Lifting up mine eyes - finally
“Seasoned sessional” and valued friend and former professor Allison Dube has written an article for the University of Calgary’s Gauntlet. In it, he condemns many of the changes that have reshaped academia in the last two decades, changes in privatization and commercialization, as well as an increasing emphasis on self-interest over public benefit, that have accelerated since the start of the century.
Seven years here have confirmed two hypotheses. First, as Baker Miller states, “the characteristics… perhaps most essential to human beings are the very characteristics that are specifically dysfunctional for success in the world as it is.” That, in spite of fostering the development of others through their teaching, sessional instructors receive neither a livable salary nor security shows this endeavor is indeed “specifically dysfunctional” for success–certainly at the U of C.
Second, traits such as self-enhancement have flourished. Worse, an overt concern for appearances over reality has clouded our ability to see this. To quote myself (as I ask my students, is there a more pretentious phrase on earth than “I quote myself?”), now it is “only the appearance of women’s strengths that is permitted and it is only because these capacities have the blessing of a profit that even this appearance is rendered acceptable.” Two parts of this relate to academe. Research is increasingly about the self, specifically career advancement. Also, as an institution fosters these aspects and thus serves itself above all, it increasingly invokes a covering facade of “we do it all for you,” the students.
It details a story about infectious and parasitic corporatism in our educational institutions, an attention and resource transfer away from long-term public benefit research toward short-term commercialization focus, and the introduction of aggressive psychological marketing to convince stakeholders these changes are positive.
As but a few examples at the University of Calgary, the much-maligned “PeopleSoft Student Centre” is being rebranded the “Student Centre” to address widespread negative assocation with the “PeopleSoft problems” that papers like the Gauntlet have detailed at length. Or the continual ground breaking ceremonies that have become the bold “Mission Accomplished” banner on the aircraft carrier that is our University’s Capital Plan.
Worthwhile reading for those who either lived through those years or worry about the state of postsecondary education in the Canada now possessed by Voltaire’s Bastards.
Lifting up mine eyes–finally - Allison Dube
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