A Modest Proposal

by Michael Brian Schiffer, UA Professor of Anthropology

The administration at the UA is fast developing a credibility problem. Lip service is given to faculty governance but in practice the administration pursues short-term political agendas, utterly lacking scholarly integrity, that are oblivious to the views of rank-and-file teaching faculty. Sweeping the Kihlstrom committee report under the rug is one example; dictating a core curriculum and its content is another. If the administration is to retain at least nominal faculty support, it must take concrete steps as soon as possible to demonstrate its willingness to share power. I recommend the following actions:

(1) Recognize that the University, one of american society's most successful institutions, is not a business.

a. Get rid of CORE, PAIP, and SLRP, and other business fads that have produced only trivial results while destroying the morale of the campus community.

b. Shift the balance of power from bean counters to people who uphold academic values.

c. Abandon the autocratic, high-handed, and top-down management style that has become this administration's trademark.

d. Take academic departments off death row; derive any necessary savings from cuts in administration.

(2) Respect the rights of faculty to participate meaningfully in university governance.

a. Work closely with the Faculty Senate and within the established committee system; do not create ad hoc committees to deal with academic affairs.

b. Follow, in a timely manner, the recommendations of faculty committees.

c. Stop scapegoating the faculty for the university's problems.

(3) Engage the University community--particulary faculty, current students and recent graduates--in frank and wide-ranging discussions on the ills of undergraduate education.

a. Immediately put on hold the development of the core curriculum.

b. furnish real data--not anecdotes, not Chicken-Little tales--for diagnosing the actual problems of undergraduate education.

c. Working with the Faculty Senate, prioritize the problems, set forth responsive solutions, and implement them.

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