I enjoyed reading your thoughts on economic optimization. I agree with you that economic optimization helps companies or organizations define their goals. Also, optimization is helpful for companies to prioritize their limited resource based on their goal. As you quoted, maximizing profit and minimizing costs might be the ultimate goal of most profit companies. However, I have a little bit of different opinion on the CTU case as an example. I believe universities should have slightly different goals from profit companies. One of their main goals should be educating or fostering people who can contribute to societies and academics. Fostering talented students enhances the reputation of schools, which draws more superb scholars, instructors, students, and investments. Of course, schools should have a certain amount of cash flow to operate and large amounts of money might be connected to attracting talented professors. At the same time, I believe pursing profitability should not be the first item on to do list of universities.