Why This is a Gettysburg Address Moment for Higher Education

[WillyT]

Why This is a Gettysburg Address Moment for Higher Education
Cathy N. Davidson - NowYouSeeIt
NOVEMBER 19, 2011

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Where are the university leaders, today, who will take the moral high ground and side sympathetically with the rising tide of students who are Occupying Higher Ed and protesting the current assault against higher ed and the subsequent rising costs of tuition and fees? All of us–and university presidents more than anyone else–know the state of higher ed today demands critical attention. Yet, instead of working with the protesting students, too many university leaders are calling in police to “maintain order” or to preserve “safety” or “security” or “sanitation.” But the police don’t preserve order but, instead, enact brutality incommensurate with minor crimes such as camping over night on university property. There are real choices that need to be made about how to address the Occupy protests. We’re at a turning point, a Gettysburg Address moment, where moral authority and moral force needs to be eloquently articulated before this historical moment devolves into violence and polarization. Our students are not wrong in the content of their protests. Calling the police does not address their issues; as we have seen too often, it can foster violence –with an ever-more imminent potential for tragedy.

The issues students are protesting today are not just student issues. They are wide social issues that hit students with particular force and emphasis. These issues include the radical economic disparity of rich and poor that leaves a depleted middle class, a compromised future of productive possibility for work, escalating educational costs and decline support for public education, and the irrelevance of much of the current educational system (K-20) for the 21st century that students today face.

I do not believe there is an administrator in America today who could not rattle off these issues. So why, when our students are peacefully sitting in the quads of universities all over America, expressing these serious concerns, are so many universities reacting by sending in the police? Equally important, why are some other universities willing to listen to the protestors–often with very good, “teachable” results from which everyone learns? New School, Union Theological Seminary, Duke and other universities are realizing that our students have valid issues and, instead of sending in the police, we are trying, collectively, to address this historical moment in a positive, forceful way. What makes the difference? What can we learn from universities where administrators are reaching out to students? And how can we hold them up as models and examples? We live in difficult times that require all of us to listen, learn, and lead together.

First, let’s look at the reason for calling the police in the first place...

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More: http://www.cathydavidson.com/2011/11/why-this-is-a-gettysburg-address-moment-for-higher-education/

:kick:

[NYC_SKP]

1. What is absolutely CRAZY to me is that violence took place at "peaceful" UC Berkeley and Davis...

Which just goes to show that just because the students and professors and general culture of an institution might be progressive, the institution itself might be anything BUT!

It's disgusting.

:mad:

[dynasaw]

2. Why Should This Be Surprising?

For the last two decades universities have increasingly been modeling themselves after corporations.

"Between 1975 and 2008, the number of full-time faculty in the CSU system rose from 11,614 to 12,019 -- or about 3.5%
-- while the number of administrators rose from 3,800 to 12,183, or about 221%.
The ratio of full-time faculty to administrators thus went from three-to-one to less than one-to-one."

The sort of people who become administrators are generally the careerists with fat salaries who have generally lost sight of the educational mandate
of higher education and are not very different from the 1% who run the banks and financial institutions.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/08/crazy_priorities_in_californias_colleges.html#ixzz1eOdUVdu7

[BadgerKid]

3. That could explain a few things.

Support staff has been increasingly cut back.
Administrative overhead of research grants isn't getting any smaller.
Universities seem to be / have been starting scaled-down benefits for new hires.

[raccoon]

4. They started scaling back benes for new hires in some places a long time ago.

In SC they have.

Also, Support staff has been increasingly cut back.