Crisis-as-Opportunity as national education policy

Readers of the XChange may remember my post from March 25, 2010 in which I discussed PASSHE’s move to join other colleges and universities in using the current economic “crisis” to fundamentally restructure American higher education. This same dynamic is evident in a recent Inside Higher Education article, “A Critique of the Cuts.”  The article reports on a widely circulating video of professor of classical and Near East Studies, Eva von Dassow’s address to the University of Minnesota Board of Regents about continued budget cuts at the university (video below).  I won’t summarize her remarks as you can watch it below.

I do want to point out, however, that the issues that von Dassow identifies are not so different from the ones we hear coming from Kutztown’s administration or the Chancellor’s office at PASSHE.  Here’s a short excerpt from the article:

Specifically, she said that “those programs engaged in the production of knowledge that is readily turned into the money are the targets of investment while the rest are to be downsized into an efficient credit and degree factory.” She cited liberal arts programs losing faculty slots while there is money for new biomedical research professors (taking care to say that biomedical research is indeed valuable and that she was questioning only the idea that other programs aren’t worthy based on their lack of financial payoff).

Here is the video:

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Punxsutawney Spirit – Union for IUP workers hints at strike against Aramark

And the struggle against Aramark begins.  Right on time.

Punxsutawney Spirit – Union for IUP workers hints at strike against ..Aramark.

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on “assembling the choir”

For a while now I’ve been wanting to write a post responding to several emails and comments I’ve received about this blog.  The specific emails and comments I have in mind have to do with concerns that the XChange is simply “preaching to the choir.”  In all but a couple of cases, these concerns were expressed by people who are invested in building a stronger union, who want to push our local and state union to be more proactive, and who are, by their own admission, part of the choir.

Anyone who has been involved in progressive politics, activism, or labor organizing is undoubtedly familiar with some version of this line of argument: progressives/ activists/ organizers/etc. spend way too much time talking to each other an not enough time trying convince those who are not already on our side.  This claim, of course, is an important one.  But I have always been troubled by an unarticulated consequence of this line of argument that devalues what I might call “rhetorics of solidarity” in favor of “public rhetorics.”  That is, an implication of the criticism that a blog like this is “preaching to the choir” is that a blog like this should strive to reach a “general public” or that the work of a blog like this is a “waste of time.”  Let me emphasize once again that I do not think that was the intention of those who took the time to write me. However, I think these criticisms are part of bigger discourse about what kind of work is valued by progressive/activist/labor communities.

One of the podcasts that I listen to is “Media Matters with Bob McChesney,” which comes out of University of Illinois Public Radio station WILL AM 580. On May 9th, McChesney had Jessica Clark and Tracy Van Slyke on the program discussing their new book, Beyond the Echo Chamber: How Networked Progressive Media Can Reshape American Politics.  Most of the discussion  was centered around the rise of what has become known as the “progressive blogosphere” and how emergent networked media is helping challenge the mainstream media’s lack of critical reporting.

At one point in the discussion McChesney raised the issue of the progressive blogosphere “preaching to the choir.”  Clark and Van Slyke were quick to take issue with the whole notion of preaching with the choir, preferring instead to foreground the concept of “assembling the choir.”  That is, Clark and Van Slyke drew attention to the importance of “rhetorics of solidarity” to a broader progressive project.  In their book, Clark and Van Slyke argue that

“preaching” is actually a false description of what many progressive projects do…it is the assembling and activating of the choir that is the critical strategy.  Just as churches, temples, or mosques serve as the hubs for those seeking to examine and fortify their beliefs, a number of media outlets have evolved into central meeting places for those looking to join, debate, and strengthen political movements (148).

