(a fable published a long time ago)
I spent much of my adult life in Hypocrisy
Valley, a small community which is the regional center of commerce,
agriculture, and modest industrialization. It also is the home of a major
university, Hypocrisy Valley State University, which has a reputation, we are
told, in agriculture, engineering, and science. As a state supported
institution it is obliged to serve the research and educational needs of the
citizens of the state.
The faculty size of the university and the student
population has grown by 25 percent in forty years. The university is the
largest employer in the county, and many workers say that while they receive
low wages, are not treated with particular respect (except for the annual spring
fling distribution of free hot dogs), they work at the university because of
the health and retirement benefits, which exceed benefits from other employers
in the area. Of course, state law prohibits Hypocrisy Valley employees from
organizing staff or faculty unions.
Hypocrisy Valley historically has had mediocre
sports teams but from time to time they defeat the other major state universities.
Masses of alumni do descend on the university during the football season to
drink, eat, and watch Hypocrisy Valley players suffer defeat. Unrelated to performance
levels, football and basketball coaches make huge salaries, as is common in
collegiate sports, and the Director of Athletic Programs makes hundreds of
thousands of dollars in salary and perks and participates in several academic
decisions at the university.
Over the last twenty-five years, the number and cost
of higher administrative personnel have grown enormously. In addition, selected
“star” faculty have enjoyed huge raises. Gaps between the salaries of high-tech,
big business, drug company researchers and professors of liberal arts,
education, and the pure sciences have grown as well. But all celebrate the fact
that Hypocrisy Valley has developed a world reputation, even ranked highly by U.S. News and World Report, the arbiter
of quality in higher education.
Presidents at Hypocrisy Valley have served one or
more five-year terms before retiring and being replaced. Ordinarily, these
presidents are celebrated for their historic contributions to the evolution of
the university, only to be all but erased from the University’s history upon
retirement. Often the Board of Trustees, the big business elites appointed by
Governors to rule the university, name buildings or roads after retired
university presidents.
This gets to the heart of academic rule at Hypocrisy
Valley. The Board of Trustees makes major decisions about the character and
future of the university, including faculty and staff employment. Generally,
high-paid administrators accept decisions as they are announced. And since the
Board is appointed by sitting Governors, higher education policy is directly
related to the distribution of political power in the state.
In addition, since elections, the public expression
of political power, are significantly determined by millionaires, trustees at
Hypocrisy Valley usually are the wealthy and powerful. Often Trustees come from
multinational corporations, banks, and real estate interests in the state and
the country. And this influence “trickles down” from the selection of higher
levels of administration at Hypocrisy Valley, to curricula, to admissions
policy, staff and faculty salaries, and student tuitions.
Recently, decisions at Hypocrisy Valley generated
more commentary than usual. The outgoing president, who served one five-year term
was encouraged to retire. She was granted a $500,000 severance payment, a
continuation of her tenured position in an academic department related to her
expertise, and a full-paid sabbatical leave, while she serves on boards of distinguished
national scholarly institutions.
Information about the severance payment was
reported, in the usually pliant local newspaper, the Hypocrisy Journal. The
Journal reported also that the Board is reconfiguring faculty and staff health
care costs, including increasing recipient co-payments. The severance package
of $500,000 will be paid out of university discretionary funds. Increased
health care costs for Hypocrisy Valley employees will be paid for by them.
In addition, with the impending retirement of the
University president, a nationwide search for a successor was carried out. A
search firm, a faculty staff committee, and the Board of Trustees, after
extensive work decided that the best candidate to be the next president of Hypocrisy
Valley was the outgoing governor of the state, who in fact appointed the Board
of Trustees which now decided that he, the governor with no academic experience,
was the best candidate to be the next president.
In addition to the appearance of political skullduggery,
the governor had already cut higher education budgets, helped establish an
online university as an alternative to traditional higher education, supported
the privatization of public education from K to grade twelve, opposed women’s
access to reproductive health and signed anti-labor legislation. Some of his strongest
defenders argue that having a new president with no higher education
administrative experience might make him best equipped to run this world-class
institution.
Meanwhile, the Hypocrisy Journal, while publishing a
few opinion pieces criticizing the appointment of the outgoing Governor as the
new president, shifted most of its editorializing to strong support for the
appointment, despite a few well-researched stories about the less transparent
aspects of the appointment.
I am sure that Hypocrisy University will survive the
moral and political corruption of the presidential appointment. Major changes
in university policy will not occur. Big corporations and banks will continue
to be served by the bulk of ongoing research and teaching. The Board of Trustees
will continue to rule in relative secrecy. Faculty, in the main, will complain
in the corridors but will not think of organizing. Students will endure higher
tuition to pay for administrative salaries. Growing numbers of young people
from around the state, often minorities and working class kids, will search for
alternatives to the prohibitively expensive education costs at Hypocrisy
Valley.
As Hoosier novelist, Kurt Vonnegut once wrote: “So
it goes.”
