Uncategorized | Freund Humanus

November 10, 2017

Life in the Administered University

A branch of the dean’s office sends out information about an intiative to enhance student experience. I have a proposal. But I also have a question about it.

I phone around, no-one seems able to deal with my question or send me to the right office. It keeps coming back to the key person x. I phone x’s office, leave a message. Send an e-mail, each time explaining what I want to do and asking a very specific question. No response. I just tried calling again, and reached the assistant y.
Me: can I talk with x, I have a question about the initiative?
Y: Sorry, she’s in a meeting.
Me: when can I talk to her?
Y: Ooo, that will be difficult, her schedule is really full, so it will be a while.
Me: what does “a while” mean?
Y: the 23rd of November.
Me: that’s 13 days from now. It’s the day before the deadline for applications. It’s too late. And I just need 5 minutes on the phone.
Y: hmmmm, I’m not sure
Me: We’re talking about a 5 minute conversation on the phone with a very specific question.
Y: hmmm, I’m just checking your e-mails to her so I can see how I would have to prep her. She might need to get more information before talking to you.
Me: why don’t you just schedule a conversation, I’ll ask her my question and then she can decide whether she needs more information or not.
Y: well, let me see if that will work. It’s going to be difficult, because her portfolio is so full.
Me: I know this isn’t your concern, but perhaps you could pass on my frustration when you speak with her. The university spends more and more money on administration, which comes up with these initiatives, and then they don’t have the time to answer questions about the initiatives they have come up with, posed by the people who are going to make the initiatives happen or not.
Y: hmmm

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April 27, 2012

Who will pay for education?

Strange, isn’t it, that the concept of free education for all seems so outrageous. How would we pay for it? Richard Fidler, writing for the Socialist Project, recently made some suggestions. He writes:

There is, of course, no truth whatever in claims that there is not enough money in current government budgets to support free education at all levels. The point was made quite compellingly in a statement by Cap sur l’indépendance, a network of groups agitating for an independent Quebec. It contrasted the projected revenues from the fee hike, $250-million, with the following documented unnecessary expenditures, among others:

1. Annual cost of Canadian monarchy: $49-million (Monarchist League of Canada, 2011)
2. Harper’s financing of oil companies since 2009: $3.5-billion (Suzuki Foundation, 2012)
3. Tax evasion of the five biggest Canadian banks (1993-2007): $16-billion (Lauzon and Hasbani, 2008)
4. Canada’s climate debt under Kyoto as of December 31, 2012: $19-billion (Le Devoir)
5. Canadian military expenditures (2007-08): $490-billion (Canada First Defence Strategy, 2008)

In fact, a single F-35 fighter plane ($482-million, according to the Auditor-General) would largely suffice to fund the re-investment in post-secondary education that Premier Jean Charest wants students to pay.

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April 21, 2012

Montreal fees fight

Here at the University of Toronto you’d hardly know there is a fees war raging in this country. For 10 weeks now, students in Montreal have been on the streets, protesting the Provincial government’s decision to increase student fees by an effective 75%, implemented over the next 5 years. The semester is in chaos. More than 165,000 students are boycotting classes. There have been street battles in Montreal. And students eager to get to exams are taking legal action.

It’s interesting to observe the responses to this in the media and online. Generally, there is not too much sympathy with the students. Reasons tend to be: the students enjoy some of the lowest fees in North America; they are privleged anyway; they are obstructing the hardworking students who want to write exams and get on with their degrees; the state already spends a lot of money subsidizing higher education; university professors in Canada earn such high wages that universities need to charge high fees to pay them.

These are all true, at least to a certain extent, but they miss the point. The continual failure of the state to support higher education is part of the general erosion of the middle class throughout the developed world. This is why you should care about and support the Quebec fees fight, unless of course, you are a member of the 1% and happy to see higher education move gradually into the domain of the wealthy. For the resot of us, it’s self-defeating to want anything but free education for all.

Having taught in universities in Apartheid South Africa, I don’t want to see higher education reserved for the wealthy. I remember how frustrating it was knowing that my students were warming the chairs of the lecture halls just because they were white. I knew that the townships were full of kids who would do much better if only they were given equal opportunity to acquire a higher education. This is where we are going in the neo-liberal vision of education. Access to higher education will be reserved for the privileged, regardless of talent.

Think about it. It is in the interest of the state to ensure that all members of society develop their skills as far as their potential will permit. This is why taxpayers should be happy to ensure the next generation can study at university free of charge. I’m on the students’ side. Let’s keep fighting fees until education is free for all.

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April 16, 2012

Freedom University

Secret universities in the United States of America, in response to the suppression of academic freedom.

In October 2010, the Georgia Board of Regents decided to effectively ban students without documented immigration status from attending 5 of the 61 Universities and Technical College Systems of Georgia. This has been enforced since the fall of 2011 through a series of admissions provisions. Georgia was following the example of South Carolina in voluntarily policing immigration laws. Of the 310,000 students in the Georgia system, only 501 fall into the status that would have them excluded. And yet, the regents saw fit to take this remarkable step.

In response, Freedom University was founded. It is a university run by volunteer professors, convening in a secret location somewhere in Georgia. It’s mission statement reads:

Founded in 2011, Freedom University is a volunteer-driven organization that provides rigorous, college-level instruction to all academically qualified students regardless of their immigration status. Our faculty are fully committed to providing our students with college courses equivalent to those taught at the state’s most selective universities. We believe that all Georgians have an equal right to a quality education. Separate and unequal access to higher education contravenes this country’s most cherished principles of equality and justice for all.

The first Freedom University course, American Civilization I, is in session right now.

Learn more about Freedom University on Democracy Now!

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April 5, 2012

My Two Jobs

As I start this blog, you need to know that I have two day jobs.

My academic job pays me a salary. Taxpayer money (more about that in a later post). It requires me to devote 2/5 of my time to teaching, 2/5 to research, and 1/5 to administration. If I work a 40 hour week (I don’t; I work longer hours than that), then I spend 16 hours supervising graduate students, preparing classes, teaching them, and grading assignments; 16 hours are taken up with research, which in my case means reading scholarly books and papers, evaluating them, and writing my own papers and books, as well as organizing conferences, editorial work, archival and library work. And then there are 8 hours for administration.

Then there’s my other job. I call it “E-Mail Traffic Controller.” It’s high-stress. I sit at the console watching the messages arrive like blips on the radar screen. One of them sails in gently, lands in my inbox, lights flashing, and I steer it into my To-Do folder, where it waits patiently. Another one carries a load of illicit pharmaceuticals and I steer it off the runway where it crashes and burns. But here comes another one, all warning signals blaring. Gotta deal with it right away. OK, meanwhile this other one can wait in the inbox. I’ll deal with it soon. Another one headed for To-Do. And so on. This can go on all day, if I let it.

I have to choose. Some days I decide to return to Academia, and just let those messages glide, swerve and crash, all waiting for me to witness it the next day, and pick up the pieces, if I can.

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