In years gone by, our colleges and universities were run by scholars who cared about teaching, research, and learning. Over the last several decades, however, the reins of control have fallen mostly into the hands of administrators — people who have little scholarly ability or interest but who purport to have expertise in managing “the brand.”
That development is greatly to be lamented. So argue professors Michael Behrent and K. Steven Vincent in today’s Martin Center article.
The authors begin, “The ‘ivory tower’ has long been the lens through which American popular culture views higher education. The phrase conjures up images of seminar rooms and high-minded ideas debated at a comfortable distance from the ‘real world.’ It is this picture, however, that is now out of touch with reality. Facing stagnant salaries, diminished job security, pressure to maintain student enrollment, and an ever more anti-intellectual culture, few professors feel like they are living in anything like a lofty ivory tower.”
What they refer to as the “academic deep state” is loaded with well-paid administrators who have their own lingo and a fixation on trivial matters.
Behrent and Vincent write, “The university community faces an expanding bureaucratic framework that values visibility more than substance. The faculty faces an administration that is increasingly indifferent to the variety and nuance of their research and the substance of their teaching. There is more and more empty praise for faculty members in the form of prosaic honors and unimaginative ‘certificates of appreciation,’ but less and less understanding of what faculty do and why. Even the focus on the intellectual development of students is being sacrificed to the vacuous goal of ‘student satisfaction.’”
True. When students complain about professors, either for ideological reasons or just because they are “too hard” the administrators invariably take their side.
I like the authors’ conclusion: “The founders of the democratic tradition understood that institutions are prone to corruption. This does not mean that they cease to operate. It means, to the contrary, that they continue to function, but in ways that no longer serve their original purpose. Modern universities — including the UNC System — might be compared, in this sense, to the Renaissance papacy or the 18th-century British parliament: rich and powerful organizations only vaguely aware of their original mission.”