Thoughts on Giorgio Agamben - Requiem per gli studenti (A Requiem for Students) and the Birth of the Hollowed Out Simulated University

Therefore the Lord, the God of hosts, the Lord, saith thus; Wailing shall be in all streets; and they shall say in all the highways, Alas! alas! and they shall call the husbandman to mourning, and such as are skilful of lamentation to wailing. . . Woe unto you that desire the day of the Lord! to what end is it for you? the day of the Lord is darkness, and not light. (Amos 5:16, 18)

Giogio Agamben has written an exquisite essay on the university in the wake of COVID-19; It is a lamentation, a wailing, a mourning for the darkness that has been called forth from the pandemic.  It is a provocative piece of impudence at a time when such things may be punished by social actors and risk averse institutions. "Therefore the prudent shall keep silence in that time; for it is an evil time." (Amos 5:13). Agamben has chosen to speak; it is not clear who is left to listen.  And yet the movement toward the reconstruction of the university as simulacra--the way that it parallels the movement toward the reconception of political space as a complex living analytics better understood through models than in flesh and blood--is worth pondering. The techno-populism that the university has become is likely the best simulation of the transformation of society that one can observe as the moment. What comes after pondering, and after observing in these times, is truly best left to silence.  

The essay, Requiem per gli studenti, follows (first published in Diario della crisi of the Instituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici 22 May 2020) along with my own brief reflections and a crude English translation. 

What is the Fundamental Task of Education?: Xi Jinping's Concept of 立德树人 [Cultivating People of Moral Character] and its Implementation Through Undergraduate University Reform in 教育部关于一流本科课程建设的实施意见 [Implementation Opinions of the Ministry of Education on the Construction of First-class Undergraduate Courses]

(Pix Credit: 兰资环学院教育实践透视立德树人工程 凝心聚力锻造思想政治教育 )

Education reform has been a priority of the Xi Jinping leadership for some time.  It is a central element of "new era" theory, which links economic, political. cultural and social renovation in a tight web that each contributes to a comprehensive expression of the "new China"  under the leadership of the Communist Party.  That "new China" is a fundamentally moral project.  It elaborates a core premise that China's further economic potential can be developed only in tandem economically potent precisely because of its transposition of core socialist moral values to the constriction of society and culture as well.  That, at least, is the theory. 

But this theory requires a powerful implementation mechanism.  And that mechanism is education. Under the current leadership that sort of education reform as been high on the agenda for a number of years (e.g., Focusing on Civic Education in China--The CCP's Ideological Work Comes to the Universities: 关于进一步加强和改进新形势下高校宣传思想工作的意见). The drivers have not changed much, but the goals are far better coordinated with the comprehensive reshaping of the political-economic m0del and its cultural basis in outlook, custom and behavior. While it may be difficult to re-form the minds of current generations, a vanguard party looks to the formation of future generations for the long term transformation of the social and political order in ways that stick. To that end education acquires a more ancient form--one that starts with the moral formation of the student as the basis on which information can be both created and disseminated.  Xi Jinping theory, when turned toward education and the socialization of the young within a morally specific trajectory of socialist modernization (the morally informed development of productive forces), informs not just the way in which students are instructed, but also the context and form of that instruction as well. 

It was perhaps with that in mind that Xi Jinping set about to elaborate the fundamental task of education (习近平这样阐释教育的根本任务 ["Cultivating People of Moral Character," Xi Jinping explains the fundamental task of education] Xinhua News Agency [March 18 2019]). What is the fundamental task of education? The answer 立德树人 [Cultivating People of Moral Character] (with thanks to Flora Sapio for the translation of this quite complex and subtle term).

The concept was derived from a variety of Xi Jinping's statements put forward in a variety of context and then woven together by the Xinhua News Agency for wide distribution. Despite its subtleties, the term is both straightforward and at the same time intimately connected to the the larger projects of Chinese Social Credit (with its foundation in integrity; see "Blacklists and Social Credit Regimes in China"), and of building a rule-of-law Socialist society in the "New Era" (grounded in the 12 Core Socialist Values [社会主义核心价值观]). It was with that in mind that Xi Jinping noted an objective to "Integrate the cultivation of moral character into all aspects of ideological and moral education, cultural knowledge education, and social practice education, and run through basic education, vocational education, and higher education. The discipline system, teaching system, teaching material system, and management system should revolve around this goal.""

