Real Time Blogging: To Grade Or Not To Grade

It is 9:30 am on the East Coast.  Right now.  That's the actual time.  It is a Sunday morning.  It is beautiful, peaceful, quiet.  Tomorrow, Monday, I will begin my work week, most of which will consist of me holding 40 hours of individualized tutorial support for the students at my university.  Most of those hours are already filled. After tomorrow's 8.5 hours of work--I get 30 minutes a day for lunch--I will travel to one of my university's satellite campuses to teach one of my university's condensed, hybridized 8-week courses.

Right now, I have sitting beside me a brand new stack of student papers that I need to grade as quickly as possible (see the above design of my course for the reason).  I have spent the last six days in a row grading another set of student papers, and I will be doing the same this week, next week, the week after that, and so on until the the course ends.

Sitting on my other side is a copy of this book.  I have never read this book, which is why I purchased a copy of it.  Given my work schedule, it is unlikely that I will read this book anytime soon.  However, I really do want to read this book sometime soon--like right now, for instance.

What do I do?  Do I grade?  Do I not grade?

Administrators are the new zombies (and it's Apocalypse Now, without so many helicopters)

Beyond the content, the fact that this piece was published in the Vancouver Sun (SunMedia being the Great White North's print equivalent to Faux News, written at a third grade level...with boobs) and penned by a Prof at the University of Calgary (the Neoliberal/Conservative/Petroleum capital of Canadia) is enough to herald (heh) the end of days.

The flava: academics, and the "professionals" who manage them, are locked in a "fundamental conflict" because:

"Teaching, research and scholarship have as their overriding purpose making public new ways of thinking or recovering forgotten old ways. Professors are as competitive as anyone else, and they enjoy making discoveries and introducing superior insights. They see the university as a means to that end.

Administrators see university as an end in itself and teaching and research are just the means. They think that the curriculum, for instance, should reflect what students, their parents, or maybe government bureaucrats want. Faculty know they are better qualified than anyone to determine what students should learn."

The author goes on to state: 

"What do administrators do? They meet, attend conferences and organize retreats. Sometimes they have joint retreats with administrators from other universities. This is how they learn about “best practices,” which seems indistinguishable from mindless mimicry, the very opposite of academic discovery and insight.

They also do a lot of strategic planning. Then they update, develop, and revise it. When they are not planning or retreating, they produce vision statements and slogans.

If you wonder why universities are expensive to operate today, follow the money to the administrators and support persons. I doubt students come to university to enjoy the fine work of well-paid under-provosts and senior associate directors. They are more likely to find whatever educational value exists in the underpaid work of part-time sessional instructors."

Preach, Dr. Cooper...and if you serve bourbon during communion, expect to find a great many of us in your pews tomorrow.