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About the Author
Dan Greenberg is a longtime observer of science policy and politics. He is the author of "Science for Sale: The Perils, Rewards, and Delusions of Campus Capitalism" (University of Chicago Press), as well as other books, and has published widely in newspapers and popular and professional magazines.
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Recent Posts
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Ripe for the Gripe
In many encounters with academe, in the course of journalistic duty, I have been told:
Morale here is low.
The president is a fool.
The administration is incompetent.
The faculty is weighted with dead wood.
The students are not held to high standards.
Hiring and tenure decisions are suspect.
It’s a rare campus that lacks at least one of these accolades, and there are more than a few that register all of them.
Given that there are more than 4,000 two- and four-year postsecondary schools in the country, some unworthiness is bound to flourish here and there. But the aforementioned laments, and others, occur too frequently to be written off as local peculiarities or wine-bar fulminations.
As sometimes manifested in Brainstorm posts and ensuing reader commentaries, bitterness among faculty and staff is no rarity in our institutions of higher education. It may be that the same is true in industry, finance, government agencies, etc., but falls from grace in those sectors occur so often as to be regarded as normal. Higher education, on the other hand, at least claims noble responsibilities to the young and the general public.
In reality, professors are not drawn from sterner moral stuff than are hedge-fund operators or pharmaceutical executives. In fact, quite a few hedge-fund operators and drug manufacturers used to be professors. Moreover, while academe’s rules and expectations for veracity and dedication to duty are lofty, universities are fairly lax about surveillance and compliance. Instances of professors failing to report income from pharmaceutical companies have become front-page regulars, and exasperated journal editors continue to find authors neglecting to disclose financial conflicts of interest. Universities may boast of their dedication to teaching, but little or no teaching is a lure for recruiting superstars.
A dour sketch of academe’s moral condition was provided in 2003 by Derek Bok, former president of Harvard, in Universities in the Marketplace: The Commercialization of Higher Education (Princeton University Press):
The university strikes many critics as a kind of anarchy, ill-suited for any purpose other than securing the comfort and convenience of the tenured professors. Officials of the university have very little authority over their senior faculty. The latter have virtually complete license to do as they choose, thanks to the security of tenure buttressed by the safeguards of academic freedom. Since it is difficult to monitor closely the work of highly educated professionals, faculty members can travel more than the university rules allow or remain at home tending their garden or enjoying their hobbies without much fear of detection. So long as they meet their scheduled classes and refrain from criminal acts, they can stay happily in their jobs until they retire.
And that’s the view from the presidency of Harvard.
Grousing is so prevalent in academe that after a while it blends into the campus environment. But an outsider who frequently visits can’t help but wonder whether the bitterness so often encountered arises from serious and neglected defects.
(Images from Photobucket.com)
Posted at 03:19:50 PM on July 7, 2008 | All postings by Dan GreenbergComments
Commenting is closed for this article.
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Dan, I hear much of the same from my colleagues in academia. And several of my direct experiences with academia are consistent with these complaints. It is not universal, but it seems nearly so. And yet, there is much of value to admire in academia. And my experiences outside academia have also revealed much bitterness and discontent—as well as envy of the academic life. Maybe life really is not entirely fair, and some people inside and outside academia both notice.
— Joe Erwin · Jul 7, 03:58 PM · #
The gripes are usually based in substance. Deadwood is always the unwanted side effect of tenure.
University administrators are, more often than not, less than competent, for several reasons:
1) They are not scholar-teachers ( or at least not successful scholar-teachers).
2) In the rare case of a successful scholar becoming an administrator, too often the Peter Principle applies.
3) People who seek power over others should not have it.
4) Administrators rarely understand that their role is to keep the trains running on time, and to stay the hell out of the academic end of things, which is strictly faculty business.
— Jane · Jul 7, 04:53 PM · #
According to your criteria, Jane, there seems to be no motivation to serve as an administrator other than money. I have applied for a few academic administrative positions on the apparently false assumption that I might have been able to initiate interdisciplinary programs and promote national and international collaborative research. I get the sense from your comments that leadership of that sort from an administrator would be unwelcome and probably would not be successful. So I am probably better off just stirring the pot and fanning the flames from outside academia—as I have been doing most of my career. Oh well….
— Joe Erwin · Jul 7, 07:04 PM · #
I think academia reflects society quite well; where many times celebrity trumps substance. I often find myself categorizing the academic staff I work with as either mercenary or missionary. The mercenary may turn out good work; but it seems their goal is recognition for self. The missionary, on the other hand, strives to add to the body of knowledge for the benefit of all.
