i predicted to an academic friend (a real scholar who works part-time) that when the cuts come, as they must, she will one of the first to go, then the full time lecturers, then the readers, finally the professors, till in the end the only staff left will be the thousands of managers who have endless meetings about meeting targets and strategic planning and developmental incorporation of what not and thingy.
Because without managers, where would we be? My god, there would be CHAOS. People might teach without having targets and incentives and performance reviews and developmental scheduling. And obviously that's impossible.
I keep thinking it's possible these micro-managing bureaucrats are actually, in the long-run, helping education. Not because they worship Chemosh, god of efficiency and left hand of Moloch, and that running a university like a business will either work or achieve any kind of goal; but because they will push to so far an extreme as to trouble a revolution or epiphany about the nature of education.
In other words: if this form of bureaucracy is a backlash, then the backlash against this will be equal and opposite.
That's my thought, whenever i read stories of utterly ridiculous goings on - that if it's pushed far enough, it will implode from sheer inanity. i think that just as people (in the UK) are hiring private security firms to patrol their neighbourhoods, and going to mob bosses to enforce a primitive justice - because the police & courts won't do anything - so with education, when the official institutions are finally emptied out of any kind of content, alternatives will spring up, probably in an organic, hotch potch way. i know quite a few people who want their children educated but are well aware that school and university won't do it.
i predicted to an academic friend (a real scholar who works part-time) that when the cuts come, as they must, she will one of the first to go, then the full time lecturers, then the readers, finally the professors, till in the end the only staff left will be the thousands of managers who have endless meetings about meeting targets and strategic planning and developmental incorporation of what not and thingy.
ReplyDeleteBecause without managers, where would we be? My god, there would be CHAOS. People might teach without having targets and incentives and performance reviews and developmental scheduling. And obviously that's impossible.
I keep thinking it's possible these micro-managing bureaucrats are actually, in the long-run, helping education. Not because they worship Chemosh, god of efficiency and left hand of Moloch, and that running a university like a business will either work or achieve any kind of goal; but because they will push to so far an extreme as to trouble a revolution or epiphany about the nature of education.
ReplyDeleteIn other words: if this form of bureaucracy is a backlash, then the backlash against this will be equal and opposite.
That's my thought, whenever i read stories of utterly ridiculous goings on - that if it's pushed far enough, it will implode from sheer inanity. i think that just as people (in the UK) are hiring private security firms to patrol their neighbourhoods, and going to mob bosses to enforce a primitive justice - because the police & courts won't do anything - so with education, when the official institutions are finally emptied out of any kind of content, alternatives will spring up, probably in an organic, hotch potch way. i know quite a few people who want their children educated but are well aware that school and university won't do it.
ReplyDelete