I intended a more pointed discussion of Bowen and Tobin’s Locus of Authority and their take on how faculty’s participation in the governance of higher education is at risk.  I started reading their book last Fall, before the reading list assigned it, because of what is happening at my small private university in Long Island.  Given the topic, perhaps my distraction is an appropriate tangent, especially since the former President of this institution is this week’s guest speaker.

Monday night, the Faculty Senate held its election.  The Chair of Faculty Senate, arguably the highest ranked and the voice of the “Faculty,” is retiring next Fall as part of an offering  to clear some of the faculty lines (for younger scholars or contingent faculty … depends on how dark you want to get).  Before I continue, permit me one more tangent.  Adelphi University is notorious in that twenty or so years ago, its President and Board of Trustees were ousted by the faculty after evidence of improprieties surfaced.  (When you start working there, you hear the story at least twice day for the first three months — it’s a greeting and a cautionary tale.) A new board was established, and after an interim President, and Matthew Goldstein vacated the Presidency for the Chancellory of CUNY, Robert Scott became its President.  He pulled Adelphi out of the fiscal ruin, restored its standing, enrollment, and began an ambitious campus renewal project.  All happy endings, except in one aspect.  The faculty dining room was abolished.  There is no faculty real estate on campus outside of the faculty’s outside/lab/department.  So for shy of twenty years, faculty have had no place to meet, collaborate, eat, collect.  At one point, it was a bar and dining room and there are rumors of scholars drinking and dancing and being “The Faculty.”  Now nothing.

It struck me as odd when I started there two years ago, one and half years after Scott handed the reins to the new President, Christine Riordan.   And I found it also odd that I was introducing faculty to each other, faculty who had taught on campus for more than ten years.  They were strangers to each other.   I also found it odd that the faculty weren’t aware that they were “The Faculty.”  They acted like adjuncts, commuting in to teach and then quickly dashing off for some other pressing call.  They sat in meetings quietly while administrators reported out.  They endure (present tense) the most insulting finance processes and labor under unhelpful or unsupportive sponsored research protocols.  Untenured faculty engaged in the majority of institutional service, because they must (for tenure) show evidence of service.  Adelphi eats its young.  But more disturbing from my stand point was that they weren’t respected, not by the Provost or academic staff, or the operational administration.  They have been infantilized.

Fast forward to Monday night.  Senate is generally a collection of older faculty, mostly men, and first and second year untenured faculty, some random lecturers and visiting faculty because the colleges send them.  Old Men and Children on its Front Lines.  So our Chair, who led the revolt to unseat the unscrupulous President and Board twenty years ago, is stepping down.  The call for nominees to replace him and the senate executive committee were met with silence.  Finally one nominee was announced.  She is a lecturer in our General Studies program.  She was unanimously elected.  She, without a Dean to shield her, without any security is now tasked with negotiating on behalf of the faculty, against an increasingly autocratic administration, and oh, I forgot  to add that she is also very young and a faculty of color.  Courage is obvious her middle name.  Courage or naïveté.  It doesn’t matter.  She is doomed to fail, in spite of her courage or intelligence or efforts.  Tenure exists for a reason.  But step back with me for a second and question, what happened to the faculty?

Bowen and Tobin in their first chapters talk about the history of faculty authority in shared governance.  When faculty were transient in their careers and institutional commitment, they held no power.  They were not regarded as professionals.  When there was a strong president and/or board, the faculty didn’t hold equal power.  All these conditions exist in the present day at Adelphi.  But I harken back to real estate problem..  When the faculty cannot convene, cannot connect, they cannot organize, cannot deliberate, they have no voice.  Given that this network of scholars is under threat by technology, by the siloing between departments (though I find the students see significant interplay and overlap in disciplines), I wonder if the faculty of Adelphi will ever regain their place at the table.

I am not debating any of the content in the Fabricant and Brier chapter.  I am dog-earring it and probably citing it in a future paper.  But here are a few of the thoughts that interacting with their detailed summary, at least in my head.

