It turns out that there is more than one university in Arkansas in need of adult supervision.
Arkansas State University is now in need of a major housecleaning. Its chancellor, Tim Hudson, has had to resign from his $360,000-a-year post. His resignation came after an internal audit revealed that the university's study-abroad program managed by his wife Deidra had been sorely mismanaged. The audit reported that trips abroad were unorganized; some students were paying their fees through a PayPal account; the instructor for its study-abroad program in the Nordic countries had no contract with the university, etc. Now word comes involving Tim Hudson's daughter, possible scholarships and alleged improper emails from the ex-chancellor to points far and wide.
It might be noted that Deidra Hudson had a doctorate in educational leadership and the subject of her dissertation was, yes, study-abroad programs. Talk about inflated titles. Call it just another paper credential handed out by the country's schools and departments of education--or unreasonable facsimiles thereof. Which is what comes of abandoning the classical liberal arts and specializing in administration, not education. In another century, Jose Ortega y Gasset called this sad trend the barbarism of specialization, and it has only spread since.
So what's ASU planning to do about this royal mess? Why, hire a full-time director of its study-abroad programs, of course! At who knows how much money. Want to find the root of evil in American higher or rather lower education? Just follow the money. It's said that when Willie Sutton, hold-up man extraordinaire, was asked why he robbed banks, he was supposed to have replied: "Because that's where the money is."
The money in American education is now in administration. Since 1980, tuition at American universities has risen faster than almost any other commodity, and a commodity is what higher learning has increasingly become. As for those who actually teach students, they may be the least paid. The commodification of education goes on apace across the country. Recommended reading: The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters by Benjamin Ginsberg, who reports in Washington Monthly that between 1975 and 2005, total spending by American colleges and universities tripled to more than $325 billion a year while the faculty-to-student ratio has remained fairly constant at about 15 or 16 students for each instructor. But administrative costs have soared. Largely because our institutions of what's called higher education have chosen to spend their money not on their faculty and students but on their administrators. So those footing the bill may find that their children have a better chance of meeting administrators on campus than professors.
Ah, well, you can't have everything; indeed, sometimes you can't have much at all after this plague of over-priced administrators gets through.
Editorial on 08/06/2016