ABSTRACT
At any gathering of faculty who teach at institutions where commitments to teaching and liberal education remain central values, one is likely to hear a whole variety of complaints about the state of higher education today. The general tenor of those complaints is often about the combination of the rise of the professional administrator and the increasing demands for particular kinds of pedagogy and curricula that seem to be coming from “on high.” The data on the growth of administrators/staff are unarguable, but it is important to disentangle the various factors involved, including everything from government mandates that have required new positions, to meeting the extra- and co-curricular demands of students that have led to a growth in Student Affairs positions, to what is the core concern of faculty, namely the growth in academic administrators in positions dealing with teaching and learning. Many of the latter positions are overseeing (or assessing) programs, often new ones, that have real implications for the work of faculty interested in liberal education. There is a sense that the faculty’s control over the curriculum, and its ability to decide what sorts of pedagogies are appropriate to forward student learning, have been severely diminished by the rise of the professional administrator.
