Another day, another article about the parlous state of Universities and the lack of respect afforded to faculty, the ‘Disneyfication’ of the curriculum, grade inflation, the embattled professoriate and students’ inability to handle difficult topics without puppies and balloons.
Not one word is relevant to me, or to my colleagues who are preparing students for the MCAT, the NCLEX, to keep actual human beings with actual illnesses alive. But we don’t count, apparently, to the authors of these plaints. The facts that everybody knows students would not pass the MCAT or NCLEX without us, that we obviously take them from I want to help people to Those values indicate acute renal injury, what’s his Potassium like?, that the same outside groups who might sneer at a French Literature prof go ‘Ooh’ when I say I teach Pathophysiology, do not apparently make us worthy allies in supporting the academy. They make us part of the problem, if not allies of the enemy.
Because in the world of academic lament, the University’s real purpose is to shelter and protect the humanities. Those of us whose work meets the criteria for Higher Education in the eyes of conservatives, businesspeople, or even (gasp) republicans are just diluting the message about liberal arts.
I still sympathize with these plaints about the state of Higher Ed, but less each time I read one in which I don’t appear. Perhaps instead of ignoring the part of Higher Ed that everyone respects, folks interested in protecting the academy should be looking at what we do and how they could build on it. At the very least, perhaps they could stop writing articles that leave us out entirely.
