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Reprinted from the Education Workers Organizing Bulletin
(Industrial Workers of the World), PO Box 762, Cortland NY 13045.
Sample copy $1; 1-year subscription $4
A Marxist Analysis of Participatory Management
"I don't know what you have to say,
"It doesn't matter anyway.
"Whatever it is, I'm against it.
"No matter what it is
"or who commenced it,
"I'm against it!"
Groucho Marx, playing the college president in
"Horsefeathers," greeted the faculty committee with those stirring
words at the famous meeting when he announced that the
institution's resources were to be yanked from academic programs in
order to build up the college's failing football team.
Administrators today are generally more sophisticated, and
have built up so extensive an array of committee structures to
incorporate faculty (and sometimes staff and students) into
participatory management schemes that the U.S. Supreme Court has
ruled that faculty are not workers, but rather part of management
(and hence not entitled to union representation--the "justices"
apparently did not trouble themselves to wonder why, if this was
so, Yeshiva University's teachers felt they needed a union to
protect themselves against the administration).
Yet while these participatory management structures may have
the appearance of democratic institutions, they rarely wield any
genuine power. When I was an undergraduate, my program was
theoretically governed by an assembly of students, faculty and
staff that met to discuss curriculum, faculty needs, etc. (this was
unique to our department, but several departments did have token
student representation to faculty meetings). But year after year
our decisions were routinely overturned and our faculty denied
tenure.
At the same school, student and student-faculty committees
made recommendations on the allocation of student activity fees,
only to have these decisions overturned when administrators took
exception to our priorities; students were made to vote over and
over again on fee hikes, the form of our "student government,"
etc., until we got it right (i.e., they wore us down); and
administrative operatives were sent from department to department
as acting chair to bring recalcitrant departments in line.
Ultimately the faculty senate voted no confidence in the chancellor
and he was eased out--but not before doing enormous damage to the
campus (nor has his successor been much better, to judge from
reports from friends still in the area).
More recently, my present department voted unanimously to
renew two faculty contracts (including mine) and to deny tenure to
someone who had been repeatedly warned that his work was not up to
departmental standards. The college dean and president, however,
overturned two of the three decisions--firing me and giving tenure
to the fellow the department had unanimously found unqualified.
(I seem to rub the bosses the wrong way--at my last job my
department and a college-wide committee unanimously recommended me
for promotion; instead the administration gave me the sack. The
college's Academic Freedom Committee reviewed the case, including
a memo in which the dean explained that I should be fired because
I was trying to change University policies and criticizing
administrators, and unanimously found that my rights had been
violated and that I should be kept on. I was fired anyway.)
Teachers and other educational workers devote a great deal of
our time to the myriad of departmental and college-wide committees
established to provide the illusion of participatory governance. We
have personnel committees, ad-hoc committees, Faculty Senates,
elections, advisory committees, Committees on Committees. But
ultimately, all decisions are made by the administrators who are in
no way accountable to these governance structures. Sure, faculty
serve on the search committees which review prospective
administrators' credentials and make recommendations for new ones
and Faculty Senates have the right to ask administrators questions.
But once the administrators are in place, they are accountable only
to themselves and to higher administrators. Faculty committees may
get a vote on who the new boss should be, but we don't have the
power to remove administrators who turn out to be tyrants or simply
incompetent. (Even where a no-confidence vote is taken, and this is
no easy task, the administration often ignores it.)
Colleges originally functioned without administrators, later
we elected colleagues to handle routine bureaucratic functions in
our behalf and to deal with unpleasantries such as wheedling money
out of the government. It appears these early administrators served
on a short-term basis, returning to the ranks of the faculty much
like departmental chairs often do (in institutions where these are
still accountable to the faculty) to this day. But power attracts
the power-mad, and administrators long ago set themselves up as a
caste apart, gathering enormous power over all aspects of the
institution.
Today, colleges across the country are facing budget cuts. But
the numbers of administrators (and the enormous salaries they give
themselves) continue to grow, even as faculty and staff ranks are
being slashed. If we question the wisdom of their decisions, they
establish another committee to keep us busy.
Its time to ask ourselves whether we can afford
administrators. They eat up resources that are desperately needed
for education, they eat up our time with their endless paperwork,
and they get in our way as we try to educate our students. It
couldn't take much more time to run our institutions ourselves
(staff, faculty and students together). As for the administrators,
let them try teaching, sweeping the halls or some other useful job.
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