activists and administrators

Conor Friedersdorf on “an under-appreciated tension in the approach of today’s student activists, who simultaneously express outrage at the bad behavior of administrative bureaucracies — and fight to expand their size and power.” So students join with administrators in the belief that the fix for pretty much everything on college campuses today is: Hire more administrators.

Faculty have always been odd, but increasingly we’re the odd people out in the current university, with our belief in “free inquiry” and “critical thinking” and “intellectual curiosity” and crap like that. Which, I suppose, is why our numbers are decreasing while those of administrators continue to skyrocket. Our ideas of what college is for have been quite thoroughly repudiated by the market.

So, verdict rendered. But: beware the corporate monster.