The AAUP, the ACTA, and the PSA

Continuously and effectively, I criticize the institutional inheritance of university and college employer-enrollers that’s monopolized the facilitation of higher education for nearly a millennium now. I have more recently directed my criticism at the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), which claims to be a champion of all things related to this inherited higher education institution (HEI) model. I have been working on this social good reform or revolution project for over thirty years, ever since I co-invented and developed the Professional Society of Academics (PSA) model as replacement or complement for the HEI model.

There are only two ways to stop me from criticizing the ignorant, irresponsible assumption of universities and colleges: Someone or some group that has more reach and authority than myself takes up the PSA project or someone refers me to material that successfully argues a professional model for higher education service and stewardship is not viable or desirable. In the meantime, my immediate strategy is to make the AAUP the focus of PSA criticism. To that end, here is the first in a series of posts that criticizes the policies, practices and actions of this organization over its 110 years of ignorant, irresponsible and unnecessary stewardship. I will be forwarding these posts to critics of the AAUP, of which there are a growing number, particularly during this period of social, political and fiscal unrest that is but one more instance in a long history of HEI model unrest.

The Professional Model Offers More Power to Academics and Students

The authoritative power of academics and students is vitiated by the model of university and college employer-enrollers. This institutional inheritance is assumed by everyone, including labor unions like the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT), and the University and College Union (UCU) that represents faculty employees across the United Kingdom. Though proclaiming themselves to be champions of the social good, collectively and individually, members of these organizations fail in their fundamental responsibility to challenge this institutional monopoly on higher education earning and learning. As an academic, I have met my social contract obligations to challenge the given and now disclaim the higher education institution (HEI) inheritance. I recommend you do the same and provide reasons and ways for you to do so.

My denial and recommendation are based on an alternative model for higher education called the Professional Society of Academics (PSA). This alternative means of servicing and stewarding the social good is superior to the unchallenged, exclusive use of institutional employer-enrollers. This post shows how PSA offers better conditions for the exercise of group and individual power, with effective checks and balances on the use of funding leverage to manage and manipulate power in higher education.

PSA Amplifies the Positive Impact of Higher Education on Students

A couple of years ago, Inside Higher Education published a piece on how college transforms students. The author, Steven Mintz, is an historian who opens with reference to how industrialization enabled women to blend traditional affairs in domestic life and cottage industry with work outside the home in factories, adding to the bargain another task master in the form of capitalist bosses. Being in the company of sisters for twelve-plus hours a day earning under an overlord who is not one’s blood or a blue blood enabled women to share, organize, speak up, withhold, refuse, and other flexing that pushes back against exploitation and pushes forward to emancipation.

In this mix of home, cottage and factory, things like productive forces, personal wealth, political authority, and personal autonomy went through complex changes for women and society. His factory-work emancipation is a rich reference, akin to that found in the migration of Blacks to the factories of New England during the 20^th century.

We can add to the tapestry of these changing times, the universities and colleges that produce opportunities for earning and learning in a place and space often likened to a factory. Even with all the resources spent on trying to localize and levitate their place and space, and after spending over twenty-five years of my life earning and learning inside these institutions, when I think of a university or college the first image is of a place, a where, not a who or a whom, but a edifice with its employee and enrollee, not you, me, or we. I wonder, when late-Victorian women thought of the opportunities factories presented, were images of sisters the first to flash through their minds or was it the horrid buildings, exploitive employment and tyrannical bosses? Was the first and lasting thought of employees or of employers, when north-migrating Blacks strove to control their futures by earning and learning in factories, of all sorts?

This post explores how access to these institutions and the positive impact of higher education that they provide to people is aided or better facilitated by the Professional Society of Academics (PSA).

