Crisis on Campus_ A Bold Plan for Reforming Our Colleges and Universities - Mark C. Taylor [39]
The measures already taken include faculty and staff cutbacks, a hiring freeze, a major decrease in faculty support (telephones were recently removed from all faculty offices), significant curtailments of student services and a reduction in the money available for financial aid. Faculty and staff had even been asked to take unpaid furloughs of between twenty-one and twenty-six days (the lower the salary the fewer the days) a year. University officials fear that even these draconian measures might not be sufficient. With falling tax revenues caused by a sluggish economy, the university is bracing for cuts that could be even worse next year. While these problems are to a significant degree the result of an outdated and regressive tax system combined with endless legislative gridlock, the crisis unfolding in California is nonetheless a sign of the unprecedented challenges all public and private colleges and universities are facing. Herbert concluded, “The problems at Berkeley are particularly acute because of the state’s drastic reduction of support. But colleges and universities across the country—public and private—are struggling because of the prolonged economic crisis and the pressure on state budgets. It will say a great deal about what kind of nation we’ve become if we let these most valuable assets slip into a period of decline.”
Honesty compels us to admit that the financial resources necessary to meet the needs of higher education are not likely to be forthcoming for the foreseeable future. If the current economic downturn is not cyclical but rather a symptom of deeper long-term changes, these difficulties will not only persist but worsen. Even if ample funding were available, it would not solve all of our problems.
Developments in higher education since the 1960s have created internal divisions and tensions in colleges and especially research universities that are deepening as financial resources become more scarce. It is possible that this moment of crisis will provide an opportunity to rethink not only how to fund higher education but also what goes on in college and university libraries, laboratories and classrooms. Meeting these challenges must begin with a frank acknowledgment of the magnitude of the problem and will require a level of cooperation that is, unfortunately, rare on most college and university campuses. Faculty members, administrators, staff and students must work together to find creative solutions that will create a vital and viable system of higher education for the future. I will be making suggestions to foster these goals in the chapters that follow.
6
Networking Knowledge
As we have seen, the university and the wider world have been moving in opposite directions for the past half century. Emerging technologies have accelerated the process of globalization in ways that increase interconnections among people, countries and institutions. New forms of transportation and communication are bringing more people across the world into greater contact than ever before. As people become more closely connected, their differences often become more obvious and misunderstandings lead to conflict. With these developments, the urgency of learning other languages and studying other cultures in all of their diversity and complexity becomes vital. In addition, new media and communications technologies have triggered explosive growth in the amount of information to which people have ready access. Not only is the quantity of information growing, its substance is also changing. This has important implications for the reorganization of knowledge and, by extension, higher education. As cross-cultural communication grows, it transforms old assumptions and ideas. Higher education