'The Lost Soul of Higher Education' October 20, 2010 To begin an article by saying that American higher education is in a state of crisis would be -- at least to most readers of this site -- so familiar as to border on tautology. "Well, sure," the reader can be imagined thinking. "But is she referring to the years of economic turmoil and drastic budget cuts? The adjunctification of the faculty? The neglect of the liberal arts and humanities? The watering down of academic standards?"
In this case, the answer would be, "Yes, for a start." And the author of that answer would be Ellen Schrecker, whose recent book The Lost Soul of Higher Education: Corporatization, the Assault on Academic Freedom, and the End of the American University (The New Press) counts all of the above among a host of critical issues confronting academe. The book grew out of an opinion piece in The Chronicle of Higher Education in which Schrecker, a professor of history at Yeshiva University, wrote that the "assault on the academy" by conservative critics such as David Horowitz poses a greater threat to academic freedom than did McCarthyism in the 1950s. In The Lost Soul of Higher Education, however, Horowitz and other detractors of academe are depicted as just one facet of a much broader set of problems. Schrecker stressed to Inside Higher Ed that the book's primary focus might be summarized as "the damage that the 'casualization' of the academic labor force is doing to academic freedom and the quality of higher education." In an e-mail interview, Schrecker shed further light on the book's themes and explained why it is incumbent on faculty in particular to stand up and speak out. Q: What are the "major flaws [of the academic community] ... that have in part ... contributed to its present precarious condition," and how have they done so? A: Let me begin with three (or at least two and a half) cheers for American higher education. For all its flaws – and they are many – it is still a remarkably diverse, exciting, and innovative enterprise that not only stretches the boundaries of our knowledge and broadens the American mind, but also serves as the main source of social mobility within the United States. That said, it is also a system that reflects and to some extent increases the inequalities within our society. Its flaws, it must be noted, do not stem from some uniquely academic shortcomings, but are the product of larger social and political forces. In other words, our universities are mirrors of our society. So, if we are seeing an increasingly inegalitarian, competitive, and stressed-out academic community, welcome to the world of 21st century America. The issue, of course, is money. Since the financial crunch of the late 1960s and 1970s, American colleges and universities have worried about their bottom lines. Reduced support from state legislatures and the federal government’s decision to aid higher education through grants and loans to students rather than through the direct funding of individual institutions forced those institutions to look for other sources of income, while seeking to cut costs. In the process, academic administrators adapted themselves to the neoliberal ethos of the time. They reoriented their institutions toward the market at the expense of those elements of their educational missions that served no immediate economic function. As they came to rely ever more heavily on tuition payments, they diverted resources to whatever would attract and retain students -- elaborate recreational facilities, gourmet dining halls, state-of-the-art computer centers, and winning football teams. At the same time, they slashed library budgets, deferred building maintenance, and – most deleteriously – replaced full-time tenure-track faculty members with part-time and temporary instructors who have no academic freedom and may be too stressed out by their inadequate salaries and poor working conditions to provide their students with the education they deserve. Meanwhile, rising tuitions are making a college degree increasingly unaffordable to the millions of potential students who most need that credential to make it into the middle class. Unfortunately, the competitive atmosphere produced by the academic community’s long-term obsession with status and its more recent devotion to the market makes it hard for its members to collaborate in solving its problems. Institutions compete for tuition-paying undergraduates and celebrity professors who can boost their institutions’ U.S. News & World Report ratings. Faculty members compete for tenure and research grants. And students compete for grades after having competed for admission to the highly ranked schools that will provide them with the credentials for a position within the American elite. Until the denizens of academe – and their off-campus supporters – recognize the need for collective action not only to restore their lost public funding but also to rededicate themselves to their core educational missions, American higher education will not emerge from its current funk. Q: The very definition of "academic freedom" is, of course, contentious. How would you define the term? A: In many ways academic freedom is like pornography: we know it when we see it, even if a simple definition eludes us. It developed because the nation’s faculties needed some kind of special protection if they were to carry out their primary functions of teaching and research without the fear of being punished for doing so. It is related to – but not the same as – free speech. While the courts have (at least until some recent bad decisions) protected the First Amendment rights of professors at public colleges and universities, they offer no such protection to those who, like myself, work at private schools. Even so, because academic freedom is derived from our activities as teachers and scholars and not our status as citizens, faculty members at every type of school and at every level enjoy (or should enjoy) it. But academic freedom does more than just protect an individual professor’s freedom of speech. It is also a professional perquisite that ideally enables faculty members to protect the quality of higher education. They do this by maintaining control over their own and their colleagues’ academic responsibilities. That autonomy is a crucial element in the structure of academic freedom; not only does it keep irrelevant political, personal, or economic considerations from subverting the educational process, but it also ensures that qualified academic professionals are in charge of that process. It operates through a variety of practices and procedures, like tenure and faculty governance, that have evolved over the past century to protect the independence of the American academy. After all, scholars and scientists cannot merely follow orders; the new knowledge they produce must come from the unfettered interplay of their trained minds with the data they collect. Similarly, as teachers, academics can develop their students’ powers of rational and independent thought only if they are themselves autonomous within their classrooms. When outsiders intervene and override the professional judgment of academics in key areas like curriculums and personnel, they threaten the integrity of higher education. Of course, their academic freedom does not allow professors to do or say whatever they please. On the contrary, they must conform to the mores of their profession. They must operate within the established boundaries of their disciplines and abide by the same standards of evidence and accountability as their fellow scholars. And they must not misuse their classrooms by propounding irrelevant material or taking advantage of students. A variety of institutions enforce these professional obligations – departmental committees, faculty senates, disciplinary associations, scholarly journals, and so on. Through peer review and the constant assessment of each individual’s work, these institutions ensure the quality of academic scholarship and teaching. Sloppy research will rarely get published; poorly prepared lecturers will rarely get tenure. Naturally conflicts arise – academics are, after all, only human – but a general consensus about what constitutes good work within each field ordinarily exists. Significantly, however, this system only functions if the men and women who enforce the norms of the academic profession are academics themselves. Who else possesses the expertise and experience needed to evaluate the quality of someone’s research or teaching? In almost every instance, when academic freedom is under attack, it is because outsiders seek to make academic judgments – a situation that not only violates academic freedom but also undermines the quality of higher education. full: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/10/20/schrecker _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
