Mr. Rodgers Goes to Dartmouth: No Surprises Here
This, at the WSJ, tells the tale of one T. J. Rodgers, a businessman who decided to get himself elected to the Board of Trustees of Dartmouth. According to him, all he really cared about was improving undergrad education at the school. He started by getting their speech code repealed. That alone apparently--and predictably--earned the hatred of the PCs. Then he discovered that he couldn't get data on which departments needed more teachers, so he had to investigate this himself. He found out that Dartmouth--like many other schools--is spending less and less on their actual faculty. (And, if they're like my school, more and more on entertainment for the students, and on making the school emulate a shopping mall.) Then he pushed to hire more profs for the under-staffed departments so they could use fewer non-tenure-track faculty. And now, to hear him tell it, anyway, he's PNG and the school is looking for ways to cut guys like him out of the governing process.
Now, this is on the WSJ opinion page, and so we can't be sure about the facts. But I have to say, nothing in this story surprises me in the least. It's all par for the course so far as I can tell.
[HT: The Venerable Smyth]
This, at the WSJ, tells the tale of one T. J. Rodgers, a businessman who decided to get himself elected to the Board of Trustees of Dartmouth. According to him, all he really cared about was improving undergrad education at the school. He started by getting their speech code repealed. That alone apparently--and predictably--earned the hatred of the PCs. Then he discovered that he couldn't get data on which departments needed more teachers, so he had to investigate this himself. He found out that Dartmouth--like many other schools--is spending less and less on their actual faculty. (And, if they're like my school, more and more on entertainment for the students, and on making the school emulate a shopping mall.) Then he pushed to hire more profs for the under-staffed departments so they could use fewer non-tenure-track faculty. And now, to hear him tell it, anyway, he's PNG and the school is looking for ways to cut guys like him out of the governing process.
Now, this is on the WSJ opinion page, and so we can't be sure about the facts. But I have to say, nothing in this story surprises me in the least. It's all par for the course so far as I can tell.
[HT: The Venerable Smyth]
posted by Winston Smith at
9:42 AM
7 Comments:
This is part of the fascist takeover of our free-thinking universities. The Dartmouth thing has been going on for awhile.
http://chronicle.com/news/article/2334/dartmouth-alumni-elect-another-insurgent-trustee
It's kinda funny that at second-rate universities such as my own we don't really have to worry about this stuff. People are, on the whole, fairly reasonable around here, and that PC shite almost *never* shows up. Frankly, I'm astonished at how little trouble we have with it.
There was something interesting over at the Volokh blog (should still be near the top) about "who owns the university." There is a current that maintains it's the faculty; the Dartmouth folks thought that the gift-giving/alumni might be the ones, hence the coup on the Board of Trustees.
At Dartmouth---and I dunno their election procedures---the latter won/is winning. Something about Chesterton's "democracy of the dead" springs to mind here...
As for your "second-rate" university (how could it be one with you on their faculty?), perhaps second-rate people tend to mind their p's and q's. It takes a first-rate mind to fall into serious error and folly (see Heidegger, M.)
(Yeah, yeah, I know: how does that explain Bush...)
Aw, shucks...
Naw, error and folly is the fate of many, many minds, first, second, and third rate alike. In my experience, anyway.
You know, I really hate that use of the term "ownership." It keeps cropping up in committee meetings. "Who's got ownership of the Honors curriculum?" someone will say. And I, with annoying predictability, will say "No one. You can't own a curriculum. Do you mean 'who's responsible for determining what it will be like?'"
I'm not merely (not *merely*) being pedantic here. The "ownership" locution encourages sloppy thinking, I think, and contributes to the corporatization of the university. Owning isn't the only way of being responsible for. Nobody really owns the university, but lots of people are responsible for what it's like. Faculty, boards of trustees, administrators, students.
Currently folks like me feel just a tad besieged. In some schools (but not most), there's a powerful knot of uber-lefty radicals on the one hand. Then there's the danger of creeping corporatization, pushing us to view the students as customers (and, of course, the customer is always right...). It also pushes schools to spend more and more money on amusements, so that they start looking more like Club Med than Oxford. Then there's the growth of more and more new "disciplines" that are basically vapid and useless (communications, "leadership studies," gender studies, marketing, "leisure studies" and (and I'm not making this up) "hotel and restaurant management") sucking money and hapless students away from real majors like math and history and literature.
The biggest threat to the university is no longer the lefties, IMHO--though they're a BIG problem in some places. It's the fact that universities are looking more and more like resorts where students occasionally go watch power-point lectures on lame-ass subjects.
What I'd kind of like to see guys like T. J. Rodgers do is come in and say "o.k., by God, you want to study Biology or lit or foreign language or physics or any other real thing, then that's great. You want to study "leisure studies" or some crap like that, go take a 2-day seminar at the Holiday Inn somewhere, but don't expect the taxpayers of this state to subsidize that ridiculous crap."
Just out of curiosity... what does "amusements" entail?
The reason I ask is that my University (WVU) has been taking steps to provide alternatives to drinking on the weekends, which falls squarely into the category of amusements, but I think these types of "amusements" are important, especially at a state university in a small town that has a party school reputation.
But I strongly agree that "the customer is always right" mentality is bull hockey. Students are here to work and learn, and complaints that a program is "too hard" are ridiculous.
That's a good point, MK.
So far as I know, none of our amusements aim at that, though they may have some minor similar effect.
We have, e.g., a palatial...well, it isn't really a gym...it's more like a big, shiny health club, a zillion places to eat (shiny and new), whole offices devoted to "student life," and innumerable (non-intellectual) activities sponsored by the university. Now, I've got nothing against being in shape, having fun, doing non-academic/social stuff in college...nothing at all. But it's a matter of emphasis. That stuff threatens to drown out the real stuff.
Add to that student parties on the weekends...and, of course, Thursday night...and now, I'm told, regularly on Wednesday night...and classes start looking like little more than something interfering with students' drinking schedules.
Just out of curiosity, are there a lot of commuters at your school?
We have (and have always had) a huge student union with multiple restaurants, bowling alley, pool tables, arcade, giant TVs, and study rooms, but we also have a lot of students who drive at least half and hour to come to school, and students who live on one campus and take classes on another campus. So this is where they spend their time between classes.
But the University has also spent money upgrading the libraries, including adding study rooms, new computer facilities, remodeling buildings, adding wireless throughout campus, etc--in other words, they've spent a lot of money in recent years upgrading the educational facilities.
It's interesting, the difference that location makes on how these things are viewed. WVU is the focal point not just for the city, but for the surrounding area (much of which is rural). The events such as guest speakers and arts events are attended by as many community members as they are by students. And many of our students are expected to remain in the state (in fact, are encouraged to do so), so they habits they obtain here will affect the state for years to come.
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