MESSAGE FROM THE DIRECTOR OF THE BUREAU OF BUSINESS AND ECONOMIC RESEARCH.

• Author: Barkey, Patrick
• Position: LETTER - Letter to the editor

I once worked for a business school dean who said, "If people would go to the library, we'd be out of business. It's all in there," pointing to the building next door.

In the midst of the third decade of the information age, this statement is truer than ever. The widespread availability of information and knowledge accessible at the touch of a keyboard should have put those of us teaching at universities out of business a long time ago. Yet it has not.

In fact, I would argue that our expertise, our perspectives and our knowledge have become more valuable with every terabyte of new data that fill up servers on computer clouds around the world. The ability to find what you're looking for--or to even know if it exists--is just the start. The ability to analyze, synthesize and critically assess the barrage of data that pass before us is what gets passed on in the classroom and those skills will never be obsolete.

We'd like to think that this kind of critical assessment, such as with the Montana...