Institutions Are Essential, But Not for Higher Education (Part 1)

Just about a year ago, the People’s College of Law closed. Just over twelve years ago, I came across this unique institution and used it to argue that Professional Society of Academics (PSA) belongs in the social economy. Just over fifty years ago, this Los Angeles-based, fixed-facility, degree-granting, unaccredited, nonprofit institution offered its first law courses, using faculty, a dean and an administrator-registrar, all of whom worked as volunteers until a few years ago when the two staff positions became full-time salaried employment. The school offered a JD degree backed by the authority of State Bar of California (SBC) accreditation and degree-granting status and American Bar Association (ABA) curriculum, with a concentration in activist law that prepared students to write the bar, practice law, go into politics, business, or, dare I say it, use the education qualification and professional licensure to earn from a joint academic-attorney practice made possible by a service and stewardship model like PSA.

[https://www.calbar.ca.gov/About-Us/News/News-Releases/committee-of-bar-examiners-withdraws-registration-of-peoples-college-of-law-due-to-noncompliance]

Using my old contract law instructor as an example, I recently posted about the personal intersection of academic and attorney, faculty employee and independent practitioner, the member of a union and the member of a profession. In this post, the People’s College of Law (PCL) is used to explore intersections at the institutional level, and how with a professional service and stewardship model like PSA, the law school could be thriving, not archiving, gainful, not charitable, boutique, not unique.

Professionals for Hire, But Not for Higher Education

Once I thought I had the fortitude to study and practice law, so I enrolled in a contracts course. The course was fine but I don’t have what it takes to be an attorney. I know this because I was married to one. We were together when she applied to law school, was called to the bar, and then practiced as an associate for a law firm. Where earning a living is concerned, I know the practice of law and the practice of higher education.

The course instructor was an attorney with a solo practice of mixed civil law. Such professor-professional hybrids exist in other fields of post-secondary education such as medicine, accounting, and business. This is an intersection of institutional faculty employee and independent professional practitioner, in one life, in one person, but two models. The clarity this juxtaposition offers is useful in addressing the challenges, crises and absurdities of the higher education institution model that we have inherited.

Presidents Are Essential, But Not to Higher Education

Thirteen years ago, I argued it is a red herring to spend resources and rancor on criticizing the compensation of presidents, deans, chancellors, and other offices of the institutions. The stink of bloated administration and compensation distracts from the scent of serious structural problems in the university and college model for higher education. A model we have inherited without challenge or alternative, in which these positions and people form clauses and parties to a social contract for the social good. In many minds, it would be hard to separate higher education from higher education institutions, though one is a means and the other an end.

Consequently, the scope of discussion on presidential compensation is not fundamental. In present circumstances the cost of the position is considered by some to be unacceptably high. This does not challenge the existence of the position, but assumes it and offers internal assessment of value, with claims of relative systemic inequity.

But ask yourself, can one of these institutions operate without a president, or its deans and other officers? Universities and colleges often operate poorly thanks to the people in these positions, but what is the provider without the position? And what relevance does this have to higher education and the people who depend upon it to earn and learn?

These questions are fundamental to higher education. Union bosses bitching about that compensation for that person as that president of that institution is fundamental only to universities and colleges and the academics who happen to be employed by them. Social goods and personal welfare are fundamental, tools for their provision and protection are not.

Mixing Collars, PSA Makes Light Blue Higher Education

This post explores earning as an academic and as a blue-collar worker, both of which I have done for extended periods of time and often with overlap. I make the case that the vocationalization of higher education – the notion that the pillar’s principal personal and public value is to help land a job that satisfies a return on investment – is forced on us by the institutional model that we have inherited without necessity or challenge. I disclaim our inheritance of university and college employers, and offer an alternative in the professional service and stewardship model for higher education.

Starting my second year of faculty employment with Saint Mary’s University, I received mail at my home from SMU informing me that I was placed on probation and no longer permitted to enter campus or use university facilities. The first claim was true, but in Canada campuses and facilities such as university libraries are open to the public and the institutional employer-enroller cannot deny me access merely because I managed to fail all courses in my first year of an undergraduate anthropology degree.

