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Lots of people are paying attention to @utulsa’s disastrous rollout of its cartoonishly bad plan to eviscerate the liberal arts. This is where my research and my life as a scholar intersect. Time for a brief explainer on what it means to “neoliberalize” a university. 1/n
The past few years have been tumultuous ones for colleges across the country. Many will close in the wake of a “higher ed bubble.” So colleges market themselves. College involves many different sorts of markets that can complicate the educational mission of a university. 2/n
Some of this marketing doesn’t pay off. At #utulsa, previous administrations made awful financial decisions, including building expensive new buildings, buying things that are cool to have (Bob Dylan’s archives!) but do not generate revenue, etc. 3/n
The common response to financial mismanagement—driven by factors that have nothing to do with fields like philosophy, languages, theater, or fine arts—has been to eliminate those fields seen to have little impact on “career skills,” narrowly defined. 4/n
At #utulsa, students were told that they had “voted with their feet.” According to the university president, low demand for the liberal arts (as shown through bad data that academic departments have disputed) means that we need to look instead to our strengths in STEM. 5/n
The pres did not mention that students had also “voted with their feet” regarding athletics. Athletic events are not well attended here, the smallest school with a DI football program. The university loses millions annually on athletics. You might say it’s a failing market. 6/n
But changes associated with the neoliberalization of the university are driven less by markets than by oligarchy. If members of the Board of Trustees want to subsidize football at the expense of the university’s educational mission, they will do so because they can. 7/n
Trustees are not educational professionals. They are not faculty. They don’t read and think and write extensively on higher ed. Rather, they are donors. Investors. Local elites. 8/n
When a university “neoliberalizes,” those trustees may invoke the language of markets when it comes to core academic programs that enrich students’ lives in myriad ways but do not directly enrich the trustees in tangible ways. 9/n
They can’t say this, of course, though it IS worth noting that the provost told Arts & Sciences faculty that we can’t touch DI football because a donor likes it. (Said donor does NOT provide the university with enough resources to cover the full costs of the team, btw.) 10/n
So what does admin do? Pretend that gutting the liberal arts is a faculty-led initiative. Here at Tulsa, as elsewhere, they created a “Provost’s Program Review Committee,” widely known among faculty as the “Death Star Committee.” (The provost HATED the nickname.) 11/n
That committee, made up of faculty hand selected by admin with no input from faculty, was tasked with making the recommendations that admin wanted them to make. How do we know this? The provost hinted at these changes long before the committee was assembled. 12/n
Also of note: The Death Star Committee signed non-disclosure agreements! 13/n
As I’ve said elsewhere, the provost and president are now using this hand-picked committee as a shield. Students, alumni, and faculty are understandably upset with this brazen move to gut the liberal arts. But the faculty didn’t do this. 14/n
The College of Arts & Sciences is now being referred to as a “retention college,” which seems like they are saying the quiet part out loud. “Retention” is largely admin-speak for “grade inflation.” 15/n
Admin now sees this backlash as a PR problem. They probably don’t understand why their corporate language of “change” and “a new model” and “secret sauce” (look it up!) can’t gloss over the many ways that students and faculty are being screwed. 16/n
The provost sent many emails over a series of months trying to sell these (then-publicly unknown) moves as “visionary,” “bold,” and (I kid you not) “transparent.” Transparent! 17/n
There may come a time to mourn my old job and adjust to my new role as professor of retention studies. But for now, I fight. For higher ed. For my students. For my colleagues. For my career. Thank you to those who care. 18/18
