THE INEXORABILITY OF LOGIC AND CONTENT.

Years ago, I learned about administrative bloat in a humorous way.  The acting chairman of my department reported that the ratio of full-time-equivalent students to faculty had increased in the department, because the number of faculty members had decreased.  He then noted that the number of vice presidents had increased at the same time, and in a quantity sufficient to lower the ratio of students to vice presidents.

To some extent, the perception of administrative bloat varies by discipline and worldview.  It's more likely to be pointed out by critics of the radical vision that captivates postmodernists, culture-studies True Believers, social constructionists, deconstructionists, and careerist conscience-cowboys.

And yes, the self-styled progressives and deconstructionists are more than a little bit responsible for the lowering of higher education, whether by treating standards as an oppressive social construct, or by admitting Distressed Material and calling it Access.  Their efforts, however, are still subject to market tests much stricter than any grading curve, and for which the absence of detailed rubrics is not grounds for appeal.

Because economists, irrespective of political orientation, understand market tests, readers are likely to encounter more criticism of excessive management (cf. Work is What We Do Between Meetings) on economics weblogs.  (Serendipitous moment!)

And yet, in the latest iteration of Historiann's Tony Grafton symposium, a colleague who has gone into administration considers the case for the flamboyant exit.

Many of us down in the trenches at Provincial State U are going to counselors now. Our jobs are driving us crazy but we can’t afford to walk away. The psych professionals tell us that our anger and sadness are entirely rational responses to the corporatization of our university. “Just try not to yell so much,” they say, “try to hold on until you can retire.”  I think the counselors are right, what ails us at my large state university does have its roots in our transformation into a public corporate organization but it is not just that. What ails us are the class divisions associated with hierarchical ordering of people and the performance-metrics drive to value quantities that are not about learning.

There's a passage somewhere in the lengthy John Galt speech about the worker of the mind suffering in silence that might also apply.  Or, leaving either the Marxian or the Randian analysis aside, there's an echo.

Access, assessment, remediation, retention, subprime.  Meanwhile striving students who lack the finances or the social connections to get into an institution where some of their classmates might be smart and motivated, even if the curriculum is coreless or trendy, end up in the academic gulags.

Dig into the comments, where the siteowner comes up with a capital idea.

I find myself fantasizing about the day a prestigious public university (Berkeley, Michigan, or in my wildest dreams, Texas) says, “[****] this assessment [$***]. We assess our students all the time with ‘instruments’ that we call grades” If a really prestigious public uni did that–and dared people to call their bluffs and not send their children there, thus proving their value in the vaunted marketplace, which should shut up conservative state legislators–then it might give lower-ranked public unis the stones to get the assessment monkey off of our backs.

Texas might be a good place to start, as the faculty pushback against reducing everyone to an entry in a spreadsheet has begun.

Open markets are environments within which powerful and appraising evolutionary forces are at work.  (Borrowed from John S. McGee).  Incentives matter.