Monday 9 July 2007
Ackademe
Not that I'm against navel-gazing - navels being one of the great delights of the mammalian belly - but there seems to be something unhealthily introverted in the fact that my employer (a university, God love it) is now offering a Diploma in University Administration. Sooner or later the Dip.Univ.Admin. will be superseded by a D.Univ.Admin. and scholars across the world will be writing doctoral theses comparing contemporary lecture hall booking facilities with the operative structures of early Byzantine lentil trading consortia
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11 comments:
by golly what a frightful mess that would be!
It's enough to put you off eduction, isn't it?
Will the degree one day become compulsory? I suddenly feel unqualified for my current job!
I foresee the coming of a final great age populated by the Voluptuaries of Administration; Sybarites who long to take courses in the administration of other people taking courses in the teaching of courses to administrators who... (etc).
Verily, we are living in End Times.
Isn't it for general staff, ie people who actually are administrators? Academics have access to so many perks in terms of training, it's a good idea to extend some of those to people who also contribute to the uni but don't get to do seminars & workshops etc.
Oh, well, there is that. And there's also not being snide about things I don't know nuffing about. Don't suppose you know who administers the diploma in university administration? Administrators (which'd make sense) or academics in, say, the Graduate School of Management?
Words ending in "oma": carcinoma, retinoblastoma, melanoma, glaucoma, papilloma, lymphoma, mesothelioma, diploma.
There's a point in there somewhere.
One day, a promising scholar in the Department of University Administration, working hard to stay a contender for the Amanda Vanstone Memorial Chair in Efficiency, will perform a wonderful and inquiring historical inquisition into the routing of academia by rapacious and ever expanding legions of university administrators. methinks the establishment of the D.U.A. will be remembered as a milestone. ah, why get misty about it all? the ivory tower toppled years ago.
And yet - and yet - heaven knows, Trixie, we don't want some avuncular old guy in a tweed coat working out how to divy up the meagre pickings based entirely on management skills gleaned from his reading of Othello. (That's just between you and me, of course.) There's something to be said for letting academic staff academicise and the administrati administer.
Ahh yes, the Doddery Chap In Tweed - I only ever encountered one instance of that specimin at large, and the poor fellow was counting the seconds until his retirement could be effected.
The Administrati, with their pressed slacks, oiled hair, and unctuous manners (learned, no doubt, from a book, or worse, a weekend Training Course) have their manicured hands on the reins now and are riding the Horse of Tradition tantivy towards tomorrow. God help us all.
So, let's just be clear: there are the Administrati, the ones with MBAs, who get the best salaries and the best offices with the best gargoyles and decide to ax the Sanskrit Department because it doesn't turn a penny. These are the pressed-slack wearers. But then there are the admin staff, they who know how everything works and make it happen and assist photocopier-imbeciles such as myself and arrive in the morning before anyone else and leave in the evening after everyone else and occasionally are good for a biscuit. More power to these people. May their slacks assume whatever configuration they choose.
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