25 Years Ago In the Academe: Same Shit Different Day

It’s worth reaching back to the start of this century, to an exchange between two academics in Canada, to see how meaningful improvement is not coming to higher education so long as the university and college model remains unchallenged. I do not mean challenge to some peculiarity of its players, positions, policies, procedures, processes, or practices, but a winner-takes-all contest. At any rate, improvement is not coming from academics who fail to see beyond the campuses they cling to for validation and vacation, memory and mortgage; beyond the peaks and valleys of unionists, trustees, capitalists, and politicians that interfere with proper stewardship of higher education.

To see how the Professional Society of Academics (PSA) offers better, the model is inserted as a third party to this cookie-cutter academic exchange between two academics. Exposition is provided by exposing the fundamental irrelevance and practical impotence of such exchanges to the well-being of higher education, and how such dialogue is happening still, a quarter century later in a similarly charged academe, and still at the expense of the social pillar.

This must stop. Not by getting your version of your institution in a secure enough position to act as some paradigm for generations to come. It’s by doing exactly the opposite. It’s by recognizing that Oxford, Stanford, Melbourne, McGill, Peking and the rest are the price of an inheritance. They are instruments in a service and stewardship model. They are not higher education. They are not the only means of providing the teaching, researching and community servicing of higher education. They are not many things that they need to be in fulfillment of their social contract, but principally, they are not required.

Dear Donald, Wanna Re-Open Trump University for the Greater Good?

Dear Donald Trump,

You opened a university and closed it with a court settlement. Without caring about fault, how'd you like to right that wrong and contribute much more to higher education besides?

Included in the case was a penalty of up to $1 million for operating an unlicensed university in the state of New York. I care about this misdemeanor offence which government assesses in its control of higher education. I think this crime should concern everyone. I think it directly concerns you, Donald.

When you were opening Trump University I was working as an adjunct at two universities in my hometown and completing a PhD on the Hard Problem of consciousness. Years before, in the early 90s, I was co-creating and promoting an alternative model for the service and stewardship of higher education. Along with Dr Peter March and Dr Robert Ansel, this profession-based model is our response to the obvious truth that everyone's higher education inheritance is fucked, like some twisted conditions in a crackpot last will from a prickly distant relative, we inherited universities and colleges.

I offer wholesale change, in a new social contact, in the now.

Dear Donald, Wanna Open Trump University Again?

Dear Donald Trump,

Straight to the point, you look to adjustment higher education. I look to turn it inside out so there is no increased demand for public funding, no more exploitation and digitization of academics, nor leaning on labour unions, alumni donors, venture capitalists, accreditation boards, and departments of (higher) education. I offer a shift in paradigm from our inheritance.

What Can PSA Do That AAUP on FIRE Can't?

These days of raging FIRE are too poetic not to use in aid of their own ends to defend and sustain the free speech and thought of all Americans. From 1999 to 2022, the organization did this sort of thing for a very small subset of Americans in very specific, temporary, unbalanced, ROI relationships at very specific, temporary, unbalanced, locations. They did this sort of thing for those Americas who try to earn and learn in higher education. Let's hear about it from an overseas ally, Academics for Academic Freedom (AFAF),

Founded in 1999, [Foundation for Individual Rights in Education] FIRE’s mission was to defend and sustain the individual rights of all students and faculty members at America’s colleges and universities. These rights included freedom of speech, freedom of association, due process, legal equality, religious liberty, and sanctity of conscience—the essential qualities of liberty. FIRE continues to educate students, faculty, alumni, trustees, and the public about the threats to these rights on our campuses and provides the means to preserve them.

Another Day in PSA

The alarm rings. Two tiny humans hoover cereal, as she enters the kitchen.

“Mom, it’s funny.”

“Yes, but don’t stare. He’s sensitive.”

“What? No. Your holidays are the same as ours.”

