Review of "Wannabe U: Inside the Corporate University."

The following review was submitted by a reader:



Wannabe U: Inside the Corporate University, Gaye Tuchman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009. 256 pages.

Those familiar with Gaye Tuchman’s books know her as an ethnomethodologist who has investigated news-making processes and also as the author of Edging Women Out, which describes how male authors essentially took over the domain of the Victorian novel from 1840-1900, which had originally been dominated by women.

Tuchman has now turned her analytic attentions to the phenomenon of the corporate university. The after-the-colon title of her new book could as well be Edging Professors Out. In any case, her book should be of special interest to readers of ASC Forum Blog, for even though she is writing of the pseudonymic “Wannabe University,” most of her observations could as well have been made at the University of Toledo.

She shows the application of a mindless marketing model where the university becomes entrained to a competitive battle to move up in the rankings. The all too familiar administrative mantras of transformative change, benchmarking, strategic planning, five year plans and selling the brand are chanted too at Wannabe. Also seen are the same trends for increased enrollment with decreased faculty size and deprofessionalization of faculty balanced by augmentation of administration.

Wannabe manifests many of the very same administrative antics as UT. Presidents and provosts and other high level administrators are seen as wandering careerists passing through on their ways to presumably more glorious destinations. The university is to these “outside administrators” a “stepping stone to elsewhere.” Professors do not envy these “corporate types,” Tuchman points out, but resent them. She even cites Robert Jackal on the primacy of public relations rather than substance in administrative behavior and the need to outrun administrative nonperformance and mistakes by soon taking another job. (Even her cites are generally impressive and thorough, the footnotes worth reading.)

What is perhaps most alarming—actually this reviewer finds it sad—is the apparent sameness of it all—how little creativity is shown in what amount to heavily administered attempts at conformity. For one of Tuchman’s most striking findings is this: Wannabe transforms by compliance and conformity with the middle of the road practices at similar universities. Far from achieving excellence, it achieves only a mediocrity startling for its sameness and lack of deviance from what administrators perceive as “best practice.” Administrators, far from being the creative problem solvers that they present themselves to be, function as low-grade plagiarists. Tuchman describes them as middle status conformists. So much for excellence! For how does one become distinctive through mindless imitation and managerial fads?

Also much like UT, we see cumulative pressure on faculty, unclear priorities, people who some perceive of as “failed academics” with poor publishing records elevated to positions of power, a drumming rhetoric of institutional transformation and market logic, ceaseless fake planning, increased centralization and a lack of transparency—as it is better to say nothing—wryly observes Tuchman—than to have to lie, which would be corporately unethical.

Chillingly, Tuchman notes that the university is one of the last Western institutions to be “de-churched.” In practice this means commodification, corporatization and increased serious state surveillance. The corporate university is “not to educate, but to train.”

Vo-Tech anyone?

Surgery is so much fun

For those of you who have been wondering (thanks mom) where I might have wondered off to and why I have not responded to the high level of administative name calling let me just say that typing with one hand is difficult. You may be aware that there are some gifts that just keep on giving. Two and one-half years ago I fell off a ladder. I broke my hand, my elbow and had a compression fracture in my back and wore a brace for several months. I also slammed my left shoulder and head into the asphalt. All in all it was a really fun time. Little did I know the fun would continue. This past December I awoke with a very sore left shoulder. My dear wife said, "take an aspirin it may be a heart attack." I finally had an MRI done and it was determined I had torn my rotator cuff. I put the operation off till between summer school and regular classes. The operation was May 12. I wish to thank Dr. Sohn at the Medical College for doing an excellennt job. It turned out I had torn the labrum. I also probably dislocated the shoulder when I fell and popped it back into place. I had bone spurs, torn cartiledge and lots of arthiritis. So thanks to Dr. Sohn I have been able to teach my on-line classes. Friends gave me a bell to use to summon my wife when my drink needed refreshing. I got to use it once and then the proctologist had to retrieve it. I am now ready to return to the fun and excitement that seems to have occured while I was otherwise detained. About that.

There is now a committee. Since there are 12 members and all female we should probably call them the disciplettes except that I'll get called all sorts of names if I suggest it so I won't. While I will note that had it been all male the response would have been ugly and ilmmediate, I frankly do not care what the makeup is. In fact, I do not think it is possible to get a "representative" committee of faculty. We are all independently nuts. What I do care about is transparancy and input. If we are going to land somewhere other than our present location it would be nice to have real input into that. We talk about sustainability around here all the time. How about some sustainable transparancy? I read that phrase somewhere recently and think it would be nice if applied here. It will be impossible to prove whether reorganization actually leads to more or better research. It will be impossible to prove if it leads to more or better programs or teaching. The problem, as we all know, is in the amount and use of resources. If you apply resources to a problem, its chances of improvement go up. If you do not apply resources to a problem its chances of improvement go down. And, that's only the beginning. Even if you apply resources you may not apply them properly. Do you want more faculty lines or more technology in the classroom. Presently, we seem intent on balancing the budget by laying off secretaries. That will have an impact on both students and faculty because they directly interact with each other. Choices are made daily at this institution in which we have no role. Had I been asked, I would have opted for keeping the secretaries and dumping the bonuses for a couple of big shots. You can keep a whole lot of folks for $200,000. We talk all the time about being a transformative force for the world but don't seem to care about the transformation that will now take place in the lives of those we have layed off. Gosh, it's good to be back.

