As the pandemic continues, college administrators shore up their own ranks
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CounterCurrent: COVID-19 Spurs Rule by Bureaucracy
As the pandemic continues, college administrators shore up their own ranks
CounterCurrent is the National Association of Scholars’ weekly newsletter, bringing you the biggest issues in academia and our responses to them.
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Category: COVID-19; Reading Time: ~2 minutes
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** Featured Article - University Administrators’ Pandemic Power Grab by Neetu Arnold ([link removed][UNIQID])
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Colleges and universities have just about made their way through the first semester of Corona U., and it’s hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel. The “second wave” predicted by health experts over the summer seems to be coming, meaning more lockdowns and school closures. At the beginning of the crisis, many institutions hoped to fully reopen for the spring 2021 semester. Now, it looks like it may not be until next fall, or even next spring in some regions, before we have anything resembling “college as usual.”
We all know about “remote” and “hybrid learning,” which continues to cause consternation ([link removed][UNIQID]) for instructors and students alike. And we know that higher ed’s hourly employees, including dining and facilities workers, have borne the brunt ([link removed][UNIQID]) of the sector’s layoffs. But what has university leadership been up to, besides building their arsenals for the anti-racism arms race ([link removed][UNIQID]) ?
It seems that college and university administrators have kept busy lining their own pockets at the expense of faculty, students, and “non-essential” staff (read: the most essential staff). In other words, the exact opposite of what we recommended they do in our April report Critical Care: Policy Recommendations to Restore American Higher Education after the 2020 Coronavirus Shutdown ([link removed][UNIQID]) .
Our recommendations urged institutions to cut administrative overhead by at least 50% in order to survive this crisis. Instead, administrators have multiplied like rabbits and, in many cases, padded their own salaries, while laying off faculty ([link removed][UNIQID]) and keeping costs high ([link removed][UNIQID]) for students. Something’s deeply wrong with this picture. Expendable bureaucrats are treated as essential while all others pay the price.
In this week’s featured article ([link removed][UNIQID]) , National Association of Scholars Research Associate Neetu Arnold examines how college administrators are “hollowing out the middle” of academia by taking power away from faculty and placing it into their own hands, diminishing the tradition of shared governance that has until recently been the modus operandi of American higher education. Neetu analyzes this administrative power struggle at the employee level, the departmental level, and the institutional level.
She concludes that, at all three levels, institutions have accelerated consolidation and centralization of power, ensuring that administrators are left unchecked when shaping the future of higher education. She writes,
[T]he actions taken by universities aren’t temporary aberrations; they foreshadow the things to come.
Universities, and particularly university executives, are taking advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic to defenestrate full-time and tenured faculty from their positions of influence in making decisions about the future of the university. …
The pursuit of truth and the passing of the torch of civilization have given way to the efficient production of corporate- and government-funded research materials, and the maintenance and growth of a top-heavy bureaucratic machine.
This should be deeply alarming for all who care about the state of higher education—indeed, for all who want there to be higher education for their children and grandchildren. Administrators need to be checked, lest they run their institutions into the ground. Sadly, that’s already begun.
Until next week.
John David
Communications Associate
National Association of Scholars
Read More ([link removed][UNIQID])
For more on COVID-19 and American higher education:
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July 10, 2020
** Don’t Bail Out Colleges. Help Students Instead. ([link removed][UNIQID])
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Andrew Gillen
To make it out of COVID-19 alive, colleges and universities need to 1) support students directly and 2) allow alternative educational providers to enter the market.
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July 07, 2020
** Curing Higher Ed in the Wake of COVID-19 ([link removed][UNIQID])
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Adam Ellwanger
The current model of higher education is utterly dysfunctional. COVID-19 has given us an unprecedented opportunity to make it work again.
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May 22, 2020
** The Failure of the New Class under the Test of COVID-19 ([link removed][UNIQID])
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Alexander Riley
When the SARS-CoV-2 virus first appeared, many experts understated the threat. Now these same experts have coalesced around the most hyperbolic disease modeling.
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April 18, 2020
** Critical Care ([link removed][UNIQID])
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National Association of Scholars
The coronavirus pandemic has inflicted enormous financial damage on colleges and universities and the cost is still growing. This report is a plan to guide the federal response to these unprecedented disruptions facing higher education in the midst of the pandemic.
** About the NAS
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The National Association of Scholars, founded in 1987, emboldens reasoned scholarship and propels civil debate. We’re the leading organization of scholars and citizens committed to higher education as the catalyst of American freedom.
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