My personal sense of (academic) culture was
thoroughly shocked after I moved to the Netherlands to take up a teaching post;
because I find to be flummery and madness what a surprising number of my colleagues
here actually think is quite a realistic and sensible expectation—to wit: that
university faculty, when not teaching in their classrooms, could reasonably be
expected to spend most of the rest of the day availably sitting in their offices.
Personally,
I find this notion to be all-around benighted flummoxitude—at least partially because
the present generation of senior faculty—established academics with lots of years
of experience and practice of university life—have faced first-hand in the
world of education the transition from a paper to a virtual world. As a former
colleague of mine (retired Professor of English) puts it (here),
echoing the common experience of university life: “With so many faculty teaching so many online or off
campus courses, the hallways where our offices were located became gradually
less populated. But mobile phones, the Internet, and IM meant that our office
hours were now 24/7.”
Qualitative
evidence accumulated over a fairly long university teaching career by this Phrontisterion philosopher, who has
enjoyed formal institutional affiliations in France, Germany, the UK, and the
US, only further aggravates my feelings of (academic) cultural gobsmackery and
rational estrangement at this idea of job “presence,” which one normally
associates with a 9-5 office-type job. It simply does not belong to the general
culture of a university—indeed, language normally associated with teaching jobs
at universities, is of “working independently, without a boss or immediate colleagues” (Chronicle of Higher Education).
So
I have deduced, with very great haste indeed, that this notion must therefore be
particular either to the general academic culture in the Netherlands, or to this
particular little Liberal Arts & Sciences community.
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| from gettyimages.com |
So let the reflections commence.
On
Time. My boyhood days were decisively shaped
by the 9-to-5 cadence of corporate America. The adults were daily in absentia, spending hours traveling to
or returning from the “place” where wealth is commonly generated—the workplace.
And the kids were ensnared in primary schools patterned after the same corporate
boilerplate—the 7:30-to-3:30 school day (exclusive of extra-curricular
activities like sports, clubs, etc.), which coincided, as if on purpose, with
parents’ working schedules.
This
may seem a dovetailed vision of an ideally engineered corporate society à la Huxley (of Brave
New World fame), where the external activities of old and young are
moderated and supervised each and every day; and like every day preceding, this
day’s dénouement reads like a story book tale: at day’s end, gradually,
inevitably, and tediously, everyone returns to the nest, the family dinner,
homework/television, and bed. But my memories, while they may seem like one of
Norman Rockwell’s wonderful Americana illustrations for The Saturday Evening Post, are framed by the oppressive corporate reality
behind society’s goose-step march.
Four years of high school, though, introduced
a different pace to my life, bringing with it more undefined blocks of time
between classes, more autonomy. It was a new period of moving toward
independence and adulthood. Then came the explosion of Life at university… the
very incarnation of seemingly unlimited choices. And there was time a-plenty.
Time to read, to think, to study, to speak and be corrected, to speak out and to
protest. It was the first time in my young man’s life where I felt what it was
like to be unburdened by the suffocating and oppressive corporate lockstep that
seems to animate the life-time of the world.
It
is no wonder, then, that when confronted, inevitably, with the adult world of
work-to-live, I would avoid at all costs entering into the enslaving rhythms of
the 9-to-5 world and what I perceived to be the mind-numbing and unfulfilling
tasks of generating wealth for ‘The Man’. Instead, going through the open doors
of the academy, I choose for freedom, to own time instead of owing time.
So,
in one of those distinctly interesting ironies of life, it would seem that toward
the end of a fairly long scholarly career I have come round full circle. From
my perspective as a longtime denizen of the ranks of university professors, I
cringe when I hear institutional scuttlebutt whispered around and about the
corridors, such as: ‘they want us to be in our offices all day!’ My hippy-esque
translation of this, of course, is straight out of the early 70s: ‘this job is just
like every corporate 9-to-5er in the world—we owe (give or take) forty hours a
week to the Institution (‘The Man’)’. So, what to do with rumors that we should
be in our offices when we are not teaching, or give an accounting of where we
have been and what we have been doing when not in the classroom?
My
shuddering reaction to this, each and every time I hear the fluttering whispers,
is that this is a nightmare scenario for an academic and university environment:
the Culture of Corporatism weds the Ivory Tower – and gives birth to a Demon Child that is neither entirely one nor the
other. This is surely some strange neighborhood in the Twilight Zone.
Then
however, on a more rational note and once I have
settled down my ruffled feathers a little, the philosopher in me can still recognize
the drive behind, if not this particular translation of, the push for some kind
of academic “presence” on university campuses, which are dedicated to the Liberal
Arts & Sciences communitarian vision of education.
On Community:
Student Presence. Historically speaking, the first
initiatives for “presence” at undergraduate Liberal A&S university campuses
were of the Oxbridge sort of residential campus, which were in turn imported to
North America via, most notably but certainly not exclusively, Harvard College.
