Readers of this web site are more likely than others to be aware of the fact that a good deal of the increase in tuition over the last several decades can be accounted for by the increase in administration and administration-related expenses. A superb article on this is Benjamin Ginsberg’s Washington Monthly piece, “Administrators Ate My Tuition” (Sept./Oct. 2011), which is based on his book, The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters. I summarize both in an article I wrote earlier this year: “The Coming Assault on Beadledom.”
What are all these administrators doing? Robert Shibley, Senior Vice President of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), offers his observations in a recent piece titled, “University Totalitarianism Leaves No Free Speech Behind.” While the examples of liberty-restricting campus speech codes are, unfortunately, legion, Shibley calls our attention to a recent and particularly egregious example of administrative illiberalism at the University of Florida. He writes:
The explosion in the number of administrators on the modern college campus – since 2005, American universities have employed more administrators than full-time faculty – has only exacerbated this conflict. Many student papers have chosen to establish their independence by severing ties with their universities. The Independent Florida Alligator, the daily student newspaper of the University of Florida (UF), made this decision nearly 40 years ago, splitting from the university after numerous clashes with administrators. The largest student-run newspaper in the United States, the Alligator currently distributes its issues, which focus on matters of interest to the UF community, in its signature orange racks. As any sports enthusiast can tell you, the color orange means something at UF.
Perhaps it was inevitable that UF would ultimately force the independent Alligator to remove its orange racks from campus – and it has demanded that this happen by August 15. The university is requiring the Alligator to lease space in university-owned black racks, instead. The Alligator must also sign a licensing agreement with UF that imposes a distribution fee on the newspaper – even though the Alligator is a free publication. Requirements like this give administrators power over newspapers that have already declared their independence from university control. Imposing fees on a free paper and regulating its means of distribution not only allows administrators to place financial pressure on the Alligator, but also jeopardizes the newspaper’s ability to reach UF students.
Surveying the scene at UF, Shibley is forced to conclude that it represents but one more example of “today’s bloated administrative class [which] seems determined to control the thoughts and actions of every student, organization, and newspaper that has any presence on campus, using tools like speech codes and free speech zones to limit the expressive rights of students and faculty.”
University life at its noblest is animated by a conviction drawn from Socrates-that “the unexamined life is not worth living for a human being.” This passion for truth cannot realize its object unless the members of the university community are free to debate their differing views. But campus speech codes aim to ensure that some unexamined assumptions remain unexamined. In so doing, they not only oppose liberty, they also strip higher education of its highest reason for being. As such, the illiberal barbarians are not atthe gates; they are inside the gates. They have become the gatekeepers.
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