From that pronouncement consolidated in March 2019, only a short time passed before the publication by the Ministry of Education of implementation guidance first targeted to undergraduate education institutions and is reflected in the 教育部关于一流本科课程建设的实施意见 [Implementation Opinions of the Ministry of Education on the Construction of First-class Undergraduate Courses].  The idea is to reshape education to suit the "New Era." To that end, education is understood first as a moral project within which it is possible to infuse the most forward looking approaches to the instruction in particular fields, all understood, of course, within the moral framework that shapes the educational project in the first place.  The object is to give content to and provide a disciplined and measurable delivery system for moral character education as overseen by the vanguard as the guardians of morals, ethics, and integrity.

(用故事和事实告诉学生人生哲理，形象生动，文字配画面增强说服力，把“大德育”化身为“小水滴”，改“大水漫灌”为“精准滴灌”。涉及的内容十分丰富，包括科学知识、感恩教育、名人典故、我的中国梦、感动中国、讲评时事、国家法律法规、生活常识、教育改革与发展、传统文化、职业素养、工匠精神等，“个个都充满正能量”。"It tells students the philosophy of life with stories and facts. The image is vivid, the text is enhanced with persuasiveness, and the "great moral education" is transformed into "small water droplets". The flood irrigation is “precise drip irrigation”. The content involved is very rich, including scientific knowledge, grateful education, celebrity allusions, my Chinese dream, moving China, commenting on current affairs, national laws and regulations, common sense of life, education reform and development, traditional culture, professionalism, craftsmanship, etc., Everyone is full of positive energy."兰资环学院教育实践透视 supra.).

The idea is profound, but not unique to China (see, e.g.,Education to Meet the Labor Needs of Markets--Cuba Changes its Approach to University Education).  It reflects a certain all around approach to education that sees it intimately tied to both moral projects, and to the project of the perfectibility of humanity within the framework in which instruction acquires both meaning and direction--its rationality.  The connection between education, labor markets and political-societal socialization runs deep in the West as well. In this sense there is much that ties this approach to that of Pope John Paul II in the encyclical Fides et Ratio: On the Relationship Between Faith and Reason (discussed in Fides et Ratio: Religion and Law in Legal Orders Suffused by Faith) ("This is to say that with the light of reason human beings can know which path to take, but they can follow that path to its end, quickly and unhindered, only if with a rightly tuned spirit they search for it within the horizon of faith. Therefore, reason and faith cannot be separated without diminishing the capacity of men and women to know themselves, the world and God in an appropriate way." Fides et Ratio ¶ 16). 

The core pronouncements of Xi Jinping follow (in the original Chinese and with crude English translation. The important Implementation Opinions of the Ministry of Education on the Construction of First-class Undergraduate Courses (教育部关于一流本科课程建设的实施意见 ) also follow in English and Chinese., including the important annex on implementation (“双万计划”国家级一流本科课程 推荐认定办法).

Diversity at Penn State: Reports of the Joint Diversity Awareness Task Force--US/IL Courses Survey--Legislative Recommendations

 

 (Pix © Larry Catá Backer 2016)

It has been my great honor to serve as the Chair of the Penn State University Joint Diversity Awareness Task Force (JDATF). JDATF was charged this past April by our Provost and the University Faculty Senate Chair to consider a number of important diversity initiatives at Penn State (Charge (PDF); Members).

Our work over the academic year has produced four reports with recommendations for substantial changes in a number of areas.

Presented March 2016 for consideration by the PSU Faculty Senate April 2016:

1. US/IL Courses Survey--Recommendations (Legislative; and Advisory/Consultative)

2. Diversity Best Practices
3. Moving Forward Embedding Diversity Policy

Presented February 2016 and Approved by the PSU Faculty Senate March 2016

4.  Moving Forward 

Each of the next several posts will provide links and the text of the reports to be considered by the Penn State Faculty Senate on April 19.  An "after action" report will follow Senate action on the 29th--action which I hope will be positive.

This post includes the Report, US/IL Courses Survey--Legislative Recommendations, prepared by our Technical Issues Sub-Committee.

AAUP Reports on Mass Faculty Dismissals at the University of Southern Maine and on Felician College

(Pix (c) Larry Catá  Bcaker 2015)

From a recent AAUP Press Release

Last month the AAUP released the reports of investigations of alleged violations of academic freedom and tenure at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Today I’m writing to announce the release of two new investigating committee reports, both involving mass dismissals of faculty.

