The dysfunctional university: A well-known secret slips out
A Professor's Cry
June 18, 2012
By Scott Jaschik
Inside Higher Ed
On Thursday David Dudley did something that surprised his colleagues at Georgia Southern University. He sent all of them an open letter in which he described -- in detail -- the extent of dysfunction he sees at the university.
He described an administration disconnected from the faculty, with oversized ambitions that could move the institution away from its teaching mission. He described a faculty governance system willing to adopt the wrong resolutions just to make the administration pay attention. And he described professors who have spent their careers at the university (in November he'll have been there 23 years; he currently serves as chair of literature and philosophy) who feel besieged by one idea after another from administrators destined to be short-termers.
While his colleagues were a little stunned when they opened their e-mail, it wasn't because they disagreed. "I was so happy because someone stood up and said this out loud," said Eric Nelson, one professor. "We all have these sentiments, but no one has said so like this."
Dudley's open letter seems not only to have become the talk of faculty at his institution, but elsewhere too. (It was forwarded to Inside Higher Ed by someone unaffiliated with the campus.) As people have forwarded it to colleagues elsewhere, frequently using the phrase "speaking truth to power," many are saying that Dudley has captured many of the things that are wrong in higher education today, especially at the non-flagship, non-elite public institutions that most students attend.
Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/06/18/senior-professors-mass-e-mail-leads-introspection#ixzz1yL6T25uk
June 18, 2012
By Scott Jaschik
Inside Higher Ed
On Thursday David Dudley did something that surprised his colleagues at Georgia Southern University. He sent all of them an open letter in which he described -- in detail -- the extent of dysfunction he sees at the university.
He described an administration disconnected from the faculty, with oversized ambitions that could move the institution away from its teaching mission. He described a faculty governance system willing to adopt the wrong resolutions just to make the administration pay attention. And he described professors who have spent their careers at the university (in November he'll have been there 23 years; he currently serves as chair of literature and philosophy) who feel besieged by one idea after another from administrators destined to be short-termers.
While his colleagues were a little stunned when they opened their e-mail, it wasn't because they disagreed. "I was so happy because someone stood up and said this out loud," said Eric Nelson, one professor. "We all have these sentiments, but no one has said so like this."
Dudley's open letter seems not only to have become the talk of faculty at his institution, but elsewhere too. (It was forwarded to Inside Higher Ed by someone unaffiliated with the campus.) As people have forwarded it to colleagues elsewhere, frequently using the phrase "speaking truth to power," many are saying that Dudley has captured many of the things that are wrong in higher education today, especially at the non-flagship, non-elite public institutions that most students attend.
Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/06/18/senior-professors-mass-e-mail-leads-introspection#ixzz1yL6T25uk
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