[Vision2020] Yardley Report

[Andreas Schou]

So, I just spent a while paging through the Yardley report. Most of it
seems like small-institution (and small-state) boilerplate: increase
research dollars; recruit graduate students to teach undergraduate
courses; focus on students from outside Idaho. These seem like good
ideas, so long as you are myopically focused on graduate, rather than
undergraduate, education, and not at all concerned with providing
services to citizens of the state (as is the university's mandate as a
land grant institution).

However, their "faculty culture" section is, frankly, incredible.

It is not unprofessional for professors to expose students to
institutional problems in a university in which they are invested. It
is not unprofessional to demand change. It is not unprofessional to
demand that the people with control over the fisc be responsible for
the fiscal health of the university--and object to bearing the burden
of the university's bad decisions. It is not unprofessional for
professors to be concerned about the health of the community in which
they live.

If I were a faculty member, I'd be incensed.

-- ACS