At a 2009 UC Berkeley Teach In, Ananya Roy called online education a subprime education (shortly after the 2008 financial crisis).  She was responding to severe budgets across the California public higher education system, and a recent proposal for an eleventh campus that would be strictly online.  Her analogy (starts at 4:57 in the video:  https://youtu.be/y75Ansf6vDM) is a good framework.  Online affords those who previously denied access to education the opportunity to participate in transformative experience, but without the privileges prime users enjoy.  I have seen the quality of the online offerings at megauniversities such as Southern New Hampshire and Governors State University through online educational services vendors vying for our tuition dollars.  The interactivity is low — a few quizzes after video or pdf readings; a forum; a poorly paid adjunct or facilitator to respond to your threads; assignments that never go anywhere; an automated email that reminds you that your coursework is waiting.  This is the opportunity to rack up educational debt without really receiving an asset.  Subprime.

For administrators this is the new scalable option.  Its the lower level 500+ student courses without limitation of the physical plant, ie. the auditorium only holds 800.  It is concerning that evidence is piling up that this is not a magic bullet (https://nyti.ms/2FVrDo0), and yet more universities are exploring ways to become the next ASU. I have tried to refocus our teaching and learning efforts on supporting faculty regardless of modality … and yet at least twice a week I am having a “programs that can go online” discussion.  And the word I can always count on in that conversation is “scalability.”  Close your eyes and imagine the administrative rage when the tenured faculty teaching online wanted to discuss enrollment caps for their courses, wanted to talk about building community in their cohorts.  Imagine how ill tempered the lot got when the topic of quality online surfaced, or when one of the faculty wanted to open the course and share materials (the university owns half of the IP for these courses).  Don’t fool yourself, this isn’t about broadening  access.  This is about increasing tuition revenue.

Here is the part that gets me.  We shouldn’t throw out the baby with the bath water.  I firmly believe in OER, in making content available.  I believe that learning how to teach online makes you a better teacher in the classroom — and it’s also one of the ways I can backfill in a system that doesn’t teach teachers how to teach.  I also believe that digital materials can enhance content and encourage self directed learning.  Gamification, yep, it makes learning fun.  This is all great educational technology … but switching out a classroom for a virtual one with an electronic syllabus, videos and a quiz isn’t going to transform lives.  And it will not absolve our municipalities and administrators from defunding public education, defunding education period.

Here are a couple of fun backlashes to that scalable approach to online (also known as money for nothing):

George Washington U alumni sue university over quality of online program

http://money.com/money/4271027/corinthian-colleges-billion-dollar-judgment/

The video series from the 2009 UCB Teach In is definitely worth watching: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL53D65B03FF28A6C7.

It’s Spring Break this week at my private university, and I am in Florida with hordes of other Spring Breakers (more on that in a sec).  On my morning walk, I pass one of many new high raise buildings going up on the Intercoastal, facing water, replacing a rag tag of historic two-story apartments and hotels constructed in 1920’s or 40’s.  At one particular site, I was stuck by the banners on the chained link fence surrounding this site, and by the marketing pitch for future condominiums in this building.  Featured are water front mansions, white modern minimalist interiors, and a price point clearly “for the privileged few.”  Obviously I am mashing up this marketing/real estate disparity with Lavin’s Right Versus Privilege, and the latest headlines about the college admissions scandal ensnaring the very rich.  More on point:

While I have always viewed the Open Admission years as a golden time at CUNY, Lavin’s study represents a stark reality check to my idealism.  “Moreover, in conformity with the perspective that sees education as helping to preserve ethnic and class advantages, white students appear to have enjoyed considerable advantages at CUNY under open admission … the fact remains that open admission did not eradicate ethnic differences in the initial positioning of students — positions that carry different potential for students’ educational and occupational life chances.” (Lanvin, p 277)  The largest populations to enroll in the senior colleges and complete (within 5 years) during the Open Admission years were Jewish and Catholic students.  Students of color predominantly enrolled in the two-year colleges, and given this start may not have completed with that window (at least in equal numbers to white classmates).  And while it may be argued that this small gain had significant outcomes (in fact Lavin goes on to argue this point in his last book, Passing the Torch), it wasn’t the leveled educational field I mythologized.

