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> For the USA citizens that may read this, you know better your country. What is your opinion? I left academia because it was clear to me that professors were

by csa 5y ago

> For the USA citizens that may read this, you know better your country. What is your opinion? I left academia because it was clear to me that professors were rapidly becoming commoditized by the administrators. First, it was the students (both grad and undergrad), then the adjunct faculty, and then the tenure track/tenured faculty. I don’t know for sure (esp. about the early years), but it seemed to me like this trend started in the 80s, gathered steam and the 90s, and hit its stride in the 00s. IMHO, this is the byproduct of the white collarization (administrationization) of as much of US society as possible, especially notable in education and medicine (where the doctors have been commoditized by the admins). I personally think that so much of this is make-work for a society that should be moving towards post-work, but US society has culturally ingrained work ethic guilt that makes equality and leisure things that are not aggressively sought after consistently throughout society. The end result is administrators who essentially make work for each other while providing much less societal value than is justified by their cost while actively devaluing the “real” work done by those around them. This patent stuff is just a continuation of the power grab of the university administrators.

cycomanic 5y ago
I think you have a very good point. I can also see this through my career. Everytime there is some restructuring more power ends up in the hand of administrators. In particular you can see that systems are generally build to reduce administration workload (because they work regular 9-5) at the cost of more work for academics (because their work hours are not counted) . I am not sure you're correct about the cause though. My theory is it's a side effect of trying to have quantifiable outcomes everywhere, which essentially requires more admin.
biztos 5y ago
> The end result is administrators who essentially make work for each other while providing much less societal value than is justified by their cost while actively devaluing the “real” work done by those around them. I wonder if this is inevitable -- the administrative staff's purpose is administration and it wants to do more of it -- or if there's a way to prevent that at the institutional level. One thing would be giving irrevocable rights and powers to professors at public universities, a lot of countries do that but I'm not sure how well it works against "administrationization." It does seem like putting the researchers in charge might help starve the cancerous administrative class, but maybe you have to start your own university in order to implement this?
- lmm 5y ago
  > I wonder if this is inevitable -- the administrative staff's purpose is administration and it wants to do more of it -- or if there's a way to prevent that at the institutional level. The iron law of bureaucracy seems to apply. Maybe the only option is to tear down institutions every so often and replace them with new ones. > One thing would be giving irrevocable rights and powers to professors at public universities, a lot of countries do that but I'm not sure how well it works against "administrationization." Maybe it works for a while, but you only have to look at the steady erosion of tenure in UK universities to see how this fails. In the US there seems to be a more subtle approach of pushing tenure dates later and later in the career path, so that gradually more and more of what were once professors are now adjuncts and grad students.
MrBuddyCasino 5y ago
Cheers for Ralph Miliband, the smart Marxist: http://on.ft.com/1hCbCiC http://on.ft.com/1hCbCiC. Pre managerialism, he predicted its rise. Also Burnham: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Visible_Hand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Visible_Hand
NaturalPhallacy 5y ago
>but US society has culturally ingrained work ethic guilt that makes equality and leisure things that are not aggressively sought after consistently throughout society. Here's a picture of that thing: https://i.imgur.com/GYlzOhQ.jpg https://i.imgur.com/GYlzOhQ.jpg Credit: Android Jones America's biggest problem are the Too Big to Fail™ + Too Big To Prosecute™ banks and their Fed. By controlling the currency supply, and through it the economy, they control the country. It's ultimately behind every systemic economic problem people face. It's designed that way as what amounts to a byzantine pyramid scheme. When they fucked up and crashed the economy, who got bailed out? The citizens and taxpayers or the country's real owners?

by csa 5y ago

cycomanic 5y ago

I think you have a very good point. I can also see this through my career. Everytime there is some restructuring more power ends up in the hand of administrators. In particular you can see that systems are generally build to reduce administration workload (because they work regular 9-5) at the cost of more work for academics (because their work hours are not counted) . I am not sure you're correct about the cause though. My theory is it's a side effect of trying to have quantifiable outcomes everywhere, which essentially requires more admin.

biztos 5y ago

> The end result is administrators who essentially make work for each other while providing much less societal value than is justified by their cost while actively devaluing the “real” work done by those around them. I wonder if this is inevitable -- the administrative staff's purpose is administration and it wants to do more of it -- or if there's a way to prevent that at the institutional level. One thing would be giving irrevocable rights and powers to professors at public universities, a lot of countries do that but I'm not sure how well it works against "administrationization." It does seem like putting the researchers in charge might help starve the cancerous administrative class, but maybe you have to start your own university in order to implement this?

lmm 5y ago
> I wonder if this is inevitable -- the administrative staff's purpose is administration and it wants to do more of it -- or if there's a way to prevent that at the institutional level. The iron law of bureaucracy seems to apply. Maybe the only option is to tear down institutions every so often and replace them with new ones. > One thing would be giving irrevocable rights and powers to professors at public universities, a lot of countries do that but I'm not sure how well it works against "administrationization." Maybe it works for a while, but you only have to look at the steady erosion of tenure in UK universities to see how this fails. In the US there seems to be a more subtle approach of pushing tenure dates later and later in the career path, so that gradually more and more of what were once professors are now adjuncts and grad students.

MrBuddyCasino 5y ago

Cheers for Ralph Miliband, the smart Marxist: http://on.ft.com/1hCbCiC http://on.ft.com/1hCbCiC. Pre managerialism, he predicted its rise. Also Burnham: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Visible_Hand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Visible_Hand

NaturalPhallacy 5y ago

>but US society has culturally ingrained work ethic guilt that makes equality and leisure things that are not aggressively sought after consistently throughout society. Here's a picture of that thing: https://i.imgur.com/GYlzOhQ.jpg https://i.imgur.com/GYlzOhQ.jpg Credit: Android Jones America's biggest problem are the Too Big to Fail™ + Too Big To Prosecute™ banks and their Fed. By controlling the currency supply, and through it the economy, they control the country. It's ultimately behind every systemic economic problem people face. It's designed that way as what amounts to a byzantine pyramid scheme. When they fucked up and crashed the economy, who got bailed out? The citizens and taxpayers or the country's real owners?