Doug,
A curious aspect of this is that the drive to
"assessment," a recent and truly appalling fad
among academic administrators, is much worse
in public universities than among private. It is
ironic that the private ones may actually be at
least slightly more immune to some of the worst
of these pressures than the public ones, where
every right wing jackass thinks he has the right
to tell us what we should be doing.
Thus, our asshole of a governor pays off the
Christian Right by appointing people to the Board
of Visitors who think they can fool with the curriculum.
No courses on gay and lesbian literature, naughty children.
BTW, along with pay, hiring, and travel, another thing
frozen here by our ambitious governor ("Look at me, Dubya!"),
is construction. On top of that he has cut contributions to
our retirement funds. We are looking at outright nominal
pay decreases, and there is not even a recession going on,
unless you listen too hard to Dubya.
Barkley Rosser
-----Original Message-----
From: Doug Henwood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Monday, March 05, 2001 7:14 PM
Subject: [PEN-L:8686] Re: Re: Re: farewell to academe
>Christian Gregory wrote:
>
>>What is different about the most recent phase of university
corporatization
>>is its willingness to reduce everything to the market's stupidest forms of
>>calculation
>
>Seems to me that the American university, as it evolved from the late
>19th century until about 20 years ago, was characterized by a partial
>autonomy from what Keynes called the Benthamite contraption; sure
>professors were ultimately in the pay of the bourgeoisie and operated
>within the strictures of bourgeois discourse, but there were several
>layers between the prof and the boss's accountants. Now you've got
>people trying to measure teacher productivity.
>
>Doug
>
>