This residential philosophy was directed at creating community among the
‘scholars’ (i.e., students), and was initiated by urban university
administrators who were afraid that students who lived around and about the
city and commuted to their classes would become too fragmented from the
university community and thus from their community of scholarship. The basis
for the concept is that educational institutions stand ‘in loco parentis’, in lieu of the parents. Thus,
“most early institutions were residential
and the tutors lived in the halls with the students. … [The] focus was on
control of the student as opposed to modern philosophy which focuses on the
development of the student as a whole, but has always connected those
interested in the welfare of students with students needing assistance.”
Still according to Wikipedia (@ residential
colleges in the US), “A residential
college is an organisational pattern for a division of a university that
places academic activity in a community setting of students and faculty,
usually at a residence and with shared meals….” Among residential colleges
listed are, “Certain colleges at Cornell University, Emory, Harvard College of
Harvard University, Princeton, Stanford University (Freshman-Sophomore
College), University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, [and] Yale.” To take only the
example of Harvard College’s Lowell House in
order to set the general historical context in North America:
“At
the time of Harvard's founding … the "colleges" of England's
Oxford and Cambridge Universities were communities within the larger
university, each an association of scholars (both established and aspiring)
sharing room and board; Harvard's founders may have envisioned it as the first
in a series of sibling colleges which, on the English model, would eventually
constitute a university.”
According to the same site, the “House”
system at Harvard was
“created by
President Lowell in the 1930s to combat what he saw as pernicious social
stratification engendered by the private, off-campus living arrangements of
many undergraduates at that time. Lowell's solution was to provide every man … with
on-campus accommodations throughout his time at the College; Lowell also saw
great benefits flowing from other features of the House system, such as the
relaxed discussions (academic or otherwise) which he hoped would take place
among undergraduates and members of the Senior Common Room over meals in each
House's dining hall.”
Another famously residential Liberal
A&S college in the U.S. is St. John’s College (in both the Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM locations).
Each campus location, of course, has significant natural attractions as a draw;
but beyond the local perks of the “active extracurricular life,” the end goal
of the residential philosophy, especially among the smaller Liberal arts
institutions, is to “offer students a variety of
opportunities to become involved in the life of the local community.” “St. John’s is a lively community of learning,” says their
website on the Student Life page. And continues: “Conversations begun in the classroom
spill over onto the quad and the placita, and our students naturally pursue
life outside the classroom with the same passion and intensity that they bring
to their studies.”
In
addition to the residential idea as a concept to encourage participation in the
life of the university’s extended community, the smaller institutions also have
the advantage of having, as St. John’s College website boasts, a “dedicated, accessible
[emphasis mine] faculty.”
St. John’s College faculty are
dedicated to teaching and are readily available to students. All classes are
small (13-19 students), ensuring that every student has a voice; the overall
faculty-student ratio is 1 to 8. Paper conferences, informal study groups, the
“Take a Tutor to Lunch” program, and a wide variety of extracurricular
activities provide any number of occasions for students to interact with
faculty members.
In addition to evolving a sense of community between
St. John’s and the local towns and communities, St. John’s residential
philosophy is also very much an attempt to create a sense of community and
exchange between students and faculty, which manifests itself 1) in small class
size with a truly luxurious faculty-student ratio; 2) in a seminar style
teaching format where students are given an active voice; and 3) in extracurricular
(non-teaching specific and non-institutional) opportunities for faculty-student
interactions.
A final example of the smaller, Liberal Arts &
Sciences College with a residential philosophy, is Bard College. For a look at the vision behind Bard’s residence
life philosophy, the Bard Mission Statement offers these insights:
“The Bard College Office of Residence Life &
Housing is committed to fostering a safe and secure environment that enhances
the personal, social and intellectual development of every student, enriching
their liberal arts experience. We seek to empower and challenge students to
become individuals, citizens, and leaders who understand their responsibility
in creating effective and socially just communities at Bard and beyond.”
Again according to the Bard College
website, the philosophy of residency in the Liberal Arts & Science
tradition is intended, literally, to lead both to the establishment of
community as well as to the emancipation of the student:
“We envision a residential community in which:
· Students feel safe, respected, valued,
comfortable and at home
· Students are engaged in activities and
dialogue which promote social justice, intellectual and artistic inquiry and
challenge as well as faculty/staff engagement outside of the classroom/office
· Students have ownership over their
rights and responsibility for shared governance and community monitoring
· Students are engaged in the Bard and
local community
· Students reside in a sustainable
manner, not only environmentally but with regard to personal decision making
around health and wellness
· Students understand, respect and follow
the principles and philosophies of community living, inclusive of active
participation in development of community standards
· The physical, emotional, and spiritual
wellness of all is prioritized
· The physical residential structures are
safe, secure, clean and conducive to the life of the mind and personal wellness”
The idea of community, then, that
undergraduate students of the Liberal Arts & Sciences should be physically
present on a residentially designed university campus, has, it seems to me, translated well in the Dutch context. University College Roosevelt (UCR, Middelburg)
for example waxes lyrical on the virtues of the undergraduate residential
philosophy, and its website is
much more explicit about its “City Campus,” arguing that such a City Campus “provides the perfect
atmosphere for students, faculty and staff to live and work together,” with the
result that “students … become part of a tight-knit academic community. The
support students receive from each other and their easy interaction with
instructors is an essential part of the success of UCR.” This idea of “Community Feeling” is obviously a
selling feature of UCR’s undergraduate Liberal A&S educational model, because
the website continues on lavishly:
“Life on campus enriches the university experience and
contributes to the academic success for all students. UCR boasts a highly
dynamic environment and creates a tight network within which students can
learn, live and thrive. When questioned what UCR alumni valued most, they
mentioned the community and diverse social contacts, in addition to the
academic skills acquired. […]
Additionally,
UCR is intricately connected to the city of Middelburg, as we are part of the
inner city of Middelburg. Right in the town's historic center, you will find
the heart of UCR, namely our main buildings Franklin, Eleanor and Theodore. Our
university library (Zeeuwse Bibliotheek) is located just a five-minute walk
away. The science laboratories are located in Vlissingen, only 4 miles away
from Middelburg, which is where the University of Applied Sciences, the
Hogeschool Zeeland, is located. A 20-minute bike ride or 8-minute train trip
will get you there easily.”
