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An Accumulation of Administration

Steven Brint

in Two Cheers for Higher Education

This chapter analyzes how, as colleges and universities expanded and became more important features of the American institutional landscape, those who occupied senior managerial positions separated ... More

This chapter analyzes how, as colleges and universities expanded and became more important features of the American institutional landscape, those who occupied senior managerial positions separated themselves more completely from the faculty. They developed features of a professionalized occupation—including separate training programs and formal knowledge bases—albeit one that remained influenced by traditions of shared governance. This separation led to many complaints by faculty members about the rise of a soulless corporate model of university administration. Professionalized management did not weaken the steering capacity of universities—quite the opposite. Yet bottom-line considerations did often intrude in ways that were counterproductive to the educational mission of the institutions.Less

The Other Chicago School: The School of Social Service Administration

Anya Jabour

in Sophonisba Breckinridge: Championing Women's Activism in Modern America

Chapter 5 details Breckinridge’s collaboration with Edith Abbott at the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration, exploring the pair’s distinctive approach to the ... More

Chapter 5 details Breckinridge’s collaboration with Edith Abbott at the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration, exploring the pair’s distinctive approach to the professionalization of social work and their consistent emphasis on public welfare programs. Building on their previous collaboration at the private Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy, Breckinridge and Abbott worked in tandem to build the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration and to make it the premier school of social work in the United States. This chapter examines the two women’s distinctive approach to social work, basing social welfare policy on social science research and emphasizing public programs rather than individual responsibility.Less

Academic Activism: Social Science and Social Reform in Progressive-Era Chicago

Anya Jabour

in Sophonisba Breckinridge: Championing Women's Activism in Modern America

Chapter 4 examines Breckinridge’s participation in social reform in the Progressive era. In conjunction with Jane Addams and other women reformers associated with Hull House, Breckinridge advocated ... More

Chapter 4 examines Breckinridge’s participation in social reform in the Progressive era. In conjunction with Jane Addams and other women reformers associated with Hull House, Breckinridge advocated for a wide range of reforms and formulated the doctrine of a national minimum standard of living that would inform her later participation in the creation of the welfare state. She also fused her participation in social reform circles with her leadership in the emerging social work profession by using social science as the basis for social reform. Through her teaching and research first at the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy and then at the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration, Breckinridge established a niche for herself in Progressive-era reform that relied upon her professional status and her scholarly expertise to legitimize political protest and advance social reform.Less

How University Administrators View Ethnic Minority Students

Yu Haibo

in Minority Education in China: Balancing Unity and Diversity in an Era of Critical Pluralism

In her chapter, Yu Haibo explores the attitudes of Han university administrators, and stresses the importance of listening to and surveying mainstream attitudes on ethnic minorities and minority ... More

In her chapter, Yu Haibo explores the attitudes of Han university administrators, and stresses the importance of listening to and surveying mainstream attitudes on ethnic minorities and minority education. Based on in-depth interviews with twenty university administrator in 2010 and 2011, Yu demonstrates how a range of opinions co-exists among Han educators, including discriminatory perceptions of minorities as slow, violent and/or backward. She calls for further education, but also stresses that the minorities themselves have an important role to play in leading by example, allowing their own efforts to shine through with the help of their teachers and other educators.Less

Money for Science: Never Enough

in Science for Sale: The Perils, Rewards, and Delusions of Campus Capitalism

This chapter discusses the insatiable need of American universities for money. Virtually all universities describe themselves as hard-pressed financially, even as they ingest colossal sums from a ... More

This chapter discusses the insatiable need of American universities for money. Virtually all universities describe themselves as hard-pressed financially, even as they ingest colossal sums from a variety of sources, accumulate huge endowments, and operate on enormous budgets. Examples are Harvard University which received a total of $29.2 billion in 2006 and the University of Michigan with $4.9 billion. This chapter suggests that the pursuit of money is at the heart of modern university administration and university presidents are judged by their fundraising prowess.Less

Administrative Interlude

Stanley Fish

in Save the World on Your Own Time

But you can’t do it in a vacuum. And although academics would be reluctant to admit it, the conditions that make what they do possible are established and maintained by administrators. When I was a ... More

But you can’t do it in a vacuum. And although academics would be reluctant to admit it, the conditions that make what they do possible are established and maintained by administrators. When I was a dean, the question I was most often asked by faculty members was, “Why do administrators make so much more money than we do?” The answer I gave was simple: administrators work harder, they have more work to do, and they actually do it. At the end of my tenure as dean, I spoke to some administrators who had been on the job for a short enough time to be able still to remember what it was like to be a faculty member and what thoughts they had then about the work they did now. One said that she had come to realize how narcissistic academics are: an academic, she mused, is focused entirely on the intellectual stock market and watches its rises and falls with an anxious and selfregarding eye. As an academic, you’re trying to get ahead; as an administrator, you’re trying “to make things happen for other people”; you’re “not advancing your own profile, but advancing the institution, and you’re more service oriented.” A second new administrator reported that he finds faculty members “unbelievably parochial, selfish, and selfindulgent.” They believe that their time is their own even when someone else is paying for it. They say things like “I don’t get paid for the summer.” They believe that they deserve everything and that if they are ever denied anything, it could only be because an evil administrator has committed a great injustice. Although they are employees of the university (and in public universities, of the state), they consider themselves independent contractors engaged fitfully in free-lance piecework. They have no idea of how comfortable a life they lead. Neither, said a third administrator recently up from the ranks, do they have any idea of how the university operates. They seem proud of their parochialism and boast of their inability to access the many systems that hold the enterprise together. Less

Developing a Nature Rx Program on a College Campus

Rakow Donald

in Nature Rx: Improving College-Student Mental Health

The chapter traces the history of how physicians began prescribing time in nature. Steps in developing a campus-based Nature Rx program include: organizing a committed group with broad representation ... More

The chapter traces the history of how physicians began prescribing time in nature. Steps in developing a campus-based Nature Rx program include: organizing a committed group with broad representation across campus, securing support among top administrators, inventorying available green spaces, engaging students, intentionally partnering with health and counseling services, developing easily usable apps and/or websites, cultivating relationships with relevant academic programs, developing an approach to effectively evaluating the program, identifying challenges, and finally modelling the desired behavior around time in nature.Less

Going Global

C. T. McIntire

in Herbert Butterfield: Historian as Dissenter

This chapter describes how Butterfield's love for historical thought nourished his imagination after his vice-chancellorship. Thinking in general about history could go on in his head while he was ... More

This chapter describes how Butterfield's love for historical thought nourished his imagination after his vice-chancellorship. Thinking in general about history could go on in his head while he was doing something else, even university administration. Subtly, without explicit resolve, he occupied himself more and more with the history of historiography. His thinking became comparative, and expanded to cover the whole globe. In spite of his exaltation of “technical history,” he had neither the time nor the interest to resume the minutely detailed and seemingly unending research that his method demanded. He had already demonstrated that general historical thinking could produce far-reaching effects, with the promise of long-lasting results. In the history of historiography, he found new purpose, new inspiration, and when he finally gave himself again to the subject, new excitement in his work.Less