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It is beyond sad how everyone seems to just accept that college is job training now. Of course, it’s a logical response because the neoliberal university saddl
by sh34r 3y ago
It is beyond sad how everyone seems to just accept that college is job training now.
Of course, it’s a logical response because the neoliberal university saddles students with far too much debt. 90% of what an American university does today is useless waste. Most classes are taught by starving grad students and adjuncts. Running the courses themselves are a rounding error on budgets. Administrators are robbing the kids blind. Education is an afterthought at many institutions.
You don’t have to look very far for ways out of this crisis. Look to European universities and their four-figure semester tuition bills, even for foreigners. Look at community colleges, which don’t have dorms, lazy rivers, hundreds of parasitic administrators who do nothing, or Kafkaesque admissions processes. Look at how much more affordable online courses are, from highly respected public universities, when you excise all the useless overhead.
- sfpotter 3y agoI think an interesting model would be a college which is “worker owned and operated” in the sense that the faculty must take in all of the administrative tasks themselves, or at least a significant portion of it. No one wants this kind of task interfering with more interesting work (teaching, mentoring, research), so there would be strong incentives to minimize waste and simplify process.
- tnecniv 3y agoThat is the university model unless I’m misunderstanding. Faculty members hold regular meetings and votes among themselves on policy, who to hire / appoint as dean of X, etc.
- etempleton 3y agoThat is the old University model. The problem with this model is it is slow to adapt and slower to react to organizational or business challenges. When faced with enrollment or financial challenges there becomes a sort of political gridlock that can and often occurs under this model. The administrator or professional management model is more efficient, but relies on the right people in the right roles and admin bloat can occur.
- sfpotter 3y agoThe faculty do service at the moment, yes, but obviously there’s a gigantic, bloated administrative apparatus. The people who work there do things that the faculty don’t. I’m proposing that those positions are eliminated and all of that work is taken on by the faculty.
- TheCoelacanth 3y agoThey make some decisions, but they don't have ultimate decision making authority unless I'm very mistaken. That belongs to the university's board of trustees.
- eszed 3y agoYes, that is the university model, but it's no longer how universities work. "Faculty governance" is dead, and cadres of professional administrators run things. How that has turned out depends on who you ask.