Last Professors

Frank Donoghue

Description

"What makes the modern university different from any other corporation?" asked Columbia's Andrew Delbanco recently in the New York Times. "There is more and more reason to think: less and less," he answered.In this provocative book, Frank Donoghue shows how this growing corporate culture of higher education threatens its most fundamental values by erasing one of its defining features: the tenured professor.Taking a clear-eyed look at American higher education over the last twenty years, Donoghue outlines a web of forces-social, political, and institutional-dismantling the professoriate. Today, fewer than 30 percent of college and university teachers are tenured or on tenure tracks, and signs point to a future where professors will disappear. Why? What will universities look like without professors? Who will teach? Why should it matter? The fate of the professor, Donoghue shows, has always been tied to that of the liberal arts -with thehumanities at its core. The rise to prominence of the American university has been defined by the strength of the humanities and by the central role of the autonomous, tenured professor who can be both scholar and teacher. Yet in today's market-driven, rank- and ratings-obsessed world of higher education, corporate logic prevails: faculties are to be managed for optimal efficiency, productivity, and competitive advantage; casual armies of adjuncts and graduate students now fill the demand for teachers.Bypassing the distractions of the culture wars and other "crises," Donoghue sheds light on the structural changes in higher education-the rise of community colleges and for-profit universities, the frenzied pursuit of prestige everywhere, the brutally competitive realities facing new Ph.D.s -that threaten the survival of professors as we've known them. There are no quick fixes in The Last Professors; rather, Donoghue offers his fellow teachers and scholarsan essential field guide to making their way in a world that no longer has room for their dreams.First published in 2008, "The Last Professors" have largely had its arguments borne out in the interim, as the percentage of courses taught by tenured professors continues to dwindle. This new edition includes a substantial Preface that elaborates on recent developments and offers tough but productive analysis that will be crucial for today's academics to heed.

Sujets

• University
• Industrial relations
• Higher education

Informations

• Publié par: Fordham University Press
• Date de parution: 03 avril 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780823279159
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

T H E L A S T P R O F E S S O R S

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f r a n k d o n o g h u e t h e L ast p r o f e s s o r s T T he he Tw C i o l r i p g o h r t a o t f e t U he nî H ve u rs m ît a y ni a t n ie d s in th t e he Fa C te or o p f o t r h a e te H U u n m i a ve n r î s t i î t e y s

Tenth Anniversary Edition

f o r d h a m u n i v e r s i t y p r e s s New York 20 I 08

Copyright2008 , F 2 o 0 r 1 d 8 ha F m ord U h n a iv m er U si n t i y ve P r r s e i s t s y Press

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data

Donoghue, Frank,1958 The last professors : the twilight of the humanities in the corporate university / Frank Donoghue. 1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN9780823228591(cloth : alk. paper)  ISBN9780823228607(pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Universities and collegesUnited StatesFaculty.2. College teachers Professional relationshipsUnited States.3. College teachersUnited StatesTenure.4. HumanitiesStudy and teaching (Higher)United States. I. Title. LB2331.72.D2008 378.121 dc22 2008003062

Printed in the United States of America 1 2 0 0 1 0 9 9  1 0 8 85 4 3 2 1 Firste p d ri it n i t o i n ng

To My Students in English890

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1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Acknowledgments

c o n t e n t s

I P n r t e r f o a d ce uctîon: The Last Professors, Ten Years Later Preface

Rhetoric, History, and the Problems of the Humanities

Competing in Academia

The Erosion of Tenure

Professors of the Future

Prestige and Prestige Envy

Notes Bibliography Index

ix xi xx x x i î

1 24 55 83 111

139 161 171

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a c k n o w l e d g m e n t s

I owe my longeststanding debt of gratitude to the Ohio State graduate students in various incarnations of my seminar on academic labor. They helped me to work out the ideas and arguments expressed here, and dedi cating the book to them seems the least I can do to repay them for their interest and their effort. I don’t have space to name all of them, but Ken Petri, Chris Mannion, Sarah Adams, and Adrien Ardoin stayed interested and stayed in touch. My department chair, Valerie Lee, and College of Humanities Dean, John Roberts, came through with a crucial year of funding that allowed me to complete the book. Helen Tartar provided invaluable support for the project from the moment that I described it to her. The readers of the manuscript for Fordham University Press, in particular J. Hillis Miller, offered valuable advice, almost all of which I have taken. Thanks to Stanley Fish, who long ago introduced me to aca demic labor as a subject worth studying, and who still inuences my stan dards for argument and my prose style. Thanks to W. B. Carnochan and Richard Ohmann for their helpful feedback on early versions of parts of the book. I’ve been especially fortunate to have so many generous col leagues at Ohio State. Jim Phelan and David Brewer offered insightful and supportive suggestions. Harvey Graff was an inexhaustible source of new ideas and references. Elizabeth Renker was the single most important in uence on the shaping of this study. She was my rst reader at every stage of composition and always struck the perfect balance between rigor and enthusiasm. Two small sections of the book have previously appeared in print. Part of Chapter one appeared in the inaugural issue ofAmerican Academic, and I’m grateful to Larry Gold and the American Federation of Teachers for giving me access to an audience that I might otherwise not have reached. Part of Chapter ve appeared inProfession2006and thus, for better or worse, has the imprimatur of the MLA.

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