Re: <nettime> de/fund/ed digest [rosler, hopkins]

[coco fusco <animas999@yahoo.com>]

Dear Martha

I do agree with you that this drive to make professors
into fundraisers constitutes an incredible burden and
also favors scholars with connections to fields that
are in fashion while diminishing attention to equally
good scholars in areas that are not considered sexy or
potentially lucrative. I am asked at EVERY faculty
meeting to come up with ways to raise money for my
department. I have colleagues who have been hired and
who passed professional reviews BECAUSE they brought
funds into the department through private donors.

It is undeniable that many art and humanities
departments have shifted their focus toward
money-making ventures, new developments that can draw
funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities
or the Social Science Research Council or private
donors, or collaborations with the hard sciences that
give humanists access to the mega-grants that hard
science departments regularly bring in. Tuition and
endowments are not enough anymore. Why else would so
many art departments have expanded in the 90s to
create digital media divisions. Why would they have
partnered with computer science and engineering? Don't
get me wrong, I am not saying that artists  should
have nothing to do with science, but it is a fact that
institutions providing art education have sought grant
monies from the sciences in order to compensate for
shrinking funds elsewhere. Therein lies the root of
the digital media boom in art education. It is also
true that some art programs have succeeded in
attracting corporate monies by promising to do R&D in
gaming for the industry - UCSD recently got $300,000
for this kind of development.
Another key way that the drive to raise money has
changed higher education is through the proliferation
of MA degrees as cash cows. Faculty are encouraged to
think of ways to invent quick and easy degree programs
that wayward and wealthy adults will pay for. We are
told by administrators to save our doctoral programs
for the creme de la creme, and use MA programs to fill
the coffers.

I highly recommend Lawrence Soley's book, LEASING THE
IVORY TOWER: THE CORPORATE TAKEOVER OF ACADEMIA, for
more information on this trend.

Best
Coco
--- nettime's_educrat <nettime@bbs.thing.net> wrote:

> Re: <nettime> funding education?
>      martha rosler <navva@earthlink.net>
>      John Hopkins <jhopkins@uiah.fi>
> 
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
> 
> Date: Mon, 7 Mar 2005 22:38:44 -0500 From: martha rosler
> <navva@earthlink.net> Subject: Re: <nettime> funding education?
> 
> wait, this is not really an answer.  i really would like to know HOW
 <...>

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