A bit further on they quote from Bob Ostertag’s book, People’s Movements, People’s Press: The Journalism of Social Justice Movements about the importance of “solidarity rhetoric” to any developing social movement:

if we seek a voice in shaping our society beyond our immediate social circle, we have to step outside our daily existence into roles which we are not accustomed and for which we have little or no institutional support.  We have to band together to maximize our very limited time and resources.  Before we can do any of that, we have to find each other–identify others with the same interests who are also willing to step outside their daily lives to pursue our long-shot objectives.  We have to see who’s good at what, who else is doing what, who might rise to the occasion if given half a chance.  We have to make plans, formulate strategies, set priorities.  We have to agitate, educate, mobilize, confront, and more.  In short, we have to constitute ourselves as a political subject, a constituency, a social movement.  And if this we had done this sometime between 1830 and 2000 we would have made a newspaper.  In most cases, it would have been the first thing we did (148-9).

Clark and Van Slyke then add that “From 2000-2008, the first thing that many activists and journalists did to join and define the progressive movement was to start a blog” (149).

Frankly, I think that this work–the work of constituting ourselves as a political subject–has been glaringly absent from both our local and State union work.  This book is helping me think through some of the issues I raised in some earlier posts about the DIY ethic.  It’s that “constitutive work” that has been absent from our union work in any sustainable way.  Since I’ve been here, there have been moments of this work, but in each case it seemed as though we were constituted as a political subject by circumstances. To put it in the terms of my field, we responded to an external exigence–for example, our last contract negotiation.  The problem with that kind of dynamic is that when the exigence is gone, so is the “stuff” that helped link people together.  Some of this is unavoidable, of course.  But it is clear to me that we need more forums–not ONLY the XChange–in which this work takes place.

As the fall semester quickly approaches, so does our next round of contract negotiations and strike preparations.  Our contract expiration date, June 30, 2011, seems like a ways away at this point, but I can promise you that it will be upon us sooner that any of us would like.  And it promises to be a difficult contract negotiations year.  With the organizing we will do, will come new networks of affinity and we will once again constitute ourselves as a political subject.  The question remains as to whether or not we will consciously try and do so or if we will be constituted by circumstances.

For my part, I will continue my work on the XChange as a small piece of constitutive work.  I’m on the other side of the “preaching to the choir” criticisms, recognizing what I think is of value in this little experiment.  That does not mean that I think that the work of getting the word out to the “public,” or establishing effective communication among all of our members is not important.  In fact, I think it’s absolutely critical. And so I return to the critics.  Yes, you’re right.  We do need to do more than “assembling the choir.”

I challenge you to do it.

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does class size matter?

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Layoffs possible for faculty at IUP – Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Another PASSHE university given notification of possible retrenchment.

Layoffs possible for faculty at IUP – Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

I cannot resist the temptation of pairing the above article with this posting on the Indiana University web page on the same day:

PASSHE Board Recognizes Former President

You may recall that this particular former president, Tony Atwater, was given a strong vote of no confidence by the faculty.  PASSHE’s response at that point?  Give Atwater a sweetheart deal.  Here’s a bit from a June 20 article posted on the Pittsburgh Tribune Opinion page:

The embattled Indiana University of Pennsylvania president, smacked with a recent no-confidence vote by faculty, will walk away with a full year’s salary ($253,428, less payroll deductions), reimbursement for COBRA medical-coverage premiums through June 2011, payment for earned but unused leave, plum retirement contributions and up to $15,000 in moving expenses.

The Pittsburgh Tribune Editorial Board titled the article, “Atwater’s Sweet Deal: Outrageous!”  I’ll say.  But apparently that editorial and disgust at the hypocritical behavior of a PASSHE administration that claims “budget crisis” while handing over sweet deals to their buddies at the top didn’t have an impact on what they do.  Just another sign that the behavior we saw on Wall Street is not limited to stock brokers and traders.  We’ve got plenty of them right here in Pennsylvania. Enough of the deceit.