In these two new reports—on the University of Southern Maine and on Felician College—the investigating committees found that both administrations violated standards recommended by the AAUP and widely accepted in the academic community.

The State of Diversity at Penn State--An Interview With Leaders of the Joint Diversity Task Force

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2014)

Issues of diversity have become an important element of engagement among stakeholders at Penn State--especially our students who have been driving current efforts (e.g., Diversity Awareness Task Force: Statement to the University Faculty Senate, January 29, 2013).  Upon petition by students before the University Faculty Senate, and with Senate support, a Joint Diversity Awareness Task Force was appointed (discussed at Diversity in Silence--The Joint Diversity Task Force Report at Penn State University Becomes Less Visible). Its work includes involvement in the university's recent complex efforts to reform Penn State's General Education programs.

The members of the JDATF have been working hard move Penn State's diversity project forward.  I recently sat down with the three co-chairs of the JDATF - Dr. Patreese Ingram, Dr. Karyn McKinney, and Brian Aynardi - to discuss the work of the committee one year after being charged.  The notes of our interview and responses to my questions are set out below.

General Education Reform: The Students Speak, Will Faculty Listen? Marginalizing the Student Voice in the Reform Process

The Pennsylvania State University, like many universities of its size and reputation, periodically review and modify what has become a staple of higher education branding and "product differentiation"--general education. At its last Senate meeting, the University Faculty Senate held a forensic discussion about progress to date. The Forensic report, A Progress Report to the University Faculty Senate, is available HERE.

 (Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2014)

This post does not speak to the merits of the substance of those proposed modifications  to Penn State general education; that will be undertaken later.  Instead the post focuses on perhaps on its potentially substantial process weaknesses--the extent wot which adequate consultation and engagement has been undertaken among all key stakeholders in the general education reform process.

One key stakeholder group--the students of the Penn State system--have not felt either engaged seriously in the process of general education reform, or adequately consulted. It is one thing for faculty to develop programs grounded in their own sense of the value of changes proposed. Indeed, traditionally, in purely faculty centered education systems, faculty would relay almost entirely on their own sense, drawn from the insights gathered from study in their respective disciplines, of the merits of affording students with a particular set or program of study leading toward the attainment of a clearly defined educational objective.  But educational objectives have become more complicated now--intermeshed with a number of social systems the objectives of which may not  be focused on the pure dissemination of knowledge but on its practical utility as that may be understood within these systems (e.g., wage labor markets).  And for that purpose the role of students in having a larger voice in their studies has been given greater legitimacy.  Thus, it is quite an important matter when changes to foundational educational programs are justified through endorsement by students intimately involved in its development, when there may have been substantially less engagement than warranted by such suggestions of support and engagement.  

That criticism, an important and weighty one, going perhaps to the legitimacy of some of the bases of support for the changes proposed, was made by student leaders at the last Penn State University Faculty Senate Meeting.  The student statement follows. It was delivered by Melissa McCleery (PSU '15 expected) UPUA Representative, College of the Liberal Arts and Chair of the Academic Affairs Committee, for the student senate caucus.

Diversity in Silence--The Joint Diversity Task Force Report at Penn State University Becomes Less Visible

Penn State University, like many other similarly situated institutions of post secondary education, has been struggling with the very hard work of moving from the embrace of flowery statements of solidarity respecting diversity to actually making it a lived reality in the environment in which students, staff, faculty and particularly administrators operate. (Statement From the Penn State University Faculty Senate Chair ).

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2014)

Among the most pro active elements of Penn State's conversations about diversity have been our students.  (Student Statement of Solidarity With Duke University Student Body).  Current efforts to bring greater focus on diversity started in January 20'13 when the students addressed the Penn State University Faculty Senate about the issue. (Diversity Awareness Task Force: Statement to the University Faculty Senate January 29, 2013).

Following that intervention a Joint Diversity Awareness Task Force was constituted including elements from the major stakeholders of the University.  Its charge included:

· Bring a diverse group of administrators, faculty and students together to work collaboratively to engage in dialogue and provide recommendations to the University Faculty Senate and Administration to enhance diversity awareness in the University Community.
· Thoroughly investigate practices that will be most effective to increase diversity understanding among the student body.
· Provide recommendations to the Faculty Senate Committee charged with reforming the general education curriculum as a whole.

