Academia

someone told me it’s all happening at the zoo

By J. L. Bastiat ⋅ June 28, 2008 ⋅  Email This Post ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

Todd Zywicki points us to a Dr. Seuss-inspired set of posts on academic wish-fulfillment fantasies. There’s some pretty good stuff, here, both in terms of diagnosis of current problems and aspirations for those of us engaged in the culture of academia. One that leaps out to me is Zywicki’s concern with “corporatization”:

Much of the leadership of higher education today has lost its way through a creeping “corporatization” of academic culture. Money matters, of course—a lot. Without it, nothing else is possible. But university leaders today often place financial considerations ahead of the university’s core institutional mission of education. Presidents are chosen largely for their fund-raising prowess rather than their intellectual leadership. Universities spend millions of dollars on glossy mailings and PR professionals to promote the institution’s “brand” rather than on improving educational quality.

(NAS–The National Association of Scholars)

I disagree only in the sense that I do not see this “corporatization” as creeping–it is rushing upon us by leaps and bounds. Franchising McUniversities that exist primarily in the imaginations of the undereducated seeking “degree completion” as an Aladdin’s lamp to la dolce vita and the cubicles of faceless processing centers are increasingly pressuring the intellectual integrity of the scholar, while the pressure to build heavily-endowed research centers continues to bear down on the teaching mission of even well-established universities. There is, of course, no reason great scholarship cannot coexist with great teaching (there is in fact no way to get the latter without the former, I think); but the managerial competencies required to balance these are subtle, intellectual, and not primarily focussed on “brand identity” and licensing deals.

Another writer on the same theme manages some rhyme, and some pointed comments, too.

Here’s a short and sweet one from me:

If someone went mad and let me run the zoo,
We’d say what we like from front desk to the loo,
But sign our names boldly–no one needes Nonny Mouse,
And we don’t need a frat or sorority house.

If someone so foolish had me keep the zoo,
We’d stop taking funds from the government, too,
And we might then go broke, but we’d open some minds
To what lies beyond Uncle Sam’s tie that binds.

In my zoo full of crazy men scholars would write,
And teachers would teach, and they’d try not to fight,
Because, after all, teachers’ teachers are scholars,
At least when they care about learning, not dollars.

And in my mad zoo, men and women’s employment
Would be based upon learning, not student enjoyment;
And while we’d abolish in loco parentis,
We won’t waste our time on the non compos mentis.

My zoo might be smaller, and leaner, and meaner,
But I think you’d enjoy its straightforward demeanor:
Where students with scholars and teachers will study,
And the deans, mostly silent, go harmlessly nutty.

Cheers!