The title of a lesser-known collection of essays by social historian David Noble, Progress without People, lays out the author’s familiar critique of the modern development and use of technology that, within certain economic coordinates, has transformed entire modes of production and ways of life. “Progress without Faculty,” may prove an apt description for the present and future state of Florida Atlantic University. While it is true that the FAU Board of Trustees’ “Strategic Plan” pays modest lip service to a concern for faculty quality, what is unmistakably clear by now is that “progress” is largely equated with the construction of new buildings, with little regard for the nature or quality of the faculty who will occupy those buildings and conduct the teaching and research that together distinguish a sub-mediocre university from one that is truly above average, if not exceptional. In fact, Goal 3, Objective 5 of the BOT’s Strategic Plan reads:
Provide competitive faculty salaries that will assure recruitment and retention of a diverse and highly productive faculty who will contribute to building superior academic programs and research capacity.
Yet the recently updated “Report Card” shows that faculty salaries at FAU have now fallen about 15% below salaries at SUS peers FIU, UCF, and USF.
This is because Brogan and the BOT have stubbornly taken FAU in the opposite direction from greater parity with the University’s state peers. After denying modest faculty raises and undermining tenure at FAU with layoffs the administration and BOT have refused to rescind, the outgoing president is left to emphasize new building construction, in addition to the features of “traditional” university life, such as athletics, fraternities, and similar “recreational opportunities”—what Indiana University Professor Murray Sperber terms “Beer and Circus.” Sperber’s analogy to Rome is apt; at “Big Time U” the spectatorship of athletics and excessive partying gives shortchanged students the option of filling the void that often comes from feeling like another number on a Scantron and body in an overcrowded lecture hall. The undue emphases and support of buildings and recreational activities in lieu of solid investments in and maintenance of FAU’s human capital denotes what serious educational reformers just a few generations ago would have vigorously condemned.
“The object of the educational system, taken as a whole,” University of Chicago President Robert Hutchins argued in the early 1950s, “is not to produce hands for industry or to teach the young how to make a living. It is to produce responsible citizens.” Hutchins’ belief in the significance of higher education for the health of the body politic likewise made him an early proponent of tenure and equitable pay for faculty while also he also defended his faculty against the anti-intellectualism of the time, then disguised as “anti-communism.”
I am now convinced that the greatest danger to education in America is the attempt, under the guise of patriotism, to suppress freedom of teaching, inquiry, and discussion. Consequently, I am now in favor of permanent tenure, with all its drawbacks, as by far the lesser of the two evils. We cannot expect to get good teachers without decent salaries and security.
While at Chicago Hutchins also opted to take the university out of what was then informally known as the Big Ten conference. In fact, he abolished the football program and fraternities, and pursued a different path toward academic excellence—one that privileged the educational relationship between faculty and students and remains confirmed in Chicago’s venerable reputation.
FAU’s administrators and trustees would likely have very little regard for Hutchins’ belief in tenure and the relationship between free scholarly inquiry, adequate compensation, and superior education to build a strong citizenry. We instead find fundamental confusion in the very recognition of higher education’s moral compass and a similar lack of the qualitative criteria that would discern and positively acknowledge education’s non-quantifiable dimensions. In their places is a bizarre notion that erecting new buildings and creating a more “traditional,” good time university environment will somehow translate to academic excellence.
This is not to suggest that modern buildings are unimportant, that there is no place for a variety of athletics and other extracurricular activities at university. And Hutchins himself may have been somewhat overzealous in doing away with Chicago football. But such things have up until the past thirty or so years been understood as at best complementary to academics, and it is to exercise questionable judgment if these together are to be thought of as direct drivers of academic success. In the case of FAU there is serious cause for concern for all of its stakeholders because such activities are being foregrounded in terms of rhetoric and resources precisely at a time when in reality FAU is academically deteriorating, has the second lowest faculty salaries in Florida, as a result of the ongoing scandal of “tenuregate” will likely find it increasingly difficult to recruit and retain quality professors, and whose trustees and administrators make no secret of their contempt for the faculty union and faculty governance.
The passage below of President Brogan’s lengthy remarks to the Board of Trustees, prefacing General Counsel David Kian’s proposal for the private funding of FAU’s football stadium, is illustrative of exactly this tendency—a fondness for many, many more grandiose buildings and the accompanying promise of “traditional” university life, but nary a mention of FAU faculty members and how they figure into this “master plan.” The remarks suggest that in the BOT’s “Vision,” faculty take what will be at best a backseat to the window dressing that is substituted for genuine education at our aspiring “Big Time U”: new buildings–sky boxes, retail spaces, cushy dorms–keg parties, and road trips to away games. FAU students and faculty deserve much more.
