The Corporate Model

One of the main problems with academia these days, as I see it, is what I've taken to calling the corporate model. It's the notion that a university is essentially a sort of company and should be run accordingly. The major problem with this, of course, is that the university isn't a capitalist enterprise that exists to maximize monetary profit.

Another problem is that the people pushing this model often have an antediluvian understanding of how good companies work.  I don't know much about business, but anyone who's ever dipped into the business pages knows that good managers these days don't simply expect to give orders and have them unthinkingly obeyed. Promoters of the "corporate model" on campus too often seem to have an industrial age factory in mind, rather than the more flexible, transparent, and even democratic corporate culture in the most successful companies today. That is, some promoters of the corporate model don't only fail to understand universities: they fail to understand companies. For more on corporate flexibility, check out this recent article, "Fostering a Culture of Dissent", from the NY Times business section.

Okay, enough for today: too much caffeine meant too much blogging.

The Silent Majority Speaks

The silent majority has spoken up in today's DE, providing me with an easy cheap-shot illustration. 

Nixon famously used the phrase "the silent majority"of those who supported the war in Vietnam which he, of course, was earnestly attempting to bring to an end. Now there was a leader one could trust! But back to events more contemporary.

Bearding authority

I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led, and bearding every authority which stood in their way.  

So Thomas Jefferson, as quoted in today's supplement on SIUC research in the Southern (the original context from a letter of 1814 can be found here; Jefferson is there apologizing, or at least pretending to apologize, for his youthful rejection of the claim that scripture is part of the common law). Showing remarkable restraint, I will not ask what percentage of the Southern's readership understands this use of the verb beard. Who cares what it means, it's a quote by one of the Founding Fathers on research, so let's run with it!  Perhaps the person who selected the quote didn't understand it, either.  As to SIUC's willingness to support a researcher confronting authority—here in the guise of corporate authority, the new church— I'll content myself with a brief response: Dr. David Gilbert.  

On the collective bargaining teach-in

The text of today's DE article on yesterday's Teach-In includes some pretty representative quotations from people describing the conversation at the meeting, though the headline is unintelligible and the lead misrepresents the amount of time spent talking about the possibility of a strike.  The conversation really revolved around the threat to collective bargaining at our campus, its connection to wider trends at places like Wisconsin, and how faculty and others could better articulate their side of the story.  


My favorite part of the conversation was a point the article gets to toward the end. Ryan Netzley, whose evaluation of a recent missive from the Office of the Chancellor you may have seen on a blog near you, argued that the key to winning a broader set of hearts and minds is to get beyond the financial details and the procedural issues of collective bargaining in order to articulate the rival visions for the future of the university.