Education Is Not About Administration

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Clarissa

June 16, 2012

When entire departments of languages and literature get destroyed, when programs of study are slashed, when tenured faculty get fired, when faculty salaries are frozen, when tenure-track jobs get replaced with adjunct positions, nobody gives a rat’s ass.

But when some overpriced useless administrator gets fired, everybody is in an uproar. Like any other administrator is going to be less overpriced and useless.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe that only complete blabbering idiots apply business practices to universities (especially the really stupid kind). But I’m bothered by how many posts and articles get dedicated to some administrator who lost her job while nobody wants to write a word about people who matter a lot more to the teaching process, the actual teaching faculty.

I just spoke to a colleague (and a close friend) who shared that, at his university, an effort to introduce a foreign language requirement failed because people don’t see any value in getting students to speak a foreign language in today’s globalized world. Are you seeing any posts on that subject? Not really because who cares that a department of foreign languages at that university is about to die when some super rich administrator will not be able to buy yet another mansion?

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8 responses to “Education Is Not About Administration”

Pen

June 16, 2012

I admire the language majors. The foreign language requirement was to me what the science requirement is to non-science people. It exposed me to something different, and it was challenging. Even if I never speak the language again, I learned a lot about me and other people in that class. Language classes require an entirely different social aspect than do physics classes, or math classes. And there’s a sort of friendliness that grows between people with different majors that wouldn’t happen otherwise.

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Dame Eleanor Hull

June 17, 2012

Are you complaining about Sullivan or about Kiernan? Or is this really about cuts elsewhere and the state of foreign languages?

Sullivan is a sociologist, a teacher and scholar who became an administrator. Such administrators, who understand how universities work and what their real point is, what faculty members really do, may well earn the respect and loyalty of other faculty on their campuses. The administrators I loathe are the outsiders, business consultants, not scholars, people who don’t grasp what goes into teaching and research.

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1. bloggerclarissa
  
  June 17, 2012
  
  I don’t believe in this distinction. The administrator who is bent on destroying foreign languages at my school is a former scholar who never had anything to do with business. All of these overpaid useless paper pushers are the same, in my opinion. They live in palaces while devising new ways of enriching themselves. I’m yet to see a single exception.
  
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n8chz

June 17, 2012

By analogy could we argue that nothing is about administration?

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1. bloggerclarissa
  
  June 17, 2012
  
  If they can make sure that bathrooms are well stocked with toilet paper and there is always chalk in the classrooms, then I’m ready to praise them.
  
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Spanish Prof

June 18, 2012

Not all administrators are created equal. And according to Inside Higher Ed, she may have been fired for refusing to eliminate language programs.
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/06/18/reports-suggest-uva-board-wanted-president-eliminate-language-programs

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1. bloggerclarissa
  
  June 18, 2012
  
  Be that as it may, my question is why the faculty members do not rise in solidarity to defend the language programs? This is not an issue that should depend on a “kind tsar.” Doesn;t it make more sense to defend the language program than to defend an administrator who may have wanted to defend the language program?
  
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  1. Spanish Prof
    
    June 18, 2012
    
    Well, I’ve seen faculty rising to defend language programs. Sometimes fhey are succesfull, sometimes they are not. It depends a lot on internal factors: the institutional culture, history and tradition of the university, structure of governance, etc. And I would certainly rise to defend an administrator who gets fired for refusing to conform to a business model in a university.
    
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