"Ah, the professoriate..."

I’ve now been teaching for three weeks after more than a dozen years of living the rhythms of the administrative calendar.

My appreciation for faculty only increases by the day — not only because of the amount of work needed to prepare, present, and conduct a course but also because of the great weight of responsibility one feels towards the students facing you in class and the integrity of the academic discipline you have devoted your life to.

Reflecting on this, I remember a passage I read and wrote about a decade or so ago in a book with glowing blurbs from the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. “Lucid, passionate, and wide-ranging,” the Gray Lady authoritatively stated. “A powerful indictment of academic careerism,” the preferred paper of the business class sternly proclaimed.

The book? “Higher Education – How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids—and What We Can Do About It.”

The passage?

“Ah, the professoriate! It’s an alternate universe. … The schools almost function for them, for their aspirations and interests. Students come and go, … but the tenured stay on … accumulating power, controlling resources, and reshaping the university according to their needs. Lost on the professorial campus is the presence of students and, for reasons that sometimes seem mystifying, an appreciation of an activity as joyful and useful as teaching.”

At the time, the crude caricature of me and those around me was just a tad annoying. But today, as I look at how misguided attacks on the value of colleges and universities such as those presented in this book have spread from the editorial rooms of highly educated opinion makers to the kitchen tables of those who benefit most from postsecondary education, I am furious.

Because the sensationalistic, unfair anti-faculty messaging that gained traction a decade ago is now adversely impacting the college aspirations of many and fueling daily attacks against those who seek to advance the idea of a university.

Because the portrayal of colleges and universities as broken, selfish institutions that has taken hold across a broad spectrum of media narratives has shifted the perception of the value of education from being primarily a public good to a private one.

Because these narratives not only belittle the determined dedication of those who comprise a university community but also shortchanges the aspirations of those who would otherwise aspire to higher education as a way to lead careers of consequence and live lives of purpose.

But fury fuels action... and we have classes to prepare, students to mentor, critical thinking to hone, creativity to spur, innovation to launch, career skills to develop, labs to conduct, research to advance, communities to engage, workforces to fuel, institutions to strengthen. Onward.