The JDATF as now produced an informational Report.  It will be delivered to the Senate but in silence. The Penn State University Faculty Senate Council approved the JDATF’s Informational report and it will be included in the March 18th Senate Agenda. But it will not be presented.  It will be posted online only and that there will not be any presentation at the Senate meeting. The JDATF will not be able to present the report or stand for questions.

This response provides an excellent illustration of the approach to diversity at many institutions--engagement and oblivion.  This is all the more important because of it collateral result--Marginalization.  Even as the University devotes a tremendous amount of resources to its reconstruction of General Education, even as it focuses substantial public time to experiential learning and other important elements of a public education--the education and practice of diversity is buried and marginalized.  Consider this:

Our guiding principle in revising General Education is to enable students to acquire the skills, knowledge, and experiences for living and working in interconnected and globalized contexts, so they can contribute to making life better for others, themselves, and the larger world. (Penn State Gen Ed Matters, Vision)

Diversity plays virtually no role in the construction of either experiential learning or general education reform, unless, perhaps, one does some very deep interpretive reading.  The expectations appear simple enough--provide a formally responsive forum for meeting, produce a report well received but avoid robust interconnection to the vital life of the university, and then move on with a sense of satisfaction of having engaged with diversity.

You judge for yourselves.  For those interested, it might be possible to raise questions and issues--especiually about the ways in which diversity has been integrated as an important part of the reform of general education and the formation of premises that support experiential learning during the "New Business" segment of the Senate Meeting or elsewhere.  It might also be time for another forensic on the state of diversity in the University Faculty Senate. 

The Informational report follows:

Managing Perception and Creating Reality Through Data Management--The Battle Over the "Best" Way to Understand MOOCs

I have recently posted about the habits of lazy and perhaps bad management as an impediment to the  development of MOOCs as an important element of university activity (Bad Management and the University Administrator: Giving Up on MOOCs?) and, as well, about the way in which assessment regimes are quickly replacing rule making as a means of governing institutions like universities (and its ill effects on shared governance) (Rulemaking Through the Back Door--Using Assessment Tools to Shape Education).

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2014)

These two trends have made an appearance recently in the conceptual battles over the way in which the academy "understands" MOOCs.  Now the academic machinery has appeared to have been put in overdrive as academics begin to deploy strategically chosen premises and the data harvested in the service thereof, to support any number of ways of "definitively" understanding MOOCs.  The stakes are high.  As consensus develops around the "better" way of "understanding" MOOCs, these will be used as the foundation of policy choices by university officials (and the governmental regulators who oversee them) to make policy about the scope and direction of MOOC use within the academy. People love data--they pay less attention to the premises in the service of which it is harvested and deployed to support some conclusion or other.  Both may be altered to strategic good effect.

This is not to mock those efforts or to suggest, necessarily, bad faith, on the part of researchers,  Quite the reverse. It is their good faith that lends these efforts their power, and the willingness to avoid critical engagement--with "data". However, it does suggest both the contingency of these investigations, and the way they are necessarily embedded in the policy  debates around which they are conceived. This post notes one of those efforts,  Ho, Andrew Dean and Reich, Justin and Nesterko, Sergiy O and Seaton, Daniel Thomas and Mullaney, Tommy and Waldo, Jim and Chuang, Isaac, HarvardX and MITx: The First Year of Open Online Courses, Fall 2012-Summer 2013 (January 21, 2014). HarvardX Working Paper Series No. 1. This study is particularly interesting because it explores the effects of changing a core premise of MOOC evaluation, and determines, that changing that premise may have a substantial effect on measuring "value". It starts with an excellent analysis: Jennifer Howard, Completion Rates Aren't the Best Way to Judge MOOCs, Researchers Say, Chronicle of Higher Education, Jan. 22, 2014.  We can only hope that these reports will contribute to a more nuanced and helpful discussion of consequences--especially about the role of MOOCs in the university and the relationship of faculty to these.

Outcome Measures, Transparency and the Failure of Universities to Cultivate Effective Service Missions

I have written about the way in which universities, including state and state-assisted universities with public and service missions, have been shifting their focus to education programs increasingly "made to market." (e.g., Made to Market Education and Professionalization in University Education).

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2013)

This shift has recently been the subject of an interesting essay, Zach Wenner, Selective Service, Washington Monthly (Nov/Dec 2013). 

