We or They
How do you see your workplace
Like most academics these days, I spend a lot of time filling in online forms. Mostly, this is just an annoyance but occasionally I get something out of it. A recent survey in which the higher-ups tried to get an idea of how the workforce was feeling, asked the question "Do you think of the University as We or They?".
Unsurprisingly given my reference to "higher-ups", my answer was "They". But giving the answer reminded me that, not so long ago, it would have been "We". In its idealized form, a university was a self-governing community, with a well-understood teaching and research mission (which did not require a Mission Statement). All but the most senior management jobs were done by academics taking turns before returning to their real jobs. Administrative staff did essential work, largely independently, but didn't conceive themselves as part of management.
The reality was inevitably less egalitarian and communitarian than this picture suggests, in all sorts of ways. Senior professors had too much power and inevitably, some of them abused it. And, given the times, lots of bad behaviour was tolerated that would not be now.
For good and ill, this has all been swept away, at least in Australia. Multiple layers of management are filled by people who have either left the academic life behind them or were never part of it. The university in this view, is not a community but a business enterprise, even if its ownership structure is rather opaque.
The reality is that of an ordinary workplace in which, most of the time, the interests of bosses and workers are in conflict (though, as in any workplace, there is a shared interest in the survival of the business). Senior managers see themselves as such and compare themselves to their corporate peers. Administrative job titles are those of the corporate sector (Chief Financial Officer and so on)>
Yet, as the question implies, there is a still a feeling that the university should be a We, and not merely in the sense of workers being willing to sing the company song. My own version of this is to think of the current regime as being temporary occupiers, from whom We will be liberated in due course. But others may take a more positive view - I'd be interested in comments
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It is impossible to convey to younger generations the social clout that all academics had in the Australia of 50 years ago, and more especially in the rural New South Wales of 50 years ago. I still recall the almost forelock-tugging deference with which motor mechanics, tradesmen, and policemen would treat my father on learning that he was Professor Stove.
(Not that he ever pulled rank. On the contrary such deference rather embarrassed him. Except of course when it resulted in cheaper car repairs for him, whereupon he realised that being a professor had its uses.)
So addicted was he to the academic life that at one delirious moment he even expressed, in print, a certain guilt: not about being paid too much, but about being paid at all. Certainly he would have detested full-time or even part-time employment in any non-academic job.
Anyhow, this culture of Australian public obeisance towards academe is, in 2024, as much (and as largely forgotten) a historical relic as are the Bandung Conference, the Gorton prime ministry, or Adam and the Ants. But once, it seemed unstoppable. There were traces of it lingering even in the 1980s. Nowadays I look back and wish for most of the time that I had trained as a plumber.
A more positive view!!! I take a more negative one -- the university that you folks knew is over and it is never coming back. I became an academic aspiring to your circumstances. I slid in just under the closing hydraulic door maxwell-smart style. I have a cushy tenured job in a great dept where I have lots of time to do research, and my research doesn't require me to raise big grants. But I think it is more likely than not that mine is the last generation that these jobs exist in universities. I think we must place our hope in the resurgence of something like Bell Labs.