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another KU budget projection hits the dust

In my March 29th post, “On Group Think and Catastrophe,” I reproduced a very pointed argument made at our local APSCUF-KU Meet and Discuss table made by former APSCUF-KU Vice President, Ken Ehrensal.  His argument called out KU Administration budget officials’ problematic use of “worst-case-scenario” logic, in particular, the logic of a budget catastrophe.  Here is an exert from that post:

Second, Ehrensal argued that the budget presentations given by Ken Long, Assistant VP of Administration and Finance, assume every catastrophic scenario.  For example, KU’s budget projections assume a 2.5% annual increase in tuition.  However, the Chancellor has been talking about a 4% increase.  If the Chancellor’s numbers hold, our “budget crisis” will be cut in half.  Long also built-in a 3.5% increase in salary for all union employees (including faculty).  However, all contracts are up for negotiation this year.  New contracts for all university unions will be in place starting July 2011.  If the salary increases are lower than 3.5%, the “budget crisis” could be cut in half (I didn’t write down the percentage that Ehrensal was working with).  Further, Long built-in to h

is analysis that the PA Legislature will not fix the problem with PSERS (PA State Employee Retirement System).  Failure to fix the problem, while possible, is not likely.  In short, the budget presentations represent a catastrophic scenario…not a likely scenario.

Despite our best efforts at the table, the administration continued to use these “catastrophic” budget projections in its presentation to faculty, staff, KU’s Board of Trustees, the Chancellor of PASSHE, and, of course, the media.  Just about every local news story about Kutztown administration’s move to retrench faculty and staff was willing to print the administration’s story of a dire budget crisis without question.  I personally reached out to a few reporters, pointed them to this blog, emailed them, and spoke to them on the phone about the problems with the Kutztown administration’s argument.  But, frankly, the adminstration’s narrative was compelling, especially since it seemed to echo that of the broader “economic crisis” narrative in the U.S. today.  In some ways, I can understand why our arguments, Ehrensal’s arguments in particular, did not gain traction.  It’s not easy to swim against the current of a dominant cultural narrative, especially when that narrative takes the form of a torrential downpour.

But just because a cultural narrative is compelling doesn’t mean that it’s accurate or true.  As a scholar and teacher of rhetoric you are taught to be very critical of cultural narratives that seem to “sweep people up” into them.  Such narratives are the ones that allow governments, businesses, con-men, and cult leaders get masses of people to do things that in “normal” times they would never do.

Well, that’s where we are folks.  KU’s administration has used the “catastrophe” narrative to cut jobs, removed fired administrators and staff from their offices with police escorts, reorganize programs, eliminate majors, all under the cover of media reports that reaffirmed what many people feared: “there’s nothing we can do.”  Well, the narrative hasn’t held.  As a matter of fact, in turned out that Ehrensal underestimated the degree to which KU’s administration was padding its numbers in order to create the appearance of crisis.  Here’s and article from yesterday’s Philadelphia Inquirer:

Pa. system approves 4.5% hike in college tuition

Undergraduate tuition at Pennsylvania’s state-owned colleges will increase $250, or 4.5 percent, under a $1.5 billion budget approved Thursday by the system’s board of governors.

Annual tuition for full-time resident undergraduates beginning this fall will be $5,804, which the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education said was the lowest among all four-year colleges and universities in the state. The system said it would receive $503.4 million in state and federal funding to support the current-year operating budget.

Resident graduate school tuition in 2010-11 will be $6,966, an increase of $300. Nonresident graduate tuition will increase $480, to $11,146. – Inquirer staff

You with me here?  Recall Ehrensal’s argument:

For example, KU’s budget projections assume a 2.5% annual increase in tuition.  However, the Chancellor has been talking about a 4% increase.  If the Chancellor’s numbers hold, our “budget crisis” will be cut in half.

Put simply, KU’s “budget crisis” has just been trimmed over 50% without a single faculty member losing her or his job, no program consolidation, no outsourcing of vehicles (yes, KU is now outsourcing to Enterprise Rent-a-Car at a cost of $41 a day.  I have heard, but haven’t yet confirmed that this is a PASSHE initiative).  So, there’s half your budget crisis.  It also looks like the PA Legislature is going to resolve the “crisis” in PSERS.  That “crisis” was supposedly going to put KU back by around $6 million.  Assuming that crisis have been averted, as predicted by Ehrensal, that cuts the “crisis” back even further.  You still following?