“Sort of. Today’s not a holiday, Sweetie. It’s a PD day. Your teachers still have to go to school.”

“But we don’t, right!?”

“Correct! Today we go to the zoo!” Collecting her coffee, she pecks each crown. “When you’re done, dishes in the sink, and suit up for safari!”

“For some fairies?”

“Yes, we’re having lunch with three,” she chuckles from down the hall, slipping into the office for some practice maintenance.

But once seated, it’s no use. She cannot concentrate on work, when work is in jeopardy. When everything is in jeopardy. Fresh pajamaed coffee, the clink of spoon and bowl, morning teases in the air. As much as one can, she controls this life…for the two who scurry past to depajama. She thinks.

“Deny the inheritance,” slips out, standing with a defiance that refutes even professional routines. Inconsistency, fleets through her mind as she sends herself for depajamaing. [See Part 1 here.]

Academic Freedom Is Not the Freedom of Academics

This post responds to a recent post on the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) publication, Academe, penned by Ross Jackson of Wittenberg University. He makes a case for academic freedom. I make a case for freedom of academics.

Asked many times by me and yet to be answered by others: Would we be facing a crisis in academic freedom or facing crisis in the same way, if academics were not the employees of inherited institutional employers but were also or instead licensed members of a legislated profession that enables them to earn a living as attorneys or physicians are enabled?

From this perspective, I respond to Ross and the widely shared view that academic freedom is necessary. Nothing will be lost in comprehending this post by not reading the Ross piece, which presents a very familiar affirmative position on the question of necessity.

The Inheritance, The Assumption

On and off, for over thirty years, I’ve tried to raise awareness of assumptions surrounding the service and stewardship of higher education. For instance, if I ask, where is higher education, what’s your immediate thought? Or if I ask who provides it, what’s your response? Or to whom are you applying for it? To whom are you paying for it?

Mass diagnosis of the assumptions of others is perilous, so wish me luck.

The hypothesis is that the failure of others to entertain PSA is in part the result of unexamined assumption. Assumption being the work yard of philosophers, I hazard a guess that, for most people, a principal response triggered by such questions includes the institutions of our inheritance. Universities and colleges are what comes to mind whenever we reflect, discuss, dream, organize, bargain, teach, graduate, discover, publish, pixelate, politicize, ……or try to improve our social pillar. Higher education action and thought is scribed, even sculpted, by these institutions and the ethos they embody, covering everything from student meals and academic research to government fund-trolling and global economies.

I do not assume this institutional inheritance. I recommend you do the same.

PSA Offers an Area of Research

Thirty years ago, Dr. Peter March, Dr. Robert Ansel and myself sketched in some detail the Professional Society of Academics (PSA) model and then tried to raise awareness for it. This is a model that does not rely on university and college employment for the public provision of academic services (i.e., teaching, researching and community servicing). There is no model like it, standing as the only comprehensive challenge to our inherited model of institutional employers and enrollers. Since that time, PSA has been further developed and disseminated. This PSA blog is a record of both.

As philosophers, we are not expert in fields that (ought to) contribute to the construction of an alternative model for the provision of higher education (HE). Suppose you are one such established or aspiring expert, looking for a fresh thesis topic, an unspoken hypothesis, then this post might be for you.

There is in this professional model the opportunity to explore a new area of research, call it: Alternative Higher Education Models (AHEM). I recognize that calling for alternative, change, reform, or revolution in the sector is obscenely common and deplorably misleading. None, I repeat, none of it references an alternative to the higher education institution (HEI) model. All light filters through this institutional lens, and what a kaleidoscope of calamity it presents. This must be acknowledged, if alternative, change, reform, or revolution is to gain footing. Anything less is relegated to a footnote of the HEI model.

This post is about something intellectual, something academic: possibility.

