Reflecting on academic labor from the other side

摘要: This essay explores the differences between university administrators and faculty members in the context of a challenging environment. While recognizing that there are significant differences in roles and perspectives, the author argues that the divide between faculty and administration, while predictable, need not be as wide nor seen as inherently resulting in conflict. The author suggests that collaboration and willingness to face change can be the only productive response to the many challenges facing higher education.The challenge to higher education is unquestioned. While the specific assaults and typically deleterious effects, as experienced within individual colleges or universities, may vary as a result of size, mission, or location, those of who labor within public and private institutions of higher education no doubt feel as we have entered a crossroads where our future viability is by no means ensured. Bill Readings’ The University in Ruins advances a critique of the conversion of the university to a quasi-(on the way to fully) corporate mentality and how this response to external pressures has not protected the university but may have helped erode our core values. There is much truth to this. Accrediting bodies do begin with propositions of total quality management or continuous quality improvement. As finances have become harder to come by, particularly as a result of the financial meltdown, concepts such as lean production (Balzer, 2010; Waterbury, 2011), the need to attend to revenue/cost ratios and to develop strategic revenue models, and forecasting revenue and enrollment have become the concern of both the financial and academic …