What this basically means is that KU’s administration and the administration at other PASSHE universities are not simply carrying out German-style austerity measures.  They are restructuring the State University system under the cover of the “budget crisis.”  As if citizens of the Commonwealth haven’t already experienced more than their share of “belt-tightening.”  Now, KU’s administration is given us all a spooky story right before bed in order to decrease citizens access to higher eduction–the very thing we’re told that is required to lift us out of this downturn.  Unjust desserts for the majority once again.

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Penn State Experts: PA is More Susceptible to Job Offshoring | GantDaily.com

As the fall semester quickly approaches and more PASSHE universities have announced plans to retrench over the summer, it is going to become increasingly necessary to continually ask the question: what’s the plan?

As several faculty members at Kutztown have pointed out, the administration’s retrenchment moves have seem haphazard at best.  The only organizing principle for their decision to close the Nursing program, for example, seems to have been made by rather crude accounting that the program was not currently “making money” for the university.  Yet, it would be wise for all of us  to place these “local” decisions into a a broader context.  Take, for example, this article from yesterday’s GantDaily.com.  The article discusses a recent report, “Offshorability of Pennsylvania Jobs,” issued by Penn State’s Workforce Education and Development Initiative:  Here’s a link to the article:

Penn State Experts: PA is More Susceptible to Job Offshoring | GantDaily.com.

The report points out that Pennsylvania jobs are more susceptible to offshoring compared to the rest of the nation.  That is because that many of the jobs–most of the jobs in some areas of the Commonwealth, actually–are in jobs that are considered high risk for offshoring.  What are some of the jobs that are NOT as susceptible to offshoring?  If you guessed health care jobs–in particular nursing–you’d be on the right track.

And yet, Kutztown chose to cut the nursing program.

The administration’s decisions have shown a persistent pattern of making decisions based upon short-term thinking, immediate cost-cutting, or what the magic 8-ball said.  Pennsylvanians deserve more than being treated like a number in an accountant’s ledger.  We need to demand that those people tasked with “managing” our educational lives (and lives in general!), plan for our future, not simply look for ways to wield their hatchets.  In the case of PASSHE, this means university administrations, university Boards of Trustees, the Chancellor and his staff, the PASSHE Board of Governors, our State Legislators, and the Governor (current and future).

So, if the plan involves only a hatchet with little consideration of long term planning, then maybe it’s time to “offshore” the administration and our State legislators to give all of us and our families a chance to live our lives with dignity and hope.

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Academic Program Actions recommended from the Office of the Chancellor to the BOG for this week’s meeting

Earlier this evening I received the official list of academic program action recommended from the Chancellor’s office to the PASSHE Board of Governors from our State Meet and Discuss Chair, Mark Cloud.  In his email, Mark indicated that “discussion of these program changes will be this Thursday, 9am during the Academic and Student Affairs Committee session in Harrisburg.”  He also indicated that Ken Mash will be addressing the BOG on behalf of APSCUF and that some faculty members will be present as well.

I wanted to share this list so that we can all get broader picture of what is happening system wide and to situate the reorganization at Kutztown with what looks like a broader PASSHE reorganization.  For example, Medical Technology has been placed in moratorium while at the same time the Medical Technology program at Bloomsburg has been reorganized as a BS in Health Sciences with Clinical Lab/Med Tech as a concentration.  While this information doesn’t by itself mean something, it does provide a useful starting point for critical inquiry.

Here is a copy of the document:

BOG Acad Program Actions July 2010

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wading back into work

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been spending time with my family, refinishing my deck (for which the weather has NOT cooperated), doing house repairs, and, basically, reflecting upon this past year as I prepare to enter my 8th year at Kutztown.  I have to admit that this past year has taken a significant toll on me, in particular, my notorious deep reserves of hope.  In my post back in the end of June, I was poking away at some of reasons for this:

While the tendency to criticize an issue and wait for “someone else” to take up the labor is certainly not limited to Kutztown University, I have always been part of groups at other institutions who had a kind of DIY ethic.  That is, I’ve generally been surrounded by people who, when faced with a problem, tended to immediately begin to generate creative solutions without waiting to be given permission.  In those contexts, we always felt a sense of ownership of the issue–and a kind of core belief that “if you want to get something done, you’ve got to do it yourself.”…

…What’s amazing about that DIY ethic is that it is hopeful–a basic belief in the creative labor of self-organizing groups–affinity groups, if you will.  While our frustrations were deep, we tended to gravitate toward possibilities–whether those possibilities included putting on shows, carrying out “guerrilla art” campaigns, building shanty towns on university campuses, occupying administration buildings, living collectively, or starting our own independent zines and newspapers.  And we did these things.  They weren’t just ideas.  Wecreated and built and produced.

