Show Me the Money

The IEA mobilization committee is going to hold another "collective action" event at noon next Friday, July 1st, the first day of the fiscal year.  We're calling it the "The Show-Me-the-Money SIUC Campus Tour".

  

We (and yes, I'm afraid I'm involved) plan to meet in front of Morris Library at noon and proceed to other key locations including Faner Hall, Woody Hall, Anthony Hall, and McAndrews Stadium. At each stop, we'll have a brief presentation and discussion about what each place reveals about SIUC's fiscal priorities and what we see as a consistent de-prioritizing of quality education. We anticipate that the entire tour will take less than an hour. To introduce a playful element, we're encouraging people to dress as tourists, so consider pulling out your bermuda shorts and tropical shirts, and bring along your cameras. We also hope to circulate a satirical campus map. 

Commentators here are welcome to suggest their own stops and commentary for the Money Tour, whether to help us with ideas for our own tour or to get a virtual version of the tour going here.  

What is a university?

Lost in SIUC’s year-long logorrhea about budgets, furlough days, and various administrative restructurings has been any serious discussion of what a university is, fundamentally and essentially. Lots of chatter about “economic engines,” graduation rates, enrollment, and retention, but nary a peep about what this place actually does, what a university—as opposed to a college or community college—is for. The result of this lacuna is the blithe assumption that we all know what a university is and that we’re just discussing different ways to attain the same ends. As usual, such sanguine ecumenism is sorely misguided: the changes advocated by the current administration at SIUC actively and fundamentally change what universities do. They change what research is and they change what teaching is. They change your job, not just how you get compensated for your job.

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So what is a university? Universities make and evaluate knowledge (research and scholarship) and transmit this knowledge and its values to students (teaching). Period. That’s it. No elaborate dragon of ambiguity to be slain. But that does mean that knowledge is the principle of value, not utility, feasibility, or popularity. And thus, valuing has a substantive content and does not reduce to a merely equanimous weighing of pros and cons. Learning means not just knowing, but also evaluating from the standpoint of this knowledge—and solely from this standpoint.