Lavin breaks the bad news as such, ” higher education will adapt to open admissions by absorbing the new students in a lower track (namely, community-college vocational programs) and thereby will preserve class and ethnic privilege in the face of changes purporting to further equality of opportunity” (p 37)  Now, there were gains for students of color.  Significant numbers of new students entered the CUNY system, who may not have aspired to higher education before open admission.  And the five year window may not been the unit of measure, given that these new students may have had to work while attending college or needed time in the system to more effectively prepare for their coursework at senior colleges.

Two thoughts, one from my own experience financing my college experiences, and the last from the enduring conflict between a practical education and a liberal one (DuBois vs. Washington, land grant vs. colonial colleges, President Michael Sorrell of Paul Quinn College vs. the Ivy league).  I could also ramble on about the “value” of an institution’s diploma and the faculty perception of academic rigor as access broadens, but I am probably going to dive more deeply into that topic on my paper.  (Lavin addresses this in a very interesting discussion about minority students dictating the culture versus the faculty. And this theme came up in various ways during the Pathways initiative; it certainly has peppered my two experiences with core/general education reform.)

One.  In a throw away line on page 279, Lavin points out that minority students were more likely to walk into class late, turn in assignments after their due dates, and they were more likely to present a more vocation orientation to higher education.  Yes.  That’s right.  That’s me.  That’s my husband, my brother, my best friend.  Those are my students.  The opportunity to attend solely to one’s university studies is reserved ‘for a privileged few.’  It certainly has never been available to me.  I have always worked because the scholarship, or the income, or the responsibilities of my family, my situation, demanded that I balance personal growth with economic realities.  My parents couldn’t have sacrificed family resources (great in their budget, meager compared to actual costs) without ensuring that I could be employed immediately and return on their investment by supporting my siblings as they pursued their educational destinies.  (Only the youngest attended as a full time student, without working a full-time job).  I imagine the 1970 through 1975 cohorts of minority students also worked until the last minute before class time, and probably through playtime, sleep time, and homework time.  I definitely see it in the students of color at my university, seventy percent of them working 20 hours or more per week.  This data wasn’t collected for the open admission cohorts.

Which brings me to the second point, the practical versus liberal argument.  We touched on this early on, and I don’t know that I can add much to the argument other than to point out that there are new voices hotly debating old themes.  Recently I invited President Michael Sorrell to keynote a conference I organized titled, Equity beyond Access.  I have been following his career for the last couple years, since he spoke alongside President Lee Bollinger on the future of affirmative action and most recently keynoted at SXSW EDU.  He has been named to multiple lists of innovative people in higher education.  At Paul Quinn College, an HBCU in Dalls, 90% of his students are Pell recipients, almost all of them work.  He reduced tuition, courses use OER, partnered with corporations in Dallas, turned his football field into a kale farm, and made curricular and structural changes to their academic calendar.  His students work two days a week, and the curriculum reflects this — classes revolve around their work, a service learning/internship/integrated learning model that he calls the “Urban Work College.”  The fall semester ends before Thanksgiving.  Funds to fly home and then back for two weeks aren’t necessarily an option for his students’ families.  But what struck me is his stance that the Ivy league has nothing to teach us about higher education.  Modeling higher education after Harvard makes no sense.  The vast majority of future learners are going to look and act a lot more like his students than the privileged few who attend the uber-selective, highly ranked institutions that populate national headlines.  I tend to agree with him on that point.

So what are my takeaways from the reading?  I am concerned about how we are measuring student success, what are our assumptions, what value do we assign to college readiness or to standards of rigor or prestige, and how we determine who has access to this major vector for social mobility.  Lavin asked many of those questions in Passing the Torch by looking at the women (most of the minority students during open admissions were older, and women) who may not have graduated in five years, and what educational and occupational outcomes (for themselves and future generations) did indeed come from their time at CUNY from 1970-1975.

