From: bfrg9732@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Brian F. Redman)
Subject: Imposters in the Temple -- Part 2
Summary: Academic intellectuals are destroying our universities
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1992 17:25:42 GMT
Keywords: treachery trickery deceit deception


Imposters in the Temple:
American Intellectuals are Destroying our Universities
and Cheating our Students of their Future

by Martin Anderson

Part 2  --  Academe

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The wealth and spending power of our universities has never been 
greater. The faculty of universities and colleges constitutes one of 
the largest occupational groups in America, totalling about 665,000 
men and women. "It is these two-thirds of a million academic 
intellectuals who today are ... an enigma and a paradox, very 
expensive ones. Most people know little of what they do and how well 
they do it ... But of one thing we can be certain. Their control of 
the centers of higher learning and research in our society gives them 
a potential power for either good or ill that is too important to 
ignore."

"What we do know about the work of academic intellectuals ... we know 
from what they tell us. In essence, they rate each other and then 
announce their rankings to those outside the academy. When we say a 
professor is distinguished we almost always do so because other 
professors have told us it is so."

The author, Martin Anderson, argues that the overall quality of these 
academic intellectuals has declined sharply in the post World War II 
period while at the same time their pay and especially their benefits 
and working conditions have improved dramatically. He traces this 
phenomena specifically to the period between 1960 and 1975 when the 8 
million increase in the number of college students "hit the academic 
intellectuals like a tidal wave." This sharp increase in demand for a 
college education fueled a sudden demand for more professors. There 
was a consequent sharp increase in faculty during the period between 
1960 and 1975.

"The sudden increase in the size of our academic intellectual 
population during the fifteen years from 1960 to 1975 was an expected 
consequence of the growth of the student population ... [But when] you 
more than double the number of professors ... you run into the same 
sorts of problems any profession would encounter that attempted to 
increase its size rapidly. Where do you find 352,000 new professors in 
fifteen years?" Anderson argues that we have watered down the quality 
of the professoriate by this rapid expansion in their numbers.

"Another notable ... consequence of the powerful demand for professors 
during the last few decades has been a strong improvement in the 
working conditions of the faculty. No longer poor, threadbare 
idealists who seemed to care little for the material benefits of this 
world as they strove for truth and knowledge, today's academic 
intellectuals have perhaps the best combination of working conditions 
and pay of any large occupational group in America." Some of these 
benefits include:

o -- Tenure. Tenure became a faculty right less than fifty 
     years ago. "Ostensibly put in place to guarantee academic 
     freedom, to prevent a professor from being fired for such 
     things as unpopular political views, tenure quickly 
     transformed itself into a 'job for life.'"

o -- Extraordinary flexibility as to when they work. Except for 
     when they must be teaching a class, attending meetings, 
     etcetera, they can adjust their schedule as they please.

o -- Long vacations. 3-4 month summer vacations as well as 
     Christmas and Spring breaks.

o -- They are well paid. "The highest-paid professors are at 
     Harvard, where their average salary was $89,000 in 1991. At 
     the other end of the academic spectrum, the two-year 
     colleges, full professors average about $45,000 a year and 
     assistant professors $32,000."

o -- Because professors do not punch a clock, there are 
     additional opportunities to increase their income through 
     moonlighting. Many professors "earn substantial amounts of 
     money from private consulting, speaking fees, book 
     royalties, and other miscellaneous work."

o -- Fringe benefits including medical and dental coverage and 
     generous retirement plans.

o -- Perquisites. Payment of tuition for the children of 
     professors, subsidies for faculty housing, cheap or free 
     automobile parking, excellent insurance policies, subsidized 
     meals at the faculty club, substantial discounts for car 
     rentals from Hertz or Avis, and full expenses paid for 
     travel to conferences. The professoriate also get free use 
     of recreational facilities as well as access to special 
     university events.

"Taken all together, the package of pay and benefits and perquisites 
and general working conditions for academic intellectuals is better 
than that received by 99 percent of the workers in America."


The author summarizes the chapter by stating that the university has 
changed drastically in the last few decades. "From the rather small, 
quiet, dignified institutions of rarefied scholarly pursuits... they 
have ballooned into sophisticated megabusiness machines, staffed by 
hundreds of thousands of men and women who call themselves professors, 
offering courses to millions of students, and paying themselves very 
well for what they do."


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Synopsis/Review by Brian Redman
"Ah yes, Armageddon. I remember it well."
End Part 2



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