Invisible Adjunct

"Reconciling Corporate and Academic Cultures": Let's Bowl!

"To the undiscerning eye of the vulgar, Philip appeared a monarch no less powerful than Hadrian or Augustus had formerly been. The form was still the same, but the animating health and vigour were fled. The industry of the people was discouraged and exhausted by a long series of oppression. The discipline of the legions, which alone, after the extinction of every other virtue, had propped the greatness of the state, was corrupted by the ambition, or relaxed by the weakness, of the emperors...[and] the fairest provinces were left exposed to the rapaciousness or ambition of the barbarians, who soon discovered the decline of the Roman empire."

-- Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, I: vii

Here's an article that should strike fear in the hearts of be of interest to humanities scholars everywhere:

"Reconciling Corporate and Academic Cultures," by Ann S. Ferren, Professor of Educational Studies and Vice President for Academic Affairs, William R. Kennan, Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Communication, and Stephen H. Lerch, Professor of Sociology and Associate Vice President for Academic Enrichment, all of Radford University (Peer Review, Spring 2001, 3.3). So it's a couple of years old (ancient history in blog time!), but has recently been circulated via Tomorrow's Professor. The article begins as follows:

While Dilbert makes us chuckle at corporate fads run amok and Doonesbury provokes knowing smiles with its satiric jabs at 'Walden University,' few faculty or administrators find much to laugh about when corporate values collide with academic traditions on their own campuses. These two very different cultures-one favoring competition, strategy, and outcomes, and the other prizing independence, reflection, and process-often seem to be locked in a bitter struggle to determine the character of higher education.

This opening can be viewed as a declaration of good faith. We know it's hard, the authors suggest, but we're on your side and we feel your pain.

The authors note, quite rightly, I think, that "this tension is bound eventually to resolve itself, one way or another." And they see two available options: "Either the relationship between corporate and academic cultures will decay to the point where institutional gridlock becomes the norm, or colleges and universities will find creative ways to bring those cultures into partnership."

Fair enough. They have identified a problem, to which they purport to offer a solution. At least they are attempting something constructive -- unlike the faculty who stand in as the embodiment of "academic values" in the article:

Yet, given their increasing exclusion from decision making, it is no wonder that many faculty retreat from campus reforms, become sideline critics, assume a skeptical posture, and demand to know, 'What's in it for me?'

Again: we understand, they want to insist, we feel your pain.

The skeptical posture of a sideline critic? Well, mea culpa -- and thanks for reading my blog. By way of apology, I could point that I am absolutely and completely excluded from decision-making. And I don't think I'm very guilty (I'm certainly not the worst offender, at any rate) of asking, "What's in it for me?" (I never have demanded to know, though perhaps I should have?). Though my not asking is not because I'm so virtuous, I will hasten to admit, but rather because I am not, or am no longer, so stupid: I don't ask because I now know the answer.

I can't help noticing that they work in a reference to the academic labor problem as just one of many examples of the collision between academic and corporate values: "Faculty-led budget allocation committees frequently bemoan the loss of teaching positions to this administrative growth,..." So the loss of teaching positions to administrative growth is explicitly and no doubt quite correctly associated here with the "corporate" framework of values. This is stated quite matter-of-factly and perfunctorily, it is just cited in passing as one of many examples of the collision. There is no hand-wringing over this fact, no sense of grave concern over the possibility that this loss of teaching positions might undermine one of the most fundamental purposes of the university. Well, it would certainly undermine one of the most fundamental purposes of the university as defined by academic values. But perhaps it wouldn't undermine, perhaps it would even support, the fundamental purposes of the university as defined by corporate values?

(They are at the gate. And they've got us surrounded.

Well, that's not fair. And not very PC, either.

But it's what I thought (though it's not the only thing I thought) when I read this article. The barbarians are at the gate. They have discovered the decline of the empire, and now they will sack and pillage, and then they will build something on the ruins, and they will call this new thing by the name of the old and not without some justification, for the old will be contained within, and will even serve as the foundations for, the new.

But this is unfair, this is unfounded. Worse still: this is cheesey. This is a cheesey History Book Club analogy. Rome and its decline, the barbarian hordes, the Latin roots of medieval Christendom...Enough. This is altogether too grandiose a scheme to describe a scuffle -- or, if you wish, a series of scuffles -- between faculty and administrators. Please crank it down a notch or two and be reasonable.

