​I was reading Peter Stokes' article "How colleges can do better at helping students get jobs" in the Chronicle of Higher Education and was struck by a random thought.  This post is not a reflection (pun intended) of the quality or purpose of the article, simply the path my mind took while reading it.  And an upfront acknowledgement that I am going to anthropomorphize the heck out of higher education in this post (something I always tell students to avoid).  ***Also this is not as in-depth or critically examined as something I would normally post - because sometimes you just need to let your brain by creative.  

Let's bump this comparison to a different level... each mirror on the ball is in a unique place, provides a different perspective, serves a different function, and yet adds to the overall impression.  So I started thinking about all of the different aspects of higher ed, how we see them (and how they see us), and how they all fit together to form a grander illusion.   

Employers are voicing a concern that college graduates are not adequately prepared to step into the workplace with both domain specific and broadly applicable skills.  This begs the question: is the primary purpose of higher education to produce the next workforce or is it a place to promote the value of knowledge and thinking?  Corporate partnerships are not a new phenomenon, but there is a piece of me that worries (yes I am voicing an opinion) that the emphasis will be placed on workforce preparation.  Might it go so far as to see higher ed institutions align themselves with corporations in an effort to produce students who are specifically trained and endorsed for a certain type of career.  I imagine things like the University of Google (not affiliated with the urban dictionary version of UG), Exxon University, or the state Wal-Mart school.  

A reflection on higher education is so much more than simply seeing what is there.  It's a process of knowing who we are, what we want, what we don't want, accepting our flaws, dreaming of our future, seeing the parts of ourselves we choose to ignore or are afraid to face, and attempting to see ourselves through the eyes of others.  

What is the priority of a higher education institution?  To deliver on its mission and promise to students or to improve its credit rating?  Certainly an institutions ability to make good on its debts is incredibly important, but not by taking money from students, cutting jobs, alienating staff, and economically threatening faculty.  

University presidents are certainly faced with tough decisions and each of them walk in facing a plethora of existing problems.  LIU's president, Kimberly Cline, was faced with the challenge of handling a credit rating that was close to reaching junk status.  Her reaction, however, is largely viewed as an attempt to "corporatize and monetize the university."  Just after her appointment, hundreds of administrative support positions were vacated or laid-off.  Now her focus is on faculty.  Negotiations with the Long island University Faculty Federation and four other Unions, including secretarial, carpenters, engineers and maintenance, as well as janitorial are all going downhill.  When the administration presented its last offer - before the membership even had an opportunity to vote on it - they also informed them that the faculty would be locked out in anticipation of a strike.  The school immediately "cut healthcare, salary, and access to email and students."  

Where qualified faculty once stood, students will now find administrators in some of those positions.  The school's chief legal counsel will be instructing Hatha Yoga and one of the deans, in his late 70s, may be taking over ballet classes.  Students are rightfully up in arms about forking over huge tuition prices for what amounts to an absurd facsimile of the education they were promised.  Their concerns and complaints are more than valid.  I have the deepest sympathies for those graduate students who are no longer allowed to work with the advisers they have come to know and trust.  I can only imagine the impact this might have on their scholarly career paths.  

More importantly, what does this say about the future of higher education?  This reeks of an abuse of power by an administrator(s) who believe the bottom line rests in a financial statement rather than with the quality of education provided.  This lockout is most likely a move to push tenured faculty out and eventually replace them with newer professors working on the lower end of the pay scale and with less bargaining power.  We need the AAUP and AFT to take stronger action towards supporting collective bargaining. The real test will be to see how this affects accreditation - it probably won't in the long run, but withholding that stamp of approval until the school is staffed with fully qualified faculty could go a long way towards making a statement about what standards higher education is most meant to promote.  

