A few days ago, I was puzzling over a statement in the executive summary of an American Enterprise Institute-sponsored paper by Ben Wildavsky released (and publicized) this week:
… faculty [at for-profits] tends to look quite different from those at many traditional not-for-profit institutions. First and foremost, they are instructors rather than researchers. (p. 2)
Anyone who knows the reality of higher education today should have been able to spot the problem: teaching dominates the roles of at least two-thirds of all faculty in public and non-profit colleges and universities, either because of the role of the institution (for two-year colleges) or because of the status of the faculty (as part-time or non-tenure-track instructors/lecturers). ((See the end of the prior entry for the details.)) This is not a hard-to-find bit of information, and the fact that Wildavsky was so wildly off the mark had me wondering how in the world this statement came into the paper.
My reading of the paper is that Wildavsky indulged his interviewees. He wrote the paper entirely from their perspective, taking all of their statements at face value. For those who are inclined to skip reading the paper (a judgment I would heartily encourage, based on this bone-headed error at the beginning of the paper), it’s a puff piece looking at the “wisdom” of administrators who moved from the public/non-profit sector to for-profit institutions. If Wildavsky accurately reported the views of his interviewees, they can now join Ben Wildavsky as demonstrating cluelessness about higher education writ large. Below is a list of the elite crossovers of former administrators on the public/non-profit side whose basic knowledge of their own field should now be cast into doubt based on Wildavsky’s paper: ((I am omitting the name of the sole faculty member interviewed for this paper, as the point here is about administrators’ knowledge))
- Geri Malandra, of Kaplan University
- Peter Smith, Kaplan
- Thomas Boyd, Kaplan
- Harold Shapiro, DeVry University
- Jorge Klor de Alva, formerly of the University of Phoenix
- Henry Bienen, Rasmussen College Inc.
- Michael Offerman, Capella University
Methodological lesson: if you interview people, check the important factual claims if there are other sources. Substantive lesson: if you’re an administrator talking on the record, please have a clue about your own field. PR lesson: if you’re a staff member editing a paper that will become public, exercise some critical thinking so your organization is not embarrassed by what it puts out. Trust me: your boss won’t mind if you point out problems before they become public.
Addendum: if you’re inclined to excuse Wildavsky on the basis of the “at many” modifier, please think about the point of the paper, that there is somehow special wisdom we can draw from administrators who move between sectors… if they come from the public/non-profit institutions that are exceptions to the broader pattern??
Addendum 2: In response on Twitter, Wildavsky writes, “‘don’t bother reading the paper I am critiquing’ hardly advances debate. Bone-headed anyone?” He said there are two other comments he’ll make, so I’ll wait until then before adding anything.