Coffee streams from urns and conversation fills the crowded auditorium as faculty and staff await the start of our compulsory annual “convocation”.
This session used to be a faculty-only event about professional development but now it resembles a shareholders’ meeting, where the president and assorted highly paid toadies can espouse corporate propaganda and demonstrate their indispensable value to the enterprise – before, no doubt, jumping ship.
“I need people around me to complete me, not to compete with me,” the president declares. Question her and “you fear change” and are “not a team player”. Question her and campus police may escort you out the door.
In a way, this era of inept “managers” aping the corporate world in which I used to work is funny. Today, though, I feel despondent because around me are good people who once fought hard for a standard of professionalism and a duty of care, but who now are forced to mostly grin and bear the malaise.
Not that the fight has entirely gone out of them. The dean of humanities takes the podium next, a bit humbled after her attempt to introduce “performance-based scheduling” was seen off by faculty.
She had intended to determine what classes to offer in a new semester based on final enrolment in the previous semester: if that figure fell below her arbitrary number, that class would not be offered again (even if it started at full enrolment) because low final numbers meant “the instructor was underperforming”. But faculty went above her head to complain that she was cancelling required classes that consistently enrolled to full capacity, that the reasons for attrition included everything from a lack of childcare to a least one gunshot wound, and that a cursory look at finances revealed performance-based scheduling had a negative impact.
One reason there are so many incompetents in American college administration these days is that appointees are no longer required to follow the traditional trajectory starting with years of rigorous teaching and research. Two decades ago, every administrator at my college came from our faculty ranks. Today, few remain. All administrators need now is a doctorate in “educational leadership”: programmes steeped in business theory. Some colleges hire businessmen with no graduate degrees whatsoever. Administrators such as these have no understanding of what professors do, so they cannot lead a college.
But, often, professors themselves don’t want to move into administration because it requires them to surrender tenure. If they dissent from the party line on any number of issues within and beyond college administration in these fractious times, they may find themselves out of a job. The high salaries aren’t worth the vulnerability. This is why no competent administrator remains in my college: the good ones were purged by a previous president. If our state legislature succeeds in abolishing tenure, though, faculty will be purged, too.
Next up, the vice-president of academic affairs says he’d like to “integrate the adjunct faculty into the fabric of the college”, a crucial request given that part-timers do the lion’s share of teaching at American colleges. He envisages inspiring a stronger commitment from them via intricately planned orientations and get-to-know-you gatherings. Yet he says nothing about increasing the pittance they are paid or giving them greater job security. Who has the right to demand commitment from someone who receives none in return?
Needless to say, the college has difficulty finding enough part-timers to exploit, so the vice-president of information technology suggests imitating the local school district’s programme allowing “industry experts” to teach without experience or credentials. His second suggestion is “to run tutoring like Uber”, so that students can phone and pay for a tutor. Never mind that tutoring is currently free to students, many of whom struggle to pay for food. This is not about serving students; it’s about the ongoing de-professionalisation of everything.
The dean of assessment takes the podium next, throwing statistics around in support of his claims about dynamism and laziness. To him, extenuating circumstances do not affect educational success; privilege and poverty have nothing at all to do with it. Education has a formula, and if we employ it – and smile a lot – we can be successful with anyone, under any conditions.
Numbers may not lie but their interpretation can lie, and I wonder if any of these charlatans will ever understand that learning occurs within relationships and that good teachers develop those relationships with their students. There are no shortcuts.
So what should I do? Jump ship? Try something new? Maybe look for a position at a different college?
I don’t think so. Not only am I too old to start over, but what’s happening at my college is happening everywhere. In a country that lionises the businessman and the entrepreneur and demonises the teacher and the civil servant, greener pastures don’t exist.
So, I’ll do what I always do: close my classroom door and teach. No matter what the false prophets require, I will not change my priorities. I will teach because it’s an important and noble pursuit. I will read because it informs my teaching and my writing, and I will write because, well, that’s what got me into this mess to begin with, this life in letters. I couldn’t stop that even if I tried.
The writer is an educator at a US community college.