The Washington Monthly’s annual college guide (published in the September/October issue) pulls together the public data that does exist on colleges’ commitment to promoting public service—the percentage of their students in ROTC; the number of their graduates who join the Peace Corps. But what we’d ideally like to know is the number of a school’s graduates who go on to serve their country and communities more broadly. That way, citizens could better judge which schools actually deliver on their lofty rhetoric and which don’t. (Ibid).

This is an especially important issue for public assisted institutions like those of the Committee on Institutional  Cooperation (CIC), including Penn State University.

The problem, of course, is one of transparency.  When universities have a monopoly on their data--and on the methods through which these are organized and presented, it is quite hard to assess and monitor university operations and performance.  While this is a great problem for internal governance, it is equally important for assessment by important outside stakeholders (including donors, alumni and employers).

Stanley Katz: “Thinking Internationally: Internationalizing the Undergraduate Curriculum”; Keynote Address: Global Penn State Conference 2013

On September 27-28, 2013, Penn State University hosts a provocative conference as part of its Global Penn State challenge, "Internationalizing the Campus, College, and Classroom," which aims to explore innovative practices for internationalizing the classroom. (more information here:Conference: "Internationalizing the Campus, College and Classroom" at Penn State University).

 (Stanley N. Katz)

A highlight of that event for me was the excellent key note address delivered by Stanley N. Katz, currently Lecturer with rank of Professor in Public and International Affairs; Director, Princeton University Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies-- “Thinking Internationally: Internationalizing the Undergraduate Curriculum.” The address ought to be required reading for anyone interested in internationalizing American education, and a reminder that gestures of internationalization, however tempting and useful for glossy brochures and administrative ambitions, is never a substitute for the hard work of internalizing the emerging cultures of education which, at their very best, are deeply international and perhaps global in scope, even as they remain local in function. Our very best intentions to avoid this inevitability can only do harm to the very best education we can deliver to our students, and to the sophistication and rigor of our own academic work.

Professor Katz's address follows:

Read more »

Stress Points and Structural Challenges for the Continued Viability of the University Faculty Senate: Remarks Delivered To Past Chairs of the Penn State University Faculty Senate

It was great honor to address the former chairs of the Penn State University Faculty Senate at a luncheon in their honor held at the Nittany Lion Inn.

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2013)

This post includes the transcript of my remarks, Stress Points and Structural Challenges for the Continued Viability of the University Faculty Senate.

The PowerPoints of the presentation may be accessed HERE.

Engaged Scholarship--De-Centering Faculty From Research and Teaching in a Relentless March Toward a Training Model for Middle Tier Universities?

The financial crises of the first two decades of the 21st century has forced innovation on universities.  Forced to compete for decreasing numbers of students less able to afford increasing costs of traditional education and more likely to encounter university education instrumentally a factor in strategic entry into labor markets, universities have proceeded with profound changes the effects of which will not be apparent to most for years to come.  (A great student perspective on the crisis of university education may be accessed here).

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2013)

Most of these changes have been well veiled by a combination of well developed rhetoric of passivity ("we can only respond to the market" rhetoric, whose falsity is only augmented by the profound effect on markets that responses produce especially by the largest university players) and by restructuring that increasingly re characterizes most important aspects of university operations as administrative and financial and thus beyond the reach of the traditional governance mechanics of academic governance. These changes have found ready acceptance and the culture of university governance has been affected so that faculty, trustees, administrators and students have begun to understand the university as cultural object in ways that would have been unthinkable a generation ago.

At middle tier universities the changes have been evidenced in a  number of ways.  One of the most interesting is what has been euphemistically pushed by senior administrators as "pedagogical efficacy" (see here). In the form of a movement toward "engaged scholarship" some aspects of this drive involve the active complicity of well placed faculty.  The ways in which influential faculty have rushed to rework their academic cultures to more comfortably conform within new markets driven operational cultures at universities provides a useful basis for understanding the nature and direction of changes to the "business" of the academy. In the process of being "helpful", these faculty efforts that mean to change the culture of the academic enterprise, may transform the nature of the academic enterprise, from an autonomous production model driven by its own objectives to one that becomes a secondary element of wage labor markets and the enterprises that drive them. This essay considers whether recent movements to compel academic conformity to so-called "engaged scholarship" might provide a good example of the profound and perhaps profoundly disturbing example of faculty complicity in movements from education to training models, models in which the academic enterprise may lose its autonomy and thus transformed, more explicitly serve other masters. 

