http://www.freep.com/article/20140209/NEWS06/302090081/michigan-college-university-hiring-employees
On Sun, Feb 9, 2014 at 11:36 AM, socialismorbarbarism < socialismorbarbarism at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The Detroit Free Press did a study of Michigan universities and found,
> surprise surprise, that there has been a disproportionate jump in
> administrators, a drop in faculty, and an increased ratio of part-time to
> full-time faculty. But I was struck by the very clear, open ideological
> stance of leading higher ed business flack-"officials" as to why this is
> happening. Here's the quote:
>
> "The increase in administrative and professional staff is largely due to
> three areas -- career services, administrating grants and working to turn
> university research into businesses, said Michael Boulus, the executive
> director of the Presidents Council, State Universities of Michigan.
>
> 'Professors are not always the best person to take an idea into a
> marketplace, or even get it ready for a private-sector company to grab and
> use,' he wrote in an e-mail to the Free Press. 'Universities have been
> adding staff to help bring those ideas to market and turn them into jobs.
>
> 'All of this is to say universities have changed to meet the needs of
> their customers and the state. Adding administrators is the smart way to do
> that.'"
>
> Look, I know critiques of the business-oriented nature of US higher
> education go back to Veblen (at least), but this gross, open restructuring
> of universities as service extensions of capital is historically
> new--certainly in degree, and I suspect in kind.
>