On a final note, this is my first Spring Break.  Seriously.  I have always taken the week as opportunity to work (while I was an undergraduate and graduate student) or to play catch up on a quiet campus as an administrator in higher ed.  I have taken other times off to travel to warm places during winter months, but this is the first time my vacation has coincided with the national spring break.  Part of me is regretting take time off, with school and work deadlines looming, and part of me is bewildered that the kids wandering around in same gender six packs, are not equally stressed about not playing catch up, choosing to spend time between beach, bar and pool.  Not to belabor the point, but … its “for a Privileged Few.”

On first pass, Laurence Veysey’s Emergence of the American University feels very reminiscent, almost nostalgic.  Reformations in higher education today echo earlier issues of curriculum, access, rigor, administration versus faculty versus students.  First published in 1965, it looks back at post-secondary’s first refiguring, after the first Morrill act, and the way universities approached broadening access beyond the clergy to the professions and merchant classes. And I do want to talk some about the irony then and now, of America’s dislike of a learned class, wealthy elites diminishing the power of education while sending their sons through the system, there is something else that is profoundly provoking me to the point of distraction.

About halfway through the book, page 271, Veysey  addresses diversity on college campus after the 1890.  In retrospect he says, “the undergraduate population of the turn of the century seems remarkably homogeneous: a parade of Anglo-Saxon names and pale, freshly scrubbed faces.”  He goes to qualify this statement by pointing out that in fifty years, there was indeed a “new and democratic” diversity on campus, Catholic, Jews and a few “Negroes.” And one might be forgiven if one assumes that this is entirely male since most of what Veysey’s discusses in his text thus far is male-centric.  But no, turning the page, we discover, very briefly in one sentence, that forty-percent of the undergraduate population is female. 40%.  Forty percent.  Wow.  I am interested.

And disappointed. Because this is nearly the sum total of the attention Veysey devotes to forty-percent of students on campus.   He drops a mirage of a mention later when he again recounts the various personas on campus: “Rivalry, diversity, and incongruity paraded themselves at every level.  Boys who still played with marbles, men who hid in libraries, and worldly executives all belonged to the same academic organization.  The laboratory, the football stadium, and the dignified presidential suite each claimed a certain legitimacy as the center of activities.  The chaplain, the co-ed tacitly seeking a husband, the professor of agriculture.… ”(Veysey 332).  I am quoting this lengthy treatment because I get a pretty good picture of the men on campus, who they are, what they are concerned with.  But apparently forty-percent of the campus is solely there to prospect for marriage partners.  Really?  Feels dismissive.  So at this point, I am flipping the book over and thumbing the index.  Diversity must mean something entirely different today than it did in 1965.  Gender seems significant enough of topic to discuss in light of the reforms that have rocked universities since their inception.  But Veysey devotes maybe 50 words total to women scholars, ten mentions and even that number’s misleading.  He dismisses the “sexual revolution” in a pat sentence.  Nothing to see here folks, move along. He counted “sex” and “sexual” as mentions of “co-education.”  But women in classrooms or as faculty or when they were first admitted.  Nope.  Nothing.  Not important.

Next index search: students of color.  Six mentions. Here’s my favorite:  “Harvard’s idea is diversity.”  Then Veysey spends two sentences on Harvard’s enrollment of Blacks.  Page 288 if you are reading along.  Who were these rare students?  That’s not what we are going to discuss.  What was worthy of mentioning?  Southerners avoiding Harvard and that Yale would never admit students of color.  But not much more on who these students were or how they impacted high education.  Maybe they didn’t.  Who knows? Not Veysey’s readers.

I get it, its 1965 writing about 1900.  I find it interesting that diversity is thoroughly explored in regards to higher education on white social-economic social mobility, but not much beyond. Veysey discusses diversity by not addressing diversity.  I’ll like to talk through this misfire because it’s slowing me down from discussing or reflecting on the rest of the book.  And there’s some truly fascinating unpacking to be had here.