Ok, ok. I will try to be reasonable. But not before asking: will anyone preserve the manuscripts? I am told not to worry, and I really am trying not to, but I've heard about the museums in Iraq, and then there are those cutbacks in New Jersey and Florida, and can I just say, if I promise not to mention the term barbarian, that I am genuinely worried about the manuscripts?).

Anyway, is it just me? or is there just the hint of a suggestion that the faculty who "bemoan" the loss of teaching positions are being just a little bit unreasonable? So let us be reasonable. Let us read the proposal and learn how to reconcile corporate and academic cultures, and then set ourselves to the task of reconcilation.

If you have spent any amount of time at the university over the past decade or so, you will have heard some of the buzz surrounding the idea of social capital. You will realize that if social capital is not the key to all mythologies, it is nevertheless the key to the resolution of a great many problems. And you will not be surprised when I tell you that the key to a reconcilation between corporate and academic cultures is found in the notion of social capital, specifically as put forth by Robert Putnam in his famous "Bowling Alone" article (Journal of Democracy 6.1 January 1995; available online through Project Muse but access requires subscription), which our authors summarize as follows:

The political scientist Robert Putnam (1995) has pointed to a weakening of relationships in all areas of our society. He notes, for example, that more people bowl than ever before, but fewer participate on teams. Similarly, fewer and fewer people hold memberships in local service organizations, like the PTA or Rotary Club. Much of the difficulty, he concludes, lies in our lack of interest in connecting with others who inhabit a shared community.

Well, social capital sounds good. It does sound like the key to a reconciliation. The "social" resonates of the values and priorities of that earlier academic culture, what Timothy Burke has nicely summarized as "the sacred, artisanal, guild character of the academy," (scroll to comments) while the "capital" gestures neatly toward the values and priorities of the newer corporate culture. Put the two words together, and you have a very appealing synthesis: the social works to humanize the capital, while the capital keeps the social to a bottom line.

But what exactly might it mean?

In order to "help solidify interdepartmental collaborative relationships," explain the authors,

some institutions have borrowed strategies from the corporate sector, such as 'continuous quality improvement' and 'working teams.' Thus, small groups of faculty are getting together in and across departments to talk about teaching and learning. While these discussions are intended primarily to result in curricular changes to improve program delivery, the process is also designed to establish ongoing interdepartmental linkages...

... Another common approach to building social capital involves the evaluation process. Although faculty have often criticized an emphasis on accountability as being too 'corporate,' some new strategies are both suitable to the academy and seem to promote a greater sense of community. In one model, individual faculty are evaluated not merely on their individual performance but also on their contributions to fulfilling the missions of their units and their institutions.

Hmm...See, I'm not convinced that under the older regime -- that of an academic culture -- faculty were not committed to what is now called "quality improvement" and were not evaluated "on their contributions to fulfilling the missions of their units and their institutions." "Units" is new, of course, as is "program delivery," but I actually think that the above description of how the corporate enriches the academic is a pretty good description of just what an older and non-corporate model sought to achieve: you're not just a free agent, it said, you belong to a department and a college, and your role is help further the mission (i.e., the teaching mission) that lies at the very heart of the enterprise. So what's up with recasting this as something new that the corporate can add to the academic?

It seems to me that the authors are not arguing for a reconcilation between these two different sets of values: the corporates gives a little here, the academic gives a little there. Rather, they are suggesting that proponents of academic values reconcile themselves to the inevitable replacement of academic by corporate values. Since you have no real capital (not the kind that talks, the kind that really matters), you have actually and in fact very little power. So stop bowling alone. Put on your corporate-issued bowling shirt and join the team!

I guess I sound a little hard on the authors of this article. I'm sure they are correct to suggest that side-line scepticism is ultimately self-defeating. And I'll acknowledge that they are probably correct to imply that the growth of the corporate is pretty much is inevitable. I'm just not convinced, frankly, that the academic and the corporate can be reconciled in the manner that they propose.

So maybe the answer is to say, f*** the academic, let's go corporate all the way (but then hope for a new Charlemagne... )?

Posted by Invisible Adjunct at May 15, 2003 10:38 PM