Administrators Have Seized the Ivory Tower
Ignoring the source bias, there is a real problem here, and its not confined to the USA. The strikes in the UK at the moment which cross the barrier from academic to general staff reflect the huge amount of &quot;suck it up&quot; logic coming out of the public sector university administration in the UK, and have added to it what can best be described as &quot;theft from the future&quot; in some proposed adjustments to the pension fund the staff contribute to, on bogus economic grounds.<p>In Australia, the same problems exist: process costs to provide tertiary education are extreme and focus on revenue raising (Australia sells tertiary education worldwide but especially in the Asia-Pacific footprint) at a detriment in the core mission.<p>The commonality in both the UK and Australia is underlying venality inherent in the system: Universities are now seen as an industrial component of the knowledge industry sector. We used to fund overseas study under what was called &quot;the columbo plan&quot; which led to a cohort of PhD in the region with significant affection and goodwill to Australia politically, strategically, and we provided tertiary education to Australians for a grant. Now, we sell degrees to anyone and levy a future tax on the loan we give Australians to do it, and we don&#x27;t care about the strategic goals of engagement in region as much as the revenue.<p>Not surprisingly, degree courses are suffering, and research is suffering, and building a career in Tertiary education in the UK, in Australia and in the US now demands outcomes which go to KPI more than a passion for knowledge.<p>The problem is the farms of KPI paperwork pushers. And the administration which decided to go to a semi-industrial KPI model of education delivery.<p>(I left tertiary education 20+ years ago. I was last employed in a general staff role, I worked in the UK and Australia in more benign times in grant funded research and systems management. What I understand above is from what family and friends who work in the sector tell me, happy to be corrected if people currently inside the space think I have this wrong)