By Professor
Doom
A couple posts back I examined why administrators don’t want to give faculty
even a crumb: administrators are trained to think that way in their graduate
level administration courses. The reasoning as given in the course is
simple—the administrator is terrified that the faculty’s knowledge will become
worthless, and thus faculty are a waste of money, money that is far better
spent going into the administrator’s pockets.
But how exactly does that
knowledge become worthless?
Admin: “Graduating students must take
at least six hours of a foreign language (French, Russian, or
Chinese/Mandarin).
--Part of my graduation requirements
in the 80s…I studied Spanish for 2 years in high school, only to find out that,
what with all the native speakers in Florida, that I’d have to learn a
different language once I got to college. D’oh—back then, education was about
learning new things, so you couldn’t take courses filled with stuff you already
knew.
Admin: “In lieu of the foreign
language requirement, graduating students can take a 3 hour introductory
computer course.”
--It seems harmless enough, but
removing the foreign language requirements effectively annihilated such
departments on campus, causing
tenured faculty to be fired. Students complained about taking Mickey Mouse
courses with information they already knew (sample test question: “Identify the
monitor in the picture of a set up computer”), but admin had the stranglehold
on by this point.
Admin: “We’re removing the computer
course requirements.”
--because it was impossible to find
people to teach the (very basic) computer course for the miserable pay being
offered (even for Mickey Mouse courses, faculty need graduate degrees), admin,
rather than do their job of trying to find people or make the resources
available, just got rid of the requirement. Keep this in mind when you meet a
college graduate that knows nothing besides skills taught by otherwise
unemployable people (eg, multiculturalists). It’s not his fault, the system is
designed to teach people the cheapest possible skills, and learning to say
“it’s not my responsibility because of [insert whatever reason you’d like,
especially one involving white males]” is a cheap skill to learn, indeed.
Part of the reason faculty can be “no longer useful” in administration’s
eyes is because administration has changed accreditation. It used to be,
accredited schools had
to teach “the classics.” There were no “fad” subjects, so a professor of,
say, History, could be comfortable knowing that his subject was secure, as
history is a “classic” subject. Now, an administrative pen can say history is
irrelevant, and the professor is out of a job. Then admin can say mathematics
past basic arithmetic is irrelevant…and admin can just keep doing this until
students have no course options except gender studies, multiculturalism, and,
well, whatever subject has so little market value that instructors can be
rented for it, very cheaply. There are many reasons why degrees are so
worthless nowadays, but one of the biggest is the elimination of serious
coursework.
Curiously, the titan of industry running the course doesn’t seem to hate
tenure much (it was probably handed to him as part of his package for running
an institution), but he hardly has anything good to say of it. While faculty
think tenure is for granting protection and insuring academic freedom from
administrative whimsy, the administrative view of tenure is far different:
The test of optimal use is whether,
using the same amount of money invested in a current faculty member, you could
get a better faculty member in the market. Positive tenure decisions represent
a bet by the guild and the institution that the capital investment in faculty
members will deliver a high value over their professional lifetimes, a value
that is as good or better than any other investment in faculty members that the
institution could make.
Tenure is purely a financial investment, to be made only if there’s no
better investment available. It is not a reward for years of successful
research, or honest work, or anything like that. That first line bears
repetition:
The test of optimal use is whether,
using the same amount of money invested in a current faculty member, you could
get a better faculty member in the market.
This is why tenure is dying—admin certainly sees no value in academic
freedom, naturally sees no value in giving any sort of faculty protection
against administrative abuse and, heck, it cuts into the ability of administration
to just go buy another faculty member from the auction block when the time is
right. Uppity faculty with integrity should be discarded as quickly as
possible.
The significance of this investment
and the risks it entails often encourage universities to rent faculty rather
than incur the risk and future costs of tenured faculty.
And finally,
the Poo-Bah addresses “rental” faculty, in other words, those minimally paid,
no benefit, part time, adjuncts
that teach the majority of classes in higher education. Again, the
administrator shows ignorance here; when you “rent” something for a long time,
you normally pay more than if you “bought” it. Rented slaves faculty
actually cost much less, even when they’re rented for years on end.
Contingent faculty have many
different perspectives on this issue. For some, the freedom from having to meet
tenure requirements in the up-or-out atmosphere of most university tenure
processes is an advantage
(Pause for
laughter…but the administrator/professor of the course is not joking)
Wow,
seriously? “Many different perspectives” is a hysterical way to put it,
comparable to the “many different perspectives” slaves viewed their own
situation, I suppose. I guess somewhere on the ‘Net there’s an adjunct saying
how great it is to have no benefits, no job security, and to be paid $2000 to
teach a class with 50 students (representing perhaps $100,000 or more of
revenue to the institution in the form of tuition), basically doing the exact
same job of the permanent faculty (those that remain) for a small fraction of
the price. This theoretical adjunct is probably thrilled to see the money saved
go to huge administrative salaries, too.
Educationist trying to teach
trigonometry: “How come I can’t get the cotangent of 90 degrees by taking the
reciprocal of tangent of 90 degrees? My calculator keeps saying ‘error’!”
--Because they can be rented very
cheaply, educationists, people with bogus “Math Education” degrees, now teach
mathematics courses. I respect that, sometimes, they ask for help about topics
they’re utterly clueless about but…students paying many thousands of dollars
for their courses probably shouldn’t be given the cheapest possible teachers.
Alas, that’s what admin thinks students deserve. Curiously, getting cheap admin
is never an option…
I really
appreciate the candor of the Poo-Bah to reveal his real thoughts. We need more
of this. When I tell people the truth of what’s going on higher education, how
a clueless administrative caste is plundering the system and destroying
everything that made the higher education system the best in the world in the
20th century…the tales come out so farfetched that I can appreciate
if someone finds it all hard to believe.
But when a
high grand administrator backs up what I say, and doesn’t even realize it?
That’s priceless. I encourage anyone who thinks I’m being thin-skinned about
this to take the above, direct quotes,
in this and the previous essay on this topic and substitute all references to “faculty” or “faculty
members” with “Negro.” Hilarity will ensue. I’ll start with my favorite:
faculty who no longer serve an
economic purpose can only be reconstructed at such a high cost that it is often
more efficient to buy a new faculty
member rather than reconstruct an old one.
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