Hi, Martin ... and all non-vacationing xmca'ers --
Martin wrote:
Firstly [administrators] interpret and implement the policies which are
determined by
the funding bodies and secondly they protect the university from its
academics. The information services department that are particularly good
at this, but my personal bete noire is the personnel/[human resources]
function who
treat short term contract research staff badly, as well as putting
inordinate hoops before me when I need to employ (or more typically sustain
the employment) of these colleagues.
In my institution we are not quite at the point where the admin is trying
to protect the policies from the academics, though that might be true of
our highest level central administration, which seems ambivalent about this
so far. Yes, information services is a bete noire for us too, probably for
everyone -- I'd love to hear about a university where academic computing is
heavily supportive of faculty initiatives -- but that seems mainly to be
because (a) the senior managers don't understand that academic computing is
really the LIBRARY, not the plumbing system, of the university of the very
near future, and (b) the people who run it are not accountable to faculty
and faculty don't set policy for it.
You can't have a well run university unless policy is set by the faculty,
or unless you are lucky enough to get a benevolent dictator in charge for a
while. The problem however is that faculty have abused our privileges and
acted very irresponsibly, and so we have very little public support for
claiming the power we need to do our jobs now. Many institutions have let
standards slip badly in terms of faculty hiring and promotion, particularly
in the US, where higher education has just expanded too quickly, as it is
now doing elsewhere. There are simply a lot of people with academic titles
who are neither great teachers, intellectuals, nor productive researchers.
Apart from that, faculty have not initiated reforms of universities and
have not seen ourselves as having social responsibilties. We have been very
lax about teaching, have let academic standards drop to the point where
many students graduate without deserving their degrees, and bicker with our
colleagues over ego issues in ways that are profoundly embarassing and
childish. Faculty seem to have become infantilized because of our lack of
social responsibility. We act as if we live in a play-pen, not as if the
future of society critically depended on our decisions and our efforts.
The situation appears to be somewhat different in different cultures and
societies. The US slid down this slope first, and other anglophone nations
appear to be following now. There are still places in Europe where
academics are public intellectuals involved in national policy dialogue
(though this is decreasing, I believe), and in other parts of the world
there is still a strong social and political commitment. It is all too
easy, however, for us to blame everything on the evil capitalists and
conservatives. We have not kept our own house in order. We do not have a
coherent alternative vision of the university to offer. We cheer workers on
to take control of their factories, but we don't act coherently to take
control of our own institutions. It would be a lot easier for us to do so.
I am not talking about legal control or revolution, just about de facto
control of policies that matter within the institution.
Do we even know what we want? What we would do with this power if we had
it? Not for our own comfort, but to play a more significant role in
society .... Do we have ideas of how to radically transform higher
education, or do we just want, like the conservatives we criticize, to live
out a fantasy of the ideal university of the last century as it was
supposed to be?
Do we ever talk to our colleagues about these issues? insist on discussing
them in faculty meetings? on departmental or university listservs? in
written articles in campus publications?
We seem sometimes to act as if we were in denial ... as if we didn't know
that the university as a modernist institution could very well disappear in
the next few decades, and will almost certainly be transformed beyond
recognition ... with us or without us. So far, it's been happening without
us, and you can judge for yourselves the results ...
JAY.
---------------------------
JAY L. LEMKE
PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION
CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
JLLBC@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
<http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/education/jlemke/index.htm>
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