The US, UK, Canada, Australia...All Suffer the Same Institutional Model

How would you like to be on the Office for Students Register? I sure would! Here are some of the benefits that come with the registration, assessment, and investigation fees:

Bet I could get on teaching, researching and community servicing in England, if I register. Maybe print some business cards with these bullets, or hang a classy framed version on my wall, maybe a website that emphasizes the value this Register enables in my service to the public. Certainly, it’s excellent promotion for a tertiary/post-secondary/higher education (HE) practice. Nothing screams value in the HE sector like the phrase, power “to award its own degrees.”

SMU, FU, So I Can Do What I Do!

Saint Mary’s University (SMU), in Canada, is one of my previous employers. The institution is presently having budgetary problems that impact employment and so the higher education it is meant to facilitate. What a surprise. Here’s another, the response from the faculty employee labor union: Solidarity, redeemable at any Tim’s or Sobey’s and telling the President to fuck off.

It doesn’t dawn on the parties that these two acts – one of solidarity, the other of schism – embody the fracture of higher education, or that reoccurring episodes of such schizophrenia might be an indicator of deeper problems with the higher education institutional model of universities and colleges.

This all might be amusing, except they deserve it and so many others do not.

Rachel and the Revolution

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) publishes just about anything from Guest Bloggers these days. As an example, Rachel Ida Buff, is quite certain that the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Popular University for Palestine Coalition (UWMPUPC) “encampments represent the true and best hope for the university.” 

Who knows, maybe this blip on the radar of the higher education institution (HEI) model of university and college higher education (HE) service providers will finally manage to bring real, lasting change to… Ha! Ha! Ya, right!! Ever hear of Berkeley? And though Rachel concludes with a reference to 1968 Paris, why not Kent, as it predates and took place in the USA? No catchy phrases? Just more dead people at the doorstep of HE.

Rachel’s post is foreshadowed by one on this blog from over ten years ago, updated in 2022. It describes a day in the life of someone who works in the Professional Society of Academics (PSA) model for HE that I have created. She’s a mom raising two kids on her own, and during an eventful day she reflects on the great faculty-student uprising, on the “education encampments” that overthrew the old (dare I say it?) colonial institutional model of HE, making possible her independent professional life as an academic and mother.

But, sure, let’s go ahead and rock that real true best hope, of saving institutions, with something thrown in about proper HE and individual flourishment.

A German Physicist, Canadian Philosopher, and Model Walk into a Wall

Sometimes in a desperate effort to garner support, I send personal correspondence to people or organizations that might benefit from the Professional Society of Academics (PSA) model for the provision of higher education (HE). This is not the higher education institutional (HEI) model of universities and colleges. PSA might be described as the HEI model turned inside out, with institutional employers recast as vendors now employed according to the prerogative of professional academics who practice HE in solo or partnered HE practices in a new HE system sanctioned by state legislation – as has been comparably done for the social goods of law and medicine.

We do not need universities and colleges, and I mean come on, look at them...

Watch them…

[Faculty and students being good little Fascists. From: https://perspectives.ushmm.org/collection/higher-education-in-nazi-germany]

Irony and Absurdity in the AAUP – Part 2

In Part 1 of this two-part series bitter irony was the focus, along with a scolding for the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and its growing team of union and activist affiliates, including the likes of the America Federation of Teachers (AFT), the Council of University of California Faculty Associations (CUCFA), and Scholars for a New Deal for Higher Education (SFNDHE). Their entrenched assumption of the higher education institution (HEI) model of university and college higher education (HE) provision is a principal cause of their failure to adequately address the many serious problems in HE. My alternative model called, the Professional Society of Academics (PSA), makes their failure all the more personally embarrassing, but publicly fixable.

Part 2 provides further reason to criticize the AAUP team for the irony and absurdity of its response to what ails HE. The aim is to open the eyes of the AAUP team to their folly and force proper consideration of the PSA model. It is recommended that Part 1 be read before continuing, but the following content can be managed without it.