To the Editor:

At a time when the Internet and other new means of communication are rendering actual residency at a university less and less essential to education, new dormitories do not make sense.

The whole way in which higher education is configured will change dramatically in the years ahead. Better to spend $600 million preparing for that change, not replicating the past.

Arthur Waldron

Feb. 19

The writer is the Lauder Professor of International Relations at the University of Pennsylvania.