Towards Voluntaryism (Part 7)
2.4. Education: Administrative Solutions
Towards Voluntaryism (Part 7)
Public education is at heart a service industry that is tasked with providing the best education possible to the individual so that they in turn can fulfill their potential and, in doing so, contribute to society as a whole. As such, the educational mandate is to intellectually empower the individual with relevant skills and knowledge and enable them to provide constructive and beneficial impetus to society. It is clear that the ideological approach of many educational institutions today is actively opposed to that task, creating intellectually disarmed debt-slaves while fostering strife and division in society at large.
What to do?
Control of the colleges and universities (and schools at all levels) must be taken away from administrations that promote societal division, identity politics, social justice ideology and subvert or oppose the rule of law. This can only be done by removing said administrators and faculty from their positions (how to do so will be addressed in sections 2.5-2.9). Once that is accomplished, both financial and educational management of the universities must be radically overhauled or, in particularly grievous instances, be shuttered and rebuilt from the ground up.
Regarding fiscal duties, there should be a basic rule of thumb for expenditures in education: Can the expense in question be justified as contributing directly to the educational duties and obligations of a college or university? How essential is an indirect support position? (e.g. computer lab technician = necessary; football coach = unnecessary etc.).
Deleteriously, the United States has created educational environments that are isolated, self-sustaining communities instead of an integrated part of the larger community surrounding them. This has made it easier for vulnerable members of the student body to become ideologically captured by those with an agenda to push and has resulted in the self-apparent "bubble" effect. This is also reflected in the common phrase 'the real world' which is used on campuses to reference the rest of society outside of the university bubble.
Specific Suggestions for Administrative Action
(1) Completely eliminate off-campus recruiting and outreach programs based on increasing "diversity" and focus on increasing "competence". Host all recruiting and information days on campus. Eliminate any non-student employees from the recruiting programs and hire students to defray their tuition costs. If pupils wish to attend university, the onus should be on them to be proactive in achieving that goal. Recruiting programs in the borrow-and-pay-to-study environment have become largely predatory for-profit endeavors, education must return to a non-profit model (until a Voluntaryist educational system becomes viable) in order to best serve society and the individual (and not the balance sheet of loan providers).
(2) Restrict student counseling to education-related subject matter. Personal problems and mental health issues should be dealt with in a private health care setting. If this is not feasible, students who use mental health services provided by the university should be required to contribute financially for the services they receive. Students who do not need such services, should not be required to pay for them for others or "just in case". This must be enacted because universities have become spaces that coddle and foster (increasingly self-imposed) victimhood adoration ideologies masquerading as mental illness.
(3) Eliminate 90% of accounting, auditing and finance departments by transitioning to place all university economic activity on an open ledger blockchain with smart contract technology. This would have the additional benefit of providing public oversight and accountability.
(4) Replace 90% of admissions and registration personnel with smart contracts. The first to be eliminated should be bureaucrats whose duty it is to promote non-meritocratic admissions that discriminate on the criteria of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, age, religion or any other category other than mental acuity. Make admissions strictly merit-, achievement- or aptitude-based; at the very least, the initial selection of high quality candidates should be capable of being determined by open-source automated systems designed to eliminate human bias. Fully automated identity and payment verification systems have already been developed in the blockchain space which can eliminate most enrollment personnel.
(5) Eliminate any and all programs and positions that support "safe space" ideology and activities. University students are legally adults and if they wish such programs or support groups, they can form them on their own in an area they finance. There is zero reason for universities to provide financing for such groups except to serve as political activism, which is certain to foster societal division. Eliminate all programs that privilege, benefit or "compensate" anyone based on their sex, age, race, ethnicity, gender, etc.
(6) Eliminate paid/financed collegiate sports completely. Playing games as adults may fulfill a service function in society as a whole (e.g. entertainment, merchandising) or assist in financing educational institutions, but they are not educational in nature. If students wish to fund and maintain locations for their sports enjoyment, or if a private company or group wishes to do so for them, then it should be dealt with in that manner. Private clubs are the best venue for sporting, such as college-age football etc., privatizing college sports teams would still allow students a venue to earn money while eliminating the corruption of "padding grades" for college athletes and spending untold sums maintaining professional-level sports facilities.
(7) Cap administration and management position salaries at the pay of a junior professor of equal tenure or time in office. Upper administration salary should be capped at no more than 100% of a full professor of equivalent tenure. Non-educational staff are support personnel and should be compensated as such, not as superiors to those performing the actual task of educating.
(8) Eliminate "diversity" hires for faculty based on cosmetic differences such as sex, gender, race, ethnicity, age, religion, etc... Immediately release from contract all hires in which "diversity" was a primary consideration (i.e. all positions in which the job description stated preference would be given to certain individuals based on their sex, gender, race, ethnicity, age, religion, etc.) If "diversity" is desired as an educational mandate by an institution, develop and enforce a hiring regimen based on a diversity of world-views (the only meaningful kind of diversity) that co-mandates absolute excellence in academics. Immediately restructure the entire faculty in accordance with this mandate, i.e. hire and fire as necessary.
(9) Revise hiring criteria for the administrative and bureaucratic branches of higher public education to require an oath to uphold the law, which when not fulfilled shall result in immediate termination. Eliminate "diversity" hires for administration based on cosmetic differences such as sex, gender, race, ethnicity, age, religion etc. and focus on competence. Hire and fire as necessary. Immediately release from contract all hires in which "diversity" was a primary consideration (i.e. all positions in which the job description stated preference would be given to certain individuals based on their sex, gender, race, ethnicity, age, religion, etc.)
(10) If representative distribution (this is not the same as "diversity") is an overriding concern of the university (above and beyond actual competence), enforce a hiring rule for each "identity category" based on population distribution in the local city/county/state population. For example, if the local population's religious distribution is as appears in the graphic provided, 51% of the faculty should be Protestant, 24% should be Roman Catholic etc. Similarly, other categories could be reflected upon: sex, sexual orientation, ethnicity etc. This is obviously far less preferable than a strictly meritocratic hire and should be considered only an interim step to meritocratic hires. Immediately restructure the entire faculty in accordance with this mandate (i.e. hire and fire as necessary).
(11) Eliminate corporate and political hires for the most important positions at an institution of higher education (currently 20% of hires, source). Students paying tuition must not be treated as customers, a labor force for private interests or as voting blocks by the administration of a university. See this article and this discussing university presidents influencing faculty hires for "views they strongly disagreed" with). It should not be possible to pay for grades, nor to perform political advocacy in line with the professor's political bias for grades as is increasingly the case. Any faculty peforming such actions should be immediately removed from any duties involving contact with the student body. This should be self-explanatory.
(12) Eliminate all faculty members that advance ideologies promoting gender, race and ethnic division that fuels identity politics as a mechanism of social and political entropy. See rational feminist Camilia Paglia's recent contribution "Women's and Gender Studies Departments Should Be Defunded. Her arguments are largely applicable to all post-objectivity, anti-empiricism advocates in academics, who are just as harmful to the educational environment as race-baiters, "identity" politics and coercive collectivists are to societal peace and stability at large.
(13) Restructure the Board of Trustees and University Senate to represent the best interests of the students and their successful employment by / integration with the population of surrounding communities. Of all of these steps, restructuring the Board of Trustees is the most effective means of affecting large scale change at a university in the shortest period of time. To that end, we will consider the Board of Trustees in more depth in the following posts (sections 2.5 & 2.6).
I am certain there are many more areas that could be substantially reformed or eliminated entirely. Feel free to provide your input below.
Next: Towards Voluntaryism (Part 8) - excursus
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