For the past three years we at Niagara County Community College have witnessed an insidiously enervating assault on collegiality and educational progress. The Klyzek administration, backed by a myopic Board of Trustees, has conspired to take control of “education” at the college. Their strategy is to destroy the faculty union and probably return the college to the obsolete vision of community college as job training facility for local business and industry. Should they be successful they will not only ruin a college but pound the last nail in the coffin of a citizenry crying out for an institution in which the kind of general education can be obtained that frees and prepares its students for life in the citizenry, autonomously, responsibly and democratically.
Apparently out of touch with the most obvious of trends in community college education for the sake of saving a few budget dollars, the administration and Board of Trustees are foolishly at the brink of dismantling what has taken 40 years to build in Niagara County. While at last survey 52% of college students enjoy their first two years of a liberal arts education at a community college, the trend does not seem to be declining. They receive a background of general education that helps them decide upon their future direction in life while experiencing a range of courses that serve as indispensable building blocks for personal development and growth as citizens. They receive the benefits of reduced tuition and the availability of faculty for one on one counseling, tutoring and academic inspiration through close contact in and out of the class room. This advantage is now being threatened BY the technocratic managerial ideology of the Klyzek administration.
Community colleges themselves have grown from technical schools of training to preparatory liberal arts institutions rivaling the first two years of college at any local and some of the best 4 year colleges in the nation. As an example of this I will speak of my own experience. After completing my Ph.D. at UB in Philosophy with a specializiation in the work of the German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer as applied to problems in learning and teaching, I was hired at NCCC as the replacement philosophy instructor. I had had several years of part time teaching at ECC, North and South, Medaille and UB. I had also completed master’s level work in psychology before completing my work at the doctoral level in philosophy. Now, after having completed my 20th year at N-trip, and having doubled the size of philosophy offerings at the college, not to mention years of continued study, writing and teaching, I am often compared to what a student would receive in philosophy education at UB. I would more often than not be seen as coming up short in this comparison. Even though, more often than not, a first year philosophy student at UB would be taught by a graduate student without a Ph.D., with little or no teaching experience and with much less life experience, education with me at NCCC would be considered less valuable, not as good, in short, inferior. In fact, the truth is, they are getting quite a deal. As compared to most of the educators at UB undergraduate level the education at N-trip is superior.
Moreover, I am a full-time, tenured faculty member. It takes a faculty of full-time professors to create the robust and productive educational institution we now have. But the present administration and undoubtedly a clueless Board of Trustees would eviscerate this faculty and replace it with part-timers most without Ph.D.s. This pennywise pound-foolish strategy is the step-child of managerialism in business. Kept on a shoe-string budget year to year by the county and state, the administration follows an obsessively penurious budgetary monitoring practice that keeps the college in a state of Orwellian oversight if not warfare over funding. The typical Academic Dean is kept running about shuffling papers, troubleshooting and defending the President’s latest money-saving maneuvers to the detriment of his supposed task, improving the quality of education at the college. In light of the mangerialism, every Academic Dean is inevitably turned into an assistant money manager incapable of seeing the educational forest for the budgetary trees.
Because administrative vision at the college has been painfully myopic in my experience since my hiring in 1989, they make mistakes that could have been avoided if they did not, in technocratic arrogance, refuse to listen to faculty. Again I will use my own case as an example. For approximately 15 years I have argued that simply hiring one more full time philosophy professor would give me the time and support to increase philosophy offerings and students that would not simply grow the department of philosophy but also bring in more students. It would in the long run mean more income for the college. Even as it is with only myself as the entire philosophy department, since I have been at the college, the size of philosophy has doubled. With one part timer and myself we offer approximately 10 philosophy sections per semester which includes 4-5 different courses, namely Introduction to Philosophy, Philosophy of Art, Philosophy of Religion, Aesthetics and Political Philosophy. This includes offerings taught online in Introduction to Philosophy, Religion and Politics. If one more full timer in philosophy were hired to work with me we could not only agian nearly double the size of offerings but surely also double the size of the number of students becoming interested in philosophical studies. As it is I am overextended in what I do with no time for program development and improvement. Because philosophy is not seen as producing jobs, they don’t see the value in developing the program. Again they are surely painfully penny wise and pound foolish. The irony is that philosophy done my way would not only improve general education in enhancing our ability to deliver regarding teaching critical thinking but also bring in more students than some of their precious job training problems many of which simply fail.
If the Administration and hapless Board of Trustees, who do not really understand the implications of this needless assault on the faculty, have their way, they will eviscerate the quality of education at the college, permanently destroy any spirit of cooperation and collegiality and demoralize a fine group of educators all in the name of a managerialist ideology that does not believe nor trust that a well-rounded general education guided by an autonomous and responsible faculty is control and guidance enough for the institution to grow qualitatively and otherwise prosper.
The administration wants control of virtually every aspect of education at N-trip. They refuse to see that education is not a business any more than government is a business. Yet they persist for the sake of saving negligible amounts of money in reducing collegiality at N-trip to a situation of academic apartheid. In short all control and decision making, if the Klyzek administration has its way, would reside with a business inspired model of control disenfranchising faculty and placing them at the hands of an autocratic vision of educational leadership.
