Kelly in Kansas

Dean Dad gives insight into the world of academe here that has some specific applications to many of us. This irrational fear of moving forward still puzzles me if students are the center of what we are trying to accomplish.

Confessions of a Community College Dean: "The assumption they all started with is that the normal and natural state of things is that public universities devote themselves to bringing the classical academic disciplines to the masses, in return for which the masses gladly pony up support for ample tenure-track positions. Any deviation from this vision – whether because of students choosing other majors, universities employing adjuncts, proprietary colleges springing up, or even students starting at cc's and transferring – is clearly less desirable, and to be explained through references to Republicans, globalization, and the Iraq war. The way back to the golden age, they all agreed, was through an unspecified alliance of faculty, labor, and students, whose interests, it was assumed, naturally converge. The various speakers differed in their estimation of the likelihood of that actually happening, but the way forward, to them, was clear."

There is obviously severe disconnect from the business world that doesn't have the option of engaging the defense mechanism if it wants to survive.