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The universities are effectively run by the tenured faculty members. As long as they produce more labor than they need, they can hire scabs if teachers go on s

The universities are effectively run by the tenured faculty members. As long as they produce more labor than they need, they can hire scabs if teachers go on strike. The real question is why so many bright minds want to go into this to begin with.

wfo 10y ago
No, universities are run by boards of directors like every corporation and a president/CEO. Tenured faculty has some vote (but NEVER a controlling or even large vote, they often have to fight to be included at all in serious decisions). It's top-down business decisions by investors and the CEO, who tell the deans/provosts/chairs/faculty/adjuncts, all the way down the totem pole to the grad students, "oh we'd like to pay you decently and hire enough workers, we really would, but the market simply can't bear it, we don't have the funds, I'm so sorry. We're on the same side here, really, it's just the practicalities of the situation. You wouldn't understand, it's business, and you're an expert in Art/English/Engineering/Chemistry which I totally respect, but you just wouldn't get it so just trust me. I'm one of you. Oh, and by the way your faculty parking lot is being redistricted into stadium parking, and since you aren't an administrator you'll have to purchase a special faculty pass (half off!) that isn't valid on game day. You can take the bus on game day, you like that kind of stuff, you're a liberal, right?" I think nearly unconditional tenure is kind of untenable. There is so much dead weight in any academic department and it's so easy to see. Ask any grad student which professors don't do research or take students and teach like absolute trash. There are always plenty. Usually old, taking up the few slots available for bright young PhDs. But we could also make more slots. There's nothing wrong with being a teaching professor, lots of people love it and they love it so much it doesn't need to pay well, just decently, and how about tenure-ish-track teaching only instead of shunting teachers off into second class citizens who can be fired if some students drop their class the day before? There's plenty of room to expand if that was the goal. But it isn't. Cuts are made where they can be made. It isn't really a market, quality of education isn't really the measured output of paying tuition so the market will NEVER select for what we think of as 'good', but the institutions are being run as if they are operating in a market instead of a public service, which is THE central neoliberal fallacy whose implementation has been as disastrous in education as it has been in any public service which is not a real market (eg healthcare)
- pmyteh 10y ago
  Oxford University (and, I think, Cambridge, but not the rest of the UK) really do have the senior faculty holding the formal power. There was a debate in Congregation (the University's 'parliament') last year on the question of whether to force the University administration to demolish some new (and expensive) accommodation blocks on the grounds that they spoiled the view from part of an ancient common. It was taken very seriously precisely because they did have the power to do it. What's interesting is that this ultimate power is used exceedingly seldom, and very rarely indeed for non-symbolic purposes. There's an active Congregation process involving the compulsory retirement age, but for more-or-less everything else Congregation simply defers to the administration. So I'm not sure that we can point to the power structures as the reason top-down management is such a thing. It happens because we're happy to let it.

wfo 10y ago

No, universities are run by boards of directors like every corporation and a president/CEO. Tenured faculty has some vote (but NEVER a controlling or even large vote, they often have to fight to be included at all in serious decisions). It's top-down business decisions by investors and the CEO, who tell the deans/provosts/chairs/faculty/adjuncts, all the way down the totem pole to the grad students, "oh we'd like to pay you decently and hire enough workers, we really would, but the market simply can't bear it, we don't have the funds, I'm so sorry. We're on the same side here, really, it's just the practicalities of the situation. You wouldn't understand, it's business, and you're an expert in Art/English/Engineering/Chemistry which I totally respect, but you just wouldn't get it so just trust me. I'm one of you. Oh, and by the way your faculty parking lot is being redistricted into stadium parking, and since you aren't an administrator you'll have to purchase a special faculty pass (half off!) that isn't valid on game day. You can take the bus on game day, you like that kind of stuff, you're a liberal, right?" I think nearly unconditional tenure is kind of untenable. There is so much dead weight in any academic department and it's so easy to see. Ask any grad student which professors don't do research or take students and teach like absolute trash. There are always plenty. Usually old, taking up the few slots available for bright young PhDs. But we could also make more slots. There's nothing wrong with being a teaching professor, lots of people love it and they love it so much it doesn't need to pay well, just decently, and how about tenure-ish-track teaching only instead of shunting teachers off into second class citizens who can be fired if some students drop their class the day before? There's plenty of room to expand if that was the goal. But it isn't. Cuts are made where they can be made. It isn't really a market, quality of education isn't really the measured output of paying tuition so the market will NEVER select for what we think of as 'good', but the institutions are being run as if they are operating in a market instead of a public service, which is THE central neoliberal fallacy whose implementation has been as disastrous in education as it has been in any public service which is not a real market (eg healthcare)

pmyteh 10y ago
Oxford University (and, I think, Cambridge, but not the rest of the UK) really do have the senior faculty holding the formal power. There was a debate in Congregation (the University's 'parliament') last year on the question of whether to force the University administration to demolish some new (and expensive) accommodation blocks on the grounds that they spoiled the view from part of an ancient common. It was taken very seriously precisely because they did have the power to do it. What's interesting is that this ultimate power is used exceedingly seldom, and very rarely indeed for non-symbolic purposes. There's an active Congregation process involving the compulsory retirement age, but for more-or-less everything else Congregation simply defers to the administration. So I'm not sure that we can point to the power structures as the reason top-down management is such a thing. It happens because we're happy to let it.