[This blog was written before the one that follows it, and is intended for a non-academic audience. As in the case of the one that follows, it was written with the hope that it might be made public in some fashion. And, like the one that follows, it is unlikely to see any publication either than here.]
The
higher education crisis in Alberta has become the perfect storm. A provincial
government trying to prove how tough it can be to the province’s right-wing
voters constitutes one element of that storm. A public that does not seem to
understand what universities are or should be is another. The abandonment by
universities of an academic model in favor of a corporate business model is yet
another.
In
regard to the ruling government and the public, both seem to think universities
are inefficient and its members over-privileged. At worst, both seem to want
universities that are mere job employment centres, where all courses and
programs are directed at current job opportunities and current applied research
needs. Even if the task of universities was this narrow, no institutions of
higher education could flexibly adapt on-the-fly to perceived needs. If they
tried, education would be a disjointed shambles of incoherent programs and
incompetent instruction by under-qualified staff. In reality, universities have
a larger task, much of it beyond employment training -- to educate students to
think critically, to create good citizens, and to improve the quality of our
lives, not just add to the cash in our billfolds.
University professors are privileged, as every one of them would admit.
They are privileged to participate in the excitement of teaching and conducting
research. But to get to that opportunity, they must go through tough
competition. Fewer than half who begin graduate studies finish with a PhD. In
most fields, fewer than half of them will ever get full-time university
employment. Those adjuncts who scramble for a living by teaching sessional courses
here and there, seldom make an income above the poverty line. In the U. S., one
source claims that adjuncts now teach 76% of undergraduate courses. Those few
academics who get a tenured position seldom have a job before they are
thirty-one years old. Post-doctoral positions and adjunct teaching are the long
residencies for academics. Even if they get a tenured position, they start at a
modest salary (at the very age when many have young families). After tenure,
good teaching and good research are absolute requirements to improve one’s
salary. Only senior professors ever acquire a good income, and this usually
occurs late in their careers. Few business or professional people in the “real”
world have to face competition like this throughout their careers. On the other
hand, most business and professional people receive higher remuneration for
their work earlier on and throughout their careers. Almost all academics could
prosper more financially by choosing another career path. Yet, they choose the
academic life for its not remunerative benefits, especially the satisfaction of
accomplishment. And, contrary to popular opinion, almost all university
professors work more than a forty-hour week, year round.
Worst of
all, over the past thirty odd years, universities have themselves made an
enormous error by embracing a corporate model of operation. On the one hand,
this model encourages top-down management. Universities were born, and long
existed, on the premise that higher education was a matter of students and
professors, and that administrators and all others in the process were there to
support the student-teacher process. Top-down management destroys this
essential relationship. The corporate model further promotes the idea that
students are customers and consumers while professors are only there to
guarantee that the customers get what they want rather than what they need. The
final stage of such a corporate model is to make universities into competitive
institutions, ones where administrators spend their time “marketing” and
“branding” the institution rather than fostering the academic and intellectual
needs of the university.
The
prognosis is not good for the future, at least not until a sea-change occurs in
North American culture. As it is, the perfect storm is overwhelming us.
