Yesterday I stumbled across a paper by Blanca Missé and James Martel of San Francisco State University with the title For Democratic Governance of Universities: The Case for Administrative Abolition.
The abstract is:
In this essay, we argue for administrative abolition, that is, the elimination of all college presidents, provosts, deans and other top level administrators who we argue form a parasitical group that was developed over time in order to exercise both political and financial control over faculty, staff and students. We examine the way that the idea of “shared governance” disguises the de facto dictatorship of administration over faculty self-governance, explore the history of how this power grab took place and furthermore explore alternative forms of faculty self-management in both US history and abroad (especially in Latin America).
Theory & Event, vol. 27 no. 1, 2024, p. 5-29. Project MUSE, https://doi.org/10.1353/tae.2024.a917791.
You can find the whole paper here. I encourage everyone working in a university to read it.
I’m sure this article will ring true to many academics, besides myself, who dream of a time when universities direct their resources to teaching and research rather than squandering it on the bloated apparatus of management that hinders the very activities it should be supporting.
In the Dark 