This past weekend I was at a Writing Program Administration conference in Philly and met up with some friends and their kids.  It was the first time that my friends and their families met my son, Rowan.  These were some of the friends I had in mind when I wrote that post.  I told them about some of my frustrations about Kutztown–in particular issues with my union work.  I have to admit that it was somewhat comforting to hear that I was not alone in my frustrations of doing organizing work in academic institutions.  One of my friends talked about her frustration with academics who all have great ideas, but are unwilling to do the work of organization to make those ideas concrete. One of my other friends talked about how important it was to take a leave just to reevaluate one’s relationship to her academic institution.  I shared stories about moments of opportunity amidst “crisis” in which faculty had a chance to take the initiative and reconstitute their working conditions, but chose, instead, to play the role of victim/critic (I think these two terms can operate too frequently as a debilitating binary).

Earlier last week, I met up with one of my oldest friends and his family who live in Northern Ireland.  They were back in Central New York visiting family, so we headed up for a one day visit.  He and I got on a similar conversation…or, I should say, I got us on to a similar conversation.  We were talking about how the political work we did back in Syracuse was not only engaging, it was FUN.  That’s right, FUN.  We enjoyed the work of political organizing and our community was strengthened by such work.  Why was it then, I asked, that this relationship is so absent at KU?  He shrugged his shoulders as did I.  “Beats me,” we both seemed to say.

All of these questions came back to me front and center upon my lukewarm return to work and preparation for the coming semester. I read through a chain of emails posted on the faculty listserv doing some bashing of our union leadership.   Some of the issues raised in these emails are not without merit–especially when it comes to communications processes over the summer.  It is true, as one faculty member wrote in regard to significant organizational changes being pursued by KU’s administration, that the union should provide members with a “continuing update” about what is going on (while, at the same time, questioning whether or not the union leadership is doing anything at all).

Point taken.  There is no doubt that it’s been a challenge keeping updates coming, especially over the summer when not all members of our Executive Committee are one campus everyday as they would be during the academic year.  And yet I think most of us on our Executive Committee would agree that there needs to be better communication networks over all.  That is true for ALL aspects of our union’s work.

What becomes a bit disenchanting for me is that on several occasions I’ve asked some of the same people who are so pissed off now to help with some of the work.  In response to personal emails providing sketches of analyses and rhetorical questions, I’ve asked people to step up and contribute–not as some kind of challenge, but because we genuinely need more members with expertise in particular areas to help combat the administration’s moves to retrench faculty and eliminate or change programs. That doesn’t seem unreasonable.  But, more often than not I receive, instead, a host of reasons why they are unable to do that work.  I’ll never understand why there is always more than enough time to write lengthy emails filled with detailed criticisms, but always insufficient time to contribute to building a stronger union.  But, this is where we are.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am the last person who will sit here and tell you that our local or statewide union is above criticism.  In many ways, I might surprise many people in our union with the sharpness of my own critiques.  However, my approach as been to look for ways to get involved and change things.  It’s that’s old DIY principle again: If you don’t like something, doing something about it by doing the work to fix it.

Despite the temptations, I’ve consciously tried to avoid engaging in personal critiques or fanning the factional flames in public forums that can potentially weaken our union. But as the beginning of the 2010-2011 academic year approaches–a contract negotiation year to boot–I think it’s necessary for “new ideas” and “criticisms” to be accompanied by a willingness to do the work to either make those ideas concrete or correct problems.  Maybe this is just too much to ask for.  We shall see.

Anyway, I’ve got more to say on a couple of other things, but I’ll do so in separate posts so as not to extend this already-too-long post further.

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