accomplishments, but the fact that so many people buy into it, lifting this guy up as a shining example of how to run a university.

But, then again, maybe it’s a good sign after all and I shouldn’t be cynical. Although ASU has epitomized some of the worst tendencies in higher education since Crow took over–tuition has multiplied, administrators have proliferated, graduation rates are improving but still abysmal, and ASU is consistently ranked as one of the nation’s top party schools–president Crow has shaken things up. In that sense, he represents the search for long overdue changes needed at our universities, even if he hasn’t found them yet. And the recognition of the need for change in higher education–in American universities in particular–is certainly a good thing.