Karen Kelsky’s fantastic education blog featured a guest post in August that exemplified a problem in higher education that has been a major source of irritation in my own academic career. While the results of what’s happening at Canisius College are horrible, I feel like there’s a bigger question that needs to be asked.
Why are THESE people in charge?
Canisius decided to get rid of a significant number of professors from their humanities department. The people making those decisions are President John J. Hurley, VP of Academic Affairs Sarah R. Morris, and the Board of Trustees.
President Hurley is a former bankruptcy lawyer with undergrad degrees in English and History. VP Morris is a zoologist with undergrad degrees in Biology and French. The Board features a cast of lawyers, corporate fat cats, and other members who share the same conspicuous absence on their CV that Hurley and Morris have.
Nobody has a degree in Education on any level. The closest I could find was board member Nancy Ware co-founding EduKids with a friend who had a Master’s in Early Childhood Education. That’s it. Not a single person with any formal background in any area of evidence-based educational theory or practice. Much like I said about K-12 education in the US, the entire system has been given over to people who have absolutely zero qualifications to make educational decisions of any kind.
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