The Disneyfication of a University
It&#x27;s part of the ongoing &quot;corporatization&quot; and &quot;MBA-ization&quot; of US colleges and universities.<p>GW&#x27;s attempt to institute a &quot;culture&quot; using techniques developed at Disney is just one of many possible examples, although I will admit it is a particularly easy one to mock. (Quoting the OP: &quot;The GW culture initiative can be summed up in two words: Mickey Mouse.&quot;)<p>Much of higher education in the US is now controlled by an administrative bureaucracy that thinks in terms of corporate strategy, corporate culture, financial incentives, business processes, and so on. These people don&#x27;t teach or conduct research, and in many cases have never taught or conducted research. They think of academics as &quot;human resources&quot; that must &quot;add value&quot; to the organization, i.e., produce benefits that can be readily measured.<p>At the top of this growing administrative apparatus are college and university presidents earning seven figures a year, but typically they also earn additional income from sitting on corporate and non-profit boards. Presidents tend to have illustrious academic pedigrees, but their involvement in day-to-day academic matters is at about the same level as the involvement of a burger-chain CEO in the operations of a single restaurant in the chain.<p>Below presidents, there are multiple layers of bureaucracy that have been growing for quite some time, with no slow-down in sight. According to federal figures, as of a few years ago, the number of non-academic administrative and professional employees at US colleges and universities <i>has more than doubled in the past quarter century, outpacing the growth in the number of students or faculty.</i>[a]<p>Perhaps the most salient example of this ever-expanding bureaucracy is Stanford&#x27;s shiny new 35-acre campus in Redwood City, which houses <i>only</i> non-academic administrative staff -- that is, people who work in departments with names like Finance, Planning, Facilities, Human Resources, Business Affairs, etc.[b]<p>Whether this corporatization proves a good or a bad thing in the long run, it remains to be seen. (I doubt it will prove to be a good thing.)<p>[a] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.necir.org&#x2F;2014&#x2F;02&#x2F;06&#x2F;new-analysis-shows-problematic-boom-in-higher-ed-administrators&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.necir.org&#x2F;2014&#x2F;02&#x2F;06&#x2F;new-analysis-shows-problema...</a><p>[b] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;redwoodcity.stanford.edu&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;redwoodcity.stanford.edu&#x2F;</a>