In solidarity,
James Tracy
UFF-FAU President
FAU Board of Trustees Meeting, July 22, 2009
Call to Order and Roll Call
President Frank Brogan: As you all know, we have at Florida Atlantic University over the past six years developed quite a comprehensive Strategic Plan, and a very important component of that Strategic Plan not only includes the continued access opportunities that a distributed campus model can provide–and have for many years, and will for years to come, reaching students who may otherwise be shut out of a higher education degree at a university with multiple campuses and programming scattered over a hundred forty miles of southeast Florida coastline. But at the same time, we made a very important decision as a university through our Strategic Plan, with the leadership of the Board to, considerably increase the traditional side of Florida Atlantic University at the same time, and that’s not in lieu of, that those two things would work in harmony with the future, to see this university continue to provide such broad access, but also at the same time grow its traditional foundation. We recognized that that was not only going to draw a new generation of students to Florida Atlantic University, but also would provide, through the research that we’ve looked at, opportunity to see our retention rate increase, our graduation rate increase, the opportunity to provide through housing, living and learning communities. The opportunity to create, uh, true benchmarks and guideposts for the university as rally points for students—both traditional and non-traditional, such as increase—increased athletic programs, greater opportunities to participate in organizations such as Greek life. Groups, clubs, and opportunities; truly develop a traditional look for the university. This, of course, is nothing new. All you need do is look around the state of Florida to find some of the universities that are a bit older than are we to see this same blueprint having been exercised. Most notably, if you go just to the north to Orlando and look at the University of Central Florida. They were very much like we were not too many years ago. They had multiple campuses. They had a huge population of community college transfer students as we still do today and hopefully will have forever. But at the same time they made an important decision to grow the traditional side of their university. Now you go back to the campus in Orlando and you see all of the extensive housing opportunities not only for undergraduate students, but graduate students, research students. You see the increase in their athletic facilities, not only those for their N-C double A teams but also for intramurals and recreation. You see fitness centers and, and opportunities that didn’t exist just a decade ago that are not only prevalent; they have assisted and supported the growth of the University of Central Florida. And if you look at the metrics of Central Florida you will also notice the rise in their academic success during that same period of time. You’ll see the increase in G-P-A, S-A-T, A-C-T of their entry level students. You will see the number and quality of students entering, some of their wonderful academic programs increasing. All of those things that are at the end of the day most important, and that is graduation rates and others, increasing exponentially with the rise of the traditional side of their university. And again, not to diminish the non-traditional, because those who still commute to UCF, and that’s the majority of their students, just as the majority of FAU students will always be commuter students. But they have access to the same new wonderful opportunities. And so this university not only made that commitment in its strategic plan, we have been working very hard for the past six years to make sure that we set that in stone. We had this meeting scheduled in this particular facility for the obvious reason. We wanted to be near the area that is the epicenter of Innovation Village. We decided that at Florida Atlantic University as we increase the academic facilities of our university, that at the same time we-we would increase the amenities of the university, so important to university, and especially student life. And so we decided what better place to have this particular meeting today than in our alumni center, which is not new for the university; it’s the first time we’ve had an alumni center at Florida Atlantic University. It’s not only, as you’ve heard me say, a facility that’ll be here for years to come that’ll serve our alumni base, but it also makes a statement. It makes the statement that we’re becoming an intergenerational university, as we see sons and daughters of our graduates graduating, and even grandsons and daughters of our graduates graduating at Florida Atlantic University. We are growing by age, we’re growing by volume, we’re growing by quality, and we’re certainly growing by reputation. And, of course, just across the plaza from this beautiful facility lies the new fitness center, phase one, and as you probably saw, many of you driving in here today phase two well under construction and should be completed sometime midyear. This is providing, not only again, for traditional students but nontraditional students, an important place not only to recreate, but to gather. And that is a big part of university life. Of course, just down the street on the corner, is going up our brand new Engineering building [sic], and as you know will be a platinum certified Leeds facility, uh, only one of two in the southeastern United States, but it will also be the home of what is becoming a premier engineering school at a great university that will give rise I think even greater reputation and opportunity for the future of Florida Atlantic University [sic]. If you, then, turn your attention north across this plaza you can start to envision what we have scheduled to take place on that ground. That being, of course, a significant new cluster of student housing, and of course, ultimately, a football stadium. All of that will be embraced by parking opportunities and new retail opportunities for the northern side of the campus that can be shared by faculty, students, staff from all over Florida Atlantic University. And so Innovation Village, which was grounded in this building and the building just across the plaza, is getting ready to give way soon to some additional incredible opportunities. Now, as we are fond of saying at FAU, we break a great deal of ground and we cut a great many ribbons on some marvelous facilities, but it’s what happens in those facilities that is of most import. And in this particular case if you stop and consider what this injection into this university will do as it joins great facilities all over the FAU family, from new facilities in Davie that are just going up as we sit here today, to what’s going on in downtown Fort Lauderdale, to what’s taking place on our Jupiter campus as we get ready to break ground for the Max Planck facility there which will have ten-thousand square feet dedicated to FAU. Obviously all the new construction at Harbor Branch and our new facility at Port St. Lucie campus. All of these are marvelous, world class facilities that make statements about the future of FAU and our commitment to our students. But also each of them well, and thoughtfully placed in our master plan to serve an important and distinct purpose, and when put together provide an amazing tapestry of opportunities for the future of this university. And so, we have worked very hard over recent years, not waiting until all of these facilities were completed, but using those that we had and those that we’ve added, as we’ve placed living-learning communities into our existing housing facilities so that students could not only live together, but study together, recreate together, and be able to continue to see our retention rates creep upward over the last several years. We’ve used this opportunity to see new marketing abilities to send a message to students all over our service district, the state of Florida, and for that matter the country and the world that Florida Atlantic University is not only a great place to come and receive a world class educational experience, but a place to come and be a part of something special. A family dedicated to securing for you as a student the entire university experience that you can take away and be satisfied with for the rest of your life.