We have been sent a survey on what we want the new president of our university to be like. I wrote that s/he should be aware of why it is crucial to keep corporate values out of academia, realize that a public university should not be run like a business, and resist at all costs the substitution of tenure lines with adjunct positions.
Is there anything crucial that I’m forgetting?
How about strong support for academic (and student) freedom of expression?
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Great idea! I will add this to my response.
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Also: more self-governance and less bureaucracy.
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more self-governance and less bureaucracy
Great ideas, but the concepts might spread beyond the academic community to Federal and State governance. I would consider that a very good thing but it would be contrary to present directions,
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I don’t know if this applies to your university but if it were my institution, I would ask for a firm commitment to the arts and humanities. We are over promoting the so called “professional” majors ar the expense of the humanitites.
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An actual commitment to student safety. Recently at my university, a student was assaulted while jogging early morning on campus, and I was less-than-impressed by the “be sure to be more vigilant while walking” response.
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That’s a great idea. We have had 3 attacks on students in the past year, and that’s 3 more than we had the year before and teh year before that.
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I think that the ability to convince alumni and others to donate money in support of the university’s academic programs is really important. But it must not eclipse the other things mentioned here!
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