The recent vote of no confidence in President Klyzek was not a knee-jerk response nor loosely, thoughtlessly used rebuke because we can’t get what we want. It is a red flag that the leadership at the college is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. The Board of Trustees needs to wake up and smell what roses are left. New dorms and a Culinary Institute do not a college make.
4 comments:
Professor -- At risk of dipping my toe into water with which I am mostly unfamiliar, I have to ask: Can you, succinctly, describe what exactly the administration is doing?
I found some of what you've posted troubling -- I think from both sides. If the admin side is effectively closing the academic side out from being part of the decision-making process about today and tomorrow, well, that seems at first blush to be counter-productive.
At the same time, you seem dismissive of the notion that a quality community college can provide job training. I appreciate your points about the need for quality education of a more general liberal arts flavor, but is there not room for both? It's been a long time since I wandered the halls of N-Trip (yes, I am a graduate), but don't all academic programs have certain base requirements across the liberal arts offerings?
I tend to stay away from internecine labor disputes because, well, that's what they often end up being -- mutually self-destructive.
But I am curious for more detail about this one simply because I can see both sides. I used my two years there exactly as you described it -- an opportunity to gain valuable knowledge in a broad array of areas which helped me decide a path for future years. I can also see a role in the job training area, especially at the community college level and especially in an economically troubled time like today and locale like Western New York.
Maybe the two can't co-exist, but maybe they can. But, at this point I'm more interested in the facts of the matter and less in the personal side of a contract dispute.
(Fuller disclosure -- I took two philosophy courses in my time at NCCC, neither of which made much of an impression on me at the time. That probably had more to do with the fact that philosophy at 8 a.m. Tu-Th is lost on an 18-year-old that had not yet fully discovered the wonders of caffeine.)
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see the president wants to get rid of the union. His actions have been divisive when for instance he tries to contract individually with individuals regarding ad hoc tasks without going through the union according to contract. …He wants first and final say as to who is fired without reason. Tenure, seniority don’t seem to mean that much to him. …. There are several cases in litigation now because of the president breaking the contract the most recent of which was changing the conditions of health insurance provisions without consulting the union. The result of that was that if we didn’t agree to the changes within a month of notice we would lose our health insurance. This is autocratic at best and conveys the attitude of very little respect or concern for the role of faculty as anything other than workers at his command. …. I am not against job training although I believe most of it should be the responsibility of business and industry. Why should we train their workers at taxpayers expense? Certain kinds of job training such as blackjack dealers to me is an insult and involves some moral questions never dealt with. …. The nursing division is a college unto itself. As a result you never, I never, see a nurse in a philosophy class. They are forced to take so many course in their “training” that general education doesn’t really play much of a part. [This promotes another kind of apartheid at the college. Really there are three colleges at NCCC. The Humanites, Nursing and everybody else.] …. If they could get rid of general education be it as it may ( and it is minimal and inadequate)
they would. I never ever see a nursing student in one of my courses, unless an advisor makes a mistake in scheduling. …. Whereas all attention, effort, energies and money is put into job training programs never is any meaningful thought given to growing the Humanities division. Never is any effort given to really reviewing and making gen ed what it should be, the preparation of citizens for a democracy. I was on the gen ed committee for 6 years without any success in conveying the fact that gen ed at present is a disorganized smorgasbord of offerings that defeats the meaning and mission of general education. The Academic Dean’s office should be on top of this but they refuse to hear any of it. As I said the Academic Dean is usually turned into a glorified assistant business manager. The last Dean, substituting for Dr. Bishop who left recently, Dr. Deep Basham (sp?), refused to talk to me when I wanted to negotiate with him regarding offering a new course that had a few less than minimum required students. He told my division chair, “I don’t talk to faculty!” That’s the attitude. They are condescending, controlling and that’s why I spoke of “apartheid.” Even though every semester I overload my courses because students want or need a class, when I want to run a course that is a couple students short they tell me, in effect, to go fuck myself. Now the president in negotiations indicates he wants to increase class size again. …. I have had a private conversation or two with the president and I liked him and thought things would work out. But he seems to be circling the wagons and now I believe he has received his mission from the Board: and it is to do everything possible to destroy our solidarity and re-define “collegiality.” …. I do not believe the Administration understands nor appreciates the Humanities (Philosophy/Literature/Languages) as such, let alone the role of gen ed in the preparation of citizens for civic discourse and participation. That is, job training so dominates the mission that all else is really lip service and window dressing. Over and out. Take care of yourself. I read some of your posts on Pundit. Good stuff!
I seem to remember that one of the first acts of the administration was to take over the student-run newspaper at NCCC. Then, it was on to taking faculty out of the governance process. Then, on to using academic counsel as a forum for discussing financial matters. Then, on to hiring a private lawyer at $600k+ per year, thereby short-circuiting the faculty association's immediate power to appeal to a third party (formerly the county lawyer at 60k per year) to quickly resolve labor issues.
Yes, it is healthy and wholesome that NCCC have astute money managers but, left unchecked, the insatiable appetite for money and power of the Klyczek administration will turn NCCC into an empty shell of an institution of higher learning.
Just a note to update the faculty/administration conflict. The faculty union voted to leave NYSUT, and to spend 90k/year on a lawyer to defend itself against the senseless attacks of the Klyczek administration, the county, and the NCCC Board of Trustees. Ultimately, the courts will decide in the favor of the faculty association, and it will cost the county millions of $$$.
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