The University of Chicago recently sent a welcome letter to the incoming freshmen class asserting their  "commitment to freedom of inquiry and expression."  Evidently this comes in the form of taking a firm stance against the creation of safe spaces or the issuing of trigger warnings as unnecessary means for protecting students from ideas that may counter their current beliefs.  My own academic and personal growth would never have occurred had I not been exposed to challenging ideas.  I've faced significant discomfort both in classrooms and on campuses.  These experiences forced me to develop the courage to stand against opposing positions, to build counter-arguments based on facts, and to accept that sometimes my personal stance on an issue was based on misconceptions.  An institution of higher education that does not push its students beyond their comfort zone is doing them a disservice.  However....and this is important....that does not mean there is no call for trigger warnings prior to certain discussions or the temporary use of safe space in developing the groundwork for brave space. As an educator, I need to challenge my students to step outside of their own experiences.  I want the freedom to introduce controversial issues and explore unpopular topics.    As an individual, I have no desire to do those things in a way that puts the well-being of any student at risk.  Should I feel the need to issue a trigger warning prior to a conversation, that is a professional pedagogical decision - one that should not leave me open to being sanctioned by my institution.  

Students can, and likely will, thrive in an environment that forces them to contend with the ugliness and opposition that exists in our real world.  Higher education should no longer be about protecting students from those people, issues, and ideas that threaten them.  Rather, it needs to be a place for preparing them to respond in a critical, informed, and civilized manner.  My greater worry about a policy or position such as the one demonstrated at the University of Chicago is for the physical and emotional safety of marginalized students.  Voicing opposing ideas under the umbrella of scholarship has the potential to lead to confrontation, verbal abuse, and targeted acts of violence outside of the classroom.  There can be a price for speaking freely and without censorship.  Institutions who promote that ideal must also take every possible step to prevent the potential harm that accompanies it.  

The deeper question, what we need to be thinking about is why this proclamation was made.  Why now?  What is the controversy that led, not only to this letter being written, but to the charge of the committee tasked with discussing it?  Are the calls for sensitivity to certain topics or protests against specific speakers really challenging the freedom of speech or are they threatening the status-quo of higher education?  

The AFTERMATH of the Chicago letter.  Read more about how others reacted, both those who were cheering in support of throwing out "political correctness" and those who were outraged at what appeared to be a direct attack on solid pedagogical practices.  

In the 2015 article, The Professoriate Reconsidered, Adrianna Kezar and Elizabeth Holcombe report some interesting findings about new models of faculty work culled from a survey conducted by the Delphi Project on the Changing Faculty and Student Success.  Among the many findings included was a moderate interest and strong agreement across groups about "creativity contracts."  This idea, pulled from Ernest Boyer's work in Scholarship Reconsidered, essentially promotes individualized plans of action that allow faculty members to participate in a variety of scholarly roles throughout their career in academia.  

As higher education allows itself to grow and change in order to fit the ever expanding needs of a globalized society, it seems unreasonable that the roles of the professoriate remain static.  As I listen to my peers discuss the possibilities of a future in academia, it seems one constant concern is how they will find their own place within the existing system.  My immediate reaction to them, and to myself, is that we will not.  We are the bodies of change, the new breath in a stale system, the next round of trailblazers.  We had the advantage of growing up and becoming educated in a technologically advanced age that has widened our understanding of the world around us and challenged us to explore our place within it.  As we move forward, we need to quit trying to find a place to fit in and to be brave enough to make a space for ourselves.  

Let us take all of our interests, our personalities, our motivations, our quirks, our passions, our insecurities, and our determination and create our own roles.  We need to be done conforming and begin the process of reforming.  To those who will question us, tell us we must pay our dues, or fear the change we embody I suggest they examine the foundations of their opinions.  We have earned our degrees, learned our content, and discovered ourselves.   We may not interact with our students the way you do - but our pedagogical innovations support student learning.  We may present our scholarship in unique ways - but our desire is to distribute our knowledge to a broader audience.  We may not dress, sound, or look like you - but our fashion sense, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, political views, languages, accents, or uniqueness are a reflection of the diverse world we occupy.

​When we join you as colleagues, our goal is to bring everything we have to our students, departments, institutions, and communities.  Our hearts are in education and we desire to give the best of ourselves for your service and to continuously develop new strengths to contribute to the greater good.  Many of us view our careers not as pre-planned trips, but rather as a journey unfolding before us.  We respect the achievements of those who traveled the well-worn road of the traditional professoriate and ask that they guide us as we each forge our own unique path.