Godzilla Versus the Swamp Creature: MOOCs, the Control of Online Education and the Move From Education to Training for Labor Markets

While much attention has been drawn to MOOCs from the perspective of large institutions and those charged with increasing the productivity of teacher-workers to deliver high margin education enhancing capacity, I have been considering some of the side effects of MOOCs.

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2013)

These include the way in which MOOC development has managed to weaken shared governance, and the way in which MOOC operations has deepened recent movements to move education and course/program policy making from the academic side of the university administration to its finance (and non-academic) side. More important, perhaps, have been two additional side effects.  The first is the way in which university administrations have used MOOCs to extend their control over faculty creativity--seeking in effect to capture all individual work whenever produced on the basis of the fact of an individual's hire.  While this has the feel of extraction without compensation, the issue remains unexplored.  The second is the way in which MOOCs may make it possible to leverage teaching by aggregating teaching capacity across universities and using that aggregation and leveraged delivery of education products to reduce the size of expensive staff.

It is with this later point in mind that it may be worth reading carefully the intervention of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) provosts in the contests for the control of MOOCs and their revenue generating and faculty cost generating potential. CIC Ad Hoc Committee for Online Learning, CIC Online Learning Collaboration: A Vision and Framework (June 15, 2013) (The CIC Provost Report).  This post includes the bulk of that report along with the way in which the COIC action was reported in the academic trade press, the Chronicle of Higher Education, in Steve Kolowich, "Universities in Consortium Talk of Taking Back Control of Online Offerings," Chronicle of Higher Education, June 19, 2013.  While the trade press characterizes this story as one of a battle between institutional giants for control of a revenue generating new form of student training (and thus the title of this post); a closer reading suggests a more potent theme, the way in which innovation is being used to continue to strip faculty of control of any meaningful role in setting the direction fo courses, course content and educational programs.

On the AAUP Condemnation of National Louis University: Lessons for the Exploitative Potential of General Education and Its Pernicious Effects on the Tenure System

Universities are entering an era of uncertainty, and one consequence is an indulgence of bad behavior excused by panic in the face of financial stress. See On the AAUP Condemnation of Southern University: Lessons for All Universities as They Begin to Panic in the Face of New Education Business Models, The Faculty Voice, April 4, 2013.

Panic is sometimes evidenced by an institutional embrace of the temptation to use process to cover arbitrary action, with the intent to avoid, and by avoiding undermining both shared governance and accountability.  The transmogrification of financial exigency is a case in point.  Originally understood as a means of providing university's in financial distress with a more flexible means of redirecting resources for the common institutional good, financial exigency has become for some a fig leaf to cover attacks on tenure and shared governance.  This is particularly the case with institutions seeking to move from the traditional system grounded on a governance sharing cohort of tenured faculty to a factory model in which tenured faculty members are converted into part time or temporary workers--fired from their jobs only to be rehired as "piece workers" at substantially reduced wages.  This is not conduct limits to universities.  Multinational corporations have sought to fire permanent workers and substitute temporary workers to reduce costs in their supply chain relationships.  It is ironic that U.S. university faculty are increasingly treated with the same ruthlessness as Indian or Pakistani factory workers, but without even the minimal protections of the Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Backer, Larry Catá, Privatization, the Role of Enterprises and the Implementation of Social and Economic Rights: A Comparison of Rights-Based and Administrative Approaches in India and China (January 1, 2013). Consortium for Peace and Ethics Working Paper No. 4-2013; Penn State Law Research Paper 4-2013.

And all of this is clothed in the soothing language of the traditional academic discourse.  It is in this context that the AAUP's recent condemnation of National Louis University ought to be considered in some detail.  It is particularly useful when considering the ways in which some institutions are using the language of finance and budgets quite loosely to effect a back door attack on the tenure and full time employment system for faculty to substitute a cheaper and more flexible piece work system that produces greater programmatic flexibility at a great price. It is also particularly interesting for what it has to say about the way university administrations might be tempted to use the general education system--not so much as a means of teaching students but as a means of generating revenue.  This is particularly important for Penn State as it begins the process of rethinking General Education--and faces the temptation of the need to preserve unit revenue at the cost of innovative reform that might affect unit revenues.  See Designing General Education for the Future: Penn State Report on General Education, The Faculty Voice, Oct. 3, 2012.

The AAUP Press release and links to the report are set out below.