On
Community: Faculty Presence. The philosophy of
undergraduate student residency on a university Liberal A&S campus is, predominantly,
in order to create a student-centered academic environment, which leads to the creation
of community, both small and large. So in the pedagogical vision of undergraduate
Liberal Arts & Sciences it would seem reasonable to also have teaching faculty
live locally in order to be present, and available to, and involved in the
institution’s larger academic community presence. Interestingly, the Dutch
Collective Bargain Agreement (CAO) allows for this interpretation in Article
1.9 Location: “An
employee can be obliged to take up residence in or near the location where the
work must be carried out if, in the opinion of the employer and in view of the
nature of the position, this is required for the proper performance of the job.”
In
the Netherlands, however, it seems to be quite the common opinion, anecdotally
speaking, that this “obligation” is really not enforceable, at least not if a
relatively isolated institution, such as UCR, wishes to hire teaching faculty. Because
much of the teaching at UCR is actually done piece-meal, with faculty members
traveling to Middelburg from hither and yon in the country just to teach their
several courses. This seems to me similar to the adjunct-teaching environment
in the U.S., which includes all the strengths and weaknesses of that workplace
model.
So
let us assume for the nonce that it really is unrealistic or impracticable in the
Netherlands to have teaching members of faculty live locally in their academic
communities. Given the residential philosophy of undergraduate Liberal Arts
& Sciences, what then might it mean for faculty to still be active and engaged
members of their undergraduate educational communities?
University
College Utrecht (UCU), to cite an example close to home, is attempting to
address this question by adopting (post 2012) a professional “presence” policy.
Instead of having faculty sit all day long in their offices, though, they have sought
to define professional scholarly presence as a virtual or online presence; and
given the shifting state of the notion of work-place in the Netherlands, this seems a reasonable compromise.
Virtual Presence. In October 2012
Utrecht University Library organized a symposium entitled, Visibility: building online scholarly presence, in an attempt to address
the question of ‘professional presence’, including visibility and availability,
in the scholarly community.
· “Where and why does a scientist need to
be visible on the Internet?
· How can Open Access really contribute
to better citation scores?
· What are the pros and cons of social
media?”
A
(Short) Excursus By Way of Reminder: Teachers 101.
Primo: studies (both quantitative and qualitative) clearly show what administrators
seem always to doubt, but which teachers have always known—that teachers work
too much in general. It is no wonder that the idea of ‘teaching’ seems to be
joined at the hip to the reality of ‘stress’: “All [academic]
ranks [work] over 40 hours a week (average of 61 hours/week) and all ranks put
in a substantial number of hours over the weekends.” Conclusion 1: teachers
work a lot of hours.
Secondo: teacher satisfaction surveys [e.g., Kim & Loadman, 1994] reveal
two defining characteristics of teachers:
· “Intrinsic Variables: Interaction with
Colleagues “Relationships with colleagues, a sense of collaboration and
community among faculty, and recognition from other teachers all have been cited
as factors in a teacher's willingness to stay in the profession” (Bogenschild,
Lauritzen & Metze, 1988).-
· Extrinsic Variables to teacher satisfaction
– “professional autonomy/decision making authority”
Conclusion 2: Educational administrators
should generally leave teachers alone to do their jobs, because studies
consistently show that teachers value a sense of academic community as much as
they prize professional autonomy. What
remains to be seen, it would seem, is what it means to have “academic community.”
Modern
workplace flexibility, in and out of the Netherlands. Canadians seem to love the idea
of flexi-time work schemes. Among other virtues, this Canadian website sees the following benefits in such
workplace schemes:
“For employees:
· Increased control over when work is done.
For example, an employee might choose to work in the evening and spend time
with children in the afternoon.
· Escape from the everyday disruptions of the
office environment
· Improved balance between work and home life
For the employer:
· Scheduling work across longer portions of
the day
· Recruiting and keeping valued staff who
have other life commitments or interests
· Making more efficient use of facilities,
desks, computers, etc.
· Continuity and staff coverage by one
employee while another is away