historically, the teaching curriculum was one thing college faculty assumed they controlled, free of administrative reach-in. That was never entirely true, but it was ended at many places by ed-tech & the Lynne Cheney fueled trustee empowerment movement of the last 20 years
Financial exigency is the main reach-in to curriculum @AAUP acknowledges. They define it narrowly, so it does NOT mean admin preferring to spend money on a loss-making nanotech center instead of Spanish, as in the SUNY Albany case I've written about bit.ly/2CmOngj
College admins have unilaterally restructured teaching over decades by replacing tenure-track with contingent faculty. @NewFacMajority Most TT faculty, for some reason, haven't seen this as reach-in to their core professional prerogative and fought it.
This has been a massive strategic error from which highered may never recover. How do we claw this back in an era of perma-austerity in higher ed?
Recently, the @utulsa administration proposed a total overhaul of their curriculum. Tulsa has non-exigent financial problems, but the motive is workforce relevance. Dems also see college as job training. Their work in driving up net costs to students has helped lock this in.
too bad, because the nonmarket benefits of college are more important to individuals & society than the direct market benefits. And also, for most fields, much larger. @UTulsa is doubling down on the smaller benefits bec they are quant and, well, trustees like monetary benefits.
yesterday, @UTulsa trustees decided that the trustees will decide what the curriculum looks like. They rejected faculty objections and an alternative bit.ly/2CwfRzT
“'Simply put, the board remains resolute in its opinion the recommendations in the Strategic Plan and True Commitment remain our best path forward,' Gerard P. Clancy, Tulsa’s president, wrote in a campuswide email. @nickfleisher
“'While we welcome suggestions for improvement through established pathways, there will be no "repeal" or "rollback" of True Commitment.'” @HankReichman
The number of colleges NOT subject to admin unilateralism, even in curriculum, thus continues to shrink. @goACTA et al have made huge headway in limiting the rights of academic professionals. And the faculty majority that are NTT also rightly suspect the value of professionalism.
in universities with decent shared governance, curriculum hasn't been messed with much. But even tenured faculty have nearly no say over the budget that controls curriculum, or over admin appointments that set the direction
The UCalif is looking to replace its president with a special committee consisting of a subset of regents who are all political appointees. None are from higher education or show understanding of frontline educational issues.
I mention this because it's a typical not an aberrant situation. TT faculty get to have an advisory committee, but its members are not allowed to participate in interviewing candidates.
The normal governance of universities feels childish to me. People with no relevant expertise preside over the experts. The former's authority now expresses itself, as UTulsa's president did, in an ability to repudiate professionals--without stating grounds, only sovereignty.
by not stating grounds, I mean @utulsa admin didn't show numbers to faculty to demonstrate how their small 2018 operating loss would be repaired by the new plan. When I looked at it I couldn't see the savings, but 40% of the curriculum will be gone. bit.ly/32r6hZW
In spite of work by @gabrielwinant and others, most professionals above a certain upper rung refuse to see or respond to their defeat by the managerial fraction of the old professional-managerial class. Some @UTulsa faculty were exceptions bit.ly/32r6hZW
same goes for governing boards. They are fiduciaries, yet proxy that, ironically, to legal and other experts because they don't know enough as individuals. Thus their main job is to show us the money. And for 30 years, public U boards and most privates have failed at this.
Boards' mission creep into curriculum, anti-BDS, all this other stuff they don't understand is partially compensatory for the failure of the business models they continue to advocate, and partly sniffing the lower social esteem of academia overall, to which they contribute.
Some UTulsa faculty, like Jacob Howland, set a great example by critiquing, resisting, proposing something better. bit.ly/2Ct394Y Faculty need much better mechanisms of mutual assistance for cases like these.
Tenured faculty can afford @AAUP membership and this is a basic first step. I understand many colleagues disagree with some of their positions, as do I, but they are the only national organization with a framework for professional rights.
I also think we can do better at not being trapped in reactivity. We've done great critique of the Uberization of the U bit.ly/2oZh6Vd the Gig Academy the Adjunct Underclass the Reorder. I don't mean that-we're in a renaissance of critical U studies that must continue.
and also expand:seeing where we go with abolitionist and decolonial frameworks, & predictions of the luxury university or post-university run by its students staff and faculty. Oddly the current excess of top-down gives me hope. @anniemcclanahan @amyjelias @nerdosyndical