Accreditation News Submitted by Reader

The following recommendation urges your participation in the UT accreditation process. Thank you, to its contributor:



Every bad idea of the Jacobs juggernaut just moves ahead propelled by cleverly orchestrated abuses of power in a climate of fear that is seven-tenths manufactured in order to force compliance onto the workforce. It is hard to watch the Administration trap unwary students and their parents into debt slavery through its degree-mill business-model machinations.

This blog has tried every which way to “get the truth out” and alter the course of the “Directions” Strategic Planning process which privatizes and secularizes our traditional public education mission and invites and valorizes greed, corruption and mismanagement at its institutional core. This summer provides the Jacobs maladministration with its last window of opportunity to push through its Bad Plan in the absence of democratic representation and participation by University of Toledo and Arts & Sciences students, faculty, staff and alumni. This push toward implementation is scalawag power politics and not in the spirit of shared governance. It is probably illegal. But this blog can only disseminate breaking news, invite comment on current trends, and recommend action to concerned parties.

Official Higher Education Commission accreditation of our rapidly changing UT academic enterprise under the Jacobs administration is on the near horizon. If you do not know what this means in terms of its significance and implications to students, faculty, staff and alumni, you should make an effort to learn quickly:

http://www.ncahlc.org/information-for-the-public/public-information.html

You may wonder how you and your concerned colleagues as “third parties” to the accreditation process can intervene in the accreditation process in a timely manner to ensure that your own voices will be heard loud and clear. Federal law provides for this:

http://www.ncahlc.org/information-for-the-public/third-party-comment.html

By submitting your comments online using this form your concerns expressed in your own words become part of the accreditation team’s official evaluation of academic achievement and trends here at UT and in the A&S College. Keep in mind that offered this opportunity no comment at all implies either your implicit vote of confidence in present academic conditions and trends on this campus or your endorsement of them.

Les Femmes Nikitas!

http://www.girlswithguns.org/long/nikita.htm

Will There Be Mergers? Soon?

"The Idea of the Presumption of "Yes"

Update on Dean's Ineffectual Efforts on Behalf of College

Read it yourself, but your sweet Bloggie interprets this as meaning--Now, now, shut up and go along with the program.



Date: Mon, 24 May 2010 16:37:04 -0400
From: "McClelland, Nina"
To: "Rouillard, Linda"
Cc: "Jacobs, Lloyd" ,
"Gaboury, John" ,
"Hymore, Diane"
Subject: RE: update on the library

Linda . . .

This confirms that I have:
1. Spoken with Dr. Gaboury regarding the library issues we
discussed. I learned that there was a committee involved in the
decisions reached and that the maps that were discarded were those - and
only those - that the Chair of the Department of Geography and Planning
identified as "no longer needed." Dr. Gaboury shared with me copies of
the related correspondence which I am attaching for your information;
and
2. Spoken with President Jacobs regarding the A&S Council Executive
Committee's request to add someone representing the Council to the
President's Committee on Strategic Organization. My sense was that,
because the committee is well along with its charge and the timeline
assigned was so short (30 days; i.e. report by June 9, 2010); and,
because the charge is institutional rather than College focused, he will
elect to continue with the Committee as originally constituted.
Please call or e-mail me if you have further questions.

Nina

Vibrancy?

The below message from the UT President was posted earlier by Bloggie as part of a larger message, so few seemed to have taken sufficient notice of its vague weirdness. Notice that a comment was posted too to an earlier post by a reader pertaining to this Strategic Reorganization. I have just these simple questions at this time, addressed to the BOT. Concerning your appointment of Lloyd Jacobs, isn't the honeymoon about over? How long are you going to let this guy going to spin these fuzzy yarns at the expense of the University?


Committee of Strategic Organization

Organizational structure can be an important tool for the attainment of strategic goals. Specifically, an organization that promotes interaction promotes creativity. Formal and informal interaction can promote vibrancy and excitement which in turn can result in new ideas and ways of thinking. For these reasons I have asked a group of faculty and administrators to continue the work begun during the recent trip to Arizona State University by thinking about our Organizational Structure. They will be benchmarking with other institutions as well as thinking creatively about Organization as Strategy. Ultimately, it is my hope that their deliberations will directly connect with the strategic planning process and constitute another implementation appendix for our recalibrated strategic plan?

The faculty and administrators involved are: Dr. Rosemary Haggett, Nina McClelland, Peg Traband, Patsy Komuniecki, Marcia King-Blandford, Jamie Barlowe, Beverly Schmoll, Miggy Hopkins, Ann Krause, Debra Davis, Charlene Czerniak, Penny Poplin Gosetti and Kaye Patten Wallace.





lj