The modern university offers no stable employment for scholars, and ballooning, secure, long-term employment for a gigantic, top-heavy cohort of administrators who know little about scholarship and scholarly endeavors.
An easy solution: give stable jobs as administrators to exploited, precarious adjuncts. Now your administrators are intimately familiar with the challenges and mission of academia, and they can get health care to boot!
This could even result in an entirely new class of employee: the “service” professor, whose time follows an 80/20 service/teaching formula rather than the established teaching/research/service proportions of traditional faculty. Such employees might not be eligible for tenure, but would at least enjoy the protections and benefits that come along with standard employment contracts and would not be vulnerable to changes in course offerings: if they are not needed for teaching, they can continue on with their other responsibilities until such time as they are needed.
Universities should be employing surplus PhDs–as administrative staff.
[Dan/School of Doubt]
(via Skepchick)
(Image: DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY,
Jenakarthik, CC-BY-SA)
