From Ivory to Babel to A New Foundation

TL;DRAbstract

During my 12 years at the NationalCenter for Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions, I observed with increasing frustration the inability of administration and faculty leaders—union and governance—to fully grasp, analyze, and find pathways out of public higher education’s current existential crisis. My many years of observing leaders of public higher education lead me to the inescapable conclusion that together the leaders share a culture that shorts strategic planning, thinking, and boldness and instead favors ad-hoc, incremental acceptance of the ever-changing, slimmed-down state of affairs. The rarified bubbles of presidential cabinets and union boards symbiotically promote policies that, even when mutually hostile, mostly address short-term local matters and crises while rarely improving the educational experience, literacy, and graduation rates, which are, of course, the primary reason for academe’s existence. Not only are academic leaders not discussing big

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