To an administrator, the flamboyant seems to sell better? As for me my mentor shall be the missionary.
— Phil · Jul 8, 08:15 AM · #
Dan — Don’t blame the faculty and staff. “Higher education” is largely a self-created, self-perpetuating, insular, incestuous and self-regulating world. There is a great deal of mediocrity in this environment. Higher education is particularly susceptible to moving or promoting individuals into positions of authority without giving them the knowledge, experience or training to do an effective job. The arrogance of higher education produces presidents who can talk but can’t listen. As recent events at American University, Duke, Eastern Michigan, Oral Roberts and WVU have shown, there is a trend toward making decisions based on self-interest and political agendas, rather than what is in the best interests of students and the institution. Many, if not most, trustees and regents are asleep at the switch. They lack enough credible information and knowledge to fulfill their oversight responsibilities. These problems are the fault of accreditation agencies, boards of trustees, presidents, provosts and other senior administrators, not the faculty and staff generally.
— Allan · Jul 8, 08:30 AM · #
Good points, Allan. The role of the accreditation agencies is often overlooked. Their current obssession with maximally vague “quality enhancement planning” has obscured their oversight of more fundamental criteria, such as academic freedom, shared governance, and full/part-time ratios.
— Jane · Jul 8, 03:25 PM · #
Try this:
One of the reasons (not the reason) academics gripe so much is that griping (discussion, debate, argument, ongoing yadda yadda yadda) is their business. Solutions (motion seconded and passed, compromise, agreement, putting an end to a specific matter) is not their bag.
Experience has taught me that a) most faculty members in most disciplines are, at heart, barracks lawyers; b) the most you can accomplish—i.e., the least harm you can do—by speaking at a faculty meeting is to extend the duration of the meeting by only the amount of time it takes you to speak.
— Just Passing Through · Jul 8, 03:28 PM · #
Addendum: The situation described above is exacerbated by the prevailing intellectual fashion for the past thirty years or so: indeterminacy (relativism, post-structuralism, deconstruction, reader-response, thick description, etc.). Humanties professors think what they’re supposed to be doing is keeping things indeterminate.
Teachers need ignorance like the cops need crime. But just as no cop will say he or she wants crime to happen in order to stayed employed, no teacher is willing to say he or she needs ignorance. Indeterminacy is the next best thing to ignorance; both are founded on “I don’t know.” So humanities professors especially like keeping things indeterminant. And faculty griping helps keep university situations indeterminant: will the president stay or go? will the football stadium get built? will the master plan change quarter system to a semester one?
Add this to the hypothesis in #7 and you get the idea that academic griping is fecklessly eternal and eternally feckless.
— Just Passing Through · Jul 8, 06:36 PM · #
Is this what we’re spending $50,000 a year for??
— Parent · Jul 9, 06:34 AM · #
Most faculty earned their Ph.D. at a better institution (as measured by any number of different criteria) than their current one. It is natural to make the comparison and find the current college or university wanting. Sometimes these complaints of the faculty actually serve to improve matters— and wouldn’t something feel wrong about a campus where the faculty were all fully satisfied?
— perplexed · Jul 9, 10:56 AM · #
I’m troubled when legitimate criticism is casually dismissed as mere griping, just as I am vexed when critiques of Bush etall are caricatured as simple “hatred.” I agree with JPT that the humanities are in a bad way, but we needn’t regard their toxicity as delegitamizing critique in general by dismissing it as blah, blah etc.
Unless I am mistaken, the spirit of Dan Greenberg’s comments, as revealed in his last sentence, is positive and does not seek to caricature all criticism as mere kvetching. JPT’s glibness has its attractions, but I’m anxious to read Dan’s book which, I hope, will help me think through important issues rather than merely leave me amidst the alleged “gripers.”
— George K · Jul 9, 06:10 PM · #
To George K:
GRIPE:
informal terms for objecting; “I have a gripe about the service here”
complain; “What was he hollering about?”
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
CRITICISM:
disapproval expressed by pointing out faults or shortcomings; “the senator received severe criticism from his opponent”
a serious examination and judgment of something; “constructive criticism is always appreciated”
a written evaluation of a work of literature
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
See the difference?
By the way, I can be glib, but I was deadly serious in #s 7 and 8.
— Just Passing Through · Jul 9, 08:03 PM · #