The argument of Minogue relies on two metaphors. First, the university is a life form and therefore affected by such evolutionary forces as competition and survival mechanisms. This first claim is related to the first metaphor which is "The life form know as higher education was hatched in a monastic cocoon in the tenth century". This metaphor refers to the fact that higher education is an outcome of the world's evolution. Like a in ecology, Higher education adapted itself to changes in order to assure its continuity. Second, higher education is a commodity and so is driven by market forces such as profit and supply and demand. One of the most important metaphors that refers to this is claim, is surely "Suppliers of higher education simply have to dip their nets in the water to catch students". Minogue uses this metaphor to show how that it is not easy to get a chance and benefit of higher education, because of growing populations and the smaller number of available seats.By the first metaphor in the text "The life form know as higher education was hatched in a monastic cocoon in the tenth century", the writer uses the metaphor of value to prove that the universities will become obsolete. Universities will surely end up by being useless one day, just like the butterfly that dies after several weeks of coming out of the cocoon. It is reasonable to analyse education with the language of evolution and economics for many reasons. first, today higher education is like a product you buy, and it is not available for all the people. So, the market of education is surely driven by the law of supply and demand. Finally, evolution shows that everything all product and generally everything in the world follows a cycle of evolution more known as the cycle of life. One of the crucial step in this evolution is maturity when the product reaches its pick of evolution, and right after that it starts degrading until becoming obsolete.
