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Posted on 05/29/2021 7:39:01 PM PDT by DUMBGRUNT
... Except its president, Miles K. Davis, isn’t the typical ivory-tower intellectual.
Mr. Davis, 61, has been pushing to change Linfield’s institutionally stodgy and politically progressive academic culture, in part by placing an increased emphasis on career education. He’s expanded his college’s nursing and business programs and eliminated more than a dozen tenured faculty positions in liberal-arts disciplines. His efforts are a case study in the obstacles to change in the long-cosseted world of American higher education.
...Mr. Davis, a U.S. Navy veteran who spent a decade in business consulting before joining Shenandoah University’s business school in 2001. He became dean there in 2012, and enrollment grew 77% before he moved on to Linfield College six years later.
Some liberal-arts programs had more faculty than students. So he did something unthinkable in academia: lay off tenured professors. “We looked at the 1940 AAUP document about tenure,” he says, referring to the American Association of University Professors, an organization of faculty and professional staff. “It’s meant to pursue academic freedom, not to guarantee employment for life.”
... Mr. Davis pressed to expand the nursing and business programs, which are more remunerative. The average annual salary of a recent graduate of Linfield’s nursing program is $83,349, vs. $20,140 for a Linfield psychology degree, according to the U.S. Education Department’s College Scorecard. Mr. Davis’s wife, a registered nurse with a doctorate in nursing practice, teaches at Linfield’s nursing campus in Portland.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
An interesting interview.
I bet this story would leave me pretty jazzed.
But it’s behind a paywall.
And, as we know from too many case studies, academic freedom only applies if you toe the ultraleftist party line. The rest of us have grown weary of supporting these parasites.
—”The rest of us have grown weary of supporting these parasites.”
See #4 for text.
A very happy surprise ending!
IIRC this is the jamoke that wrote in the NYT that Snow White was a racesist story.
Liberal arts are easy. People who could not do any real job, get tenure in liberal arts and milk the system forever. All they do is “educate” few similar useless types!
This Mr. Davis is right. Colleges need to educate for real life jobs! Get rid of at least half of the liberal arts professors would be good start.
Like most people, as soon as I hear the name ‘Miles Davis’, I think of the famous jazz fusion musician, now deceased.
I am guessing when people under 35 hear the name, the majority of them do not associate that name with anything out of the ordinary. Of course their are the exceptions.
Jazz will always be here with us, just like classical music, but it is nowhere near as popular, as ubiquitous as it was up until about 1985. Most TV shows had a theme song that was affected by jazz phrasings. As George H. said, All Things Must Pass.
When I say Defund the Universities around here, what I really mean is defund liberal arts and grievance studies. I love seeing what this guy is doing.
I was a conservative professor at a Big 10 university. They certainly would have laid me off if they could. But they couldn’t because I had tenure. This is a two-edged sword.
The real problem is the neo-Marxism. Ideally, the subjects that are basically fronts for destructive ideology (e.g. Gender Studies) would be eliminated and the revolutionaries that have taken over necessary fields like history, humanities, etc. would be rooted out. Unfortunately, we are probably already passed the point where that can be done through normal means. Rough times are ahead.
Anything with the names Critical, Studies or Theory ought to be made elective, downgraded in credit value, and not an actual degreed major.
In fact, done properly, they're not easy at all. Classical philology, stylometric analysis, genuine historical research, or just finding some thing new but interesting and justified about any topic of research in the humanities is hard work.
The problem is that the academic departments have replaced genuine learning with political indoctrination to such an extent that there was probably more genuine research in some humanities fields in the Soviet Union than there currently is in the US.
BTW, the Greeks had a name for the class of persons who were solely concerned with having to work for a living: slaves.
“I was a conservative professor at a Big 10 university. They certainly would have laid me off if they could. But they couldn’t because I had tenure. This is a two-edged sword.”
I feel victim to the the “You have the wrong ethnic makeup and don’t have tenure yet.” Part of that sword.
And, just to be honest, I have more academic publications, in better journals, than the dean of Academic affairs at the university where I was head of Library Cataloging. There was no cause other than identity politics.
This is the first time I have seen Linfield College mentioned since my basketball coach used to brag about his years there. He was my coach from ‘50 through ‘52.
Peruse later.
—”This is a two-edged sword.”
Our son, a teacher, and incoming Department Head used exactly the same words.
From my perspective, this is a positive article for the education industry.
Yes, it points out one of the usual suspects and his downfall.
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Yes, I am saying cut in half, not abandoning altogether!
There are definitely some things to be done in liberal arts, but, unfortunately, these are not very popular with press. Classical literature, music, linguistic, philosophy, history, religion. That all belongs to the education of the whole person.
And by the way - slaves did not do all physical work. That was a simplification made by Marx. There were always free middle class people, artisans, farmers, fishermen.
An some slaves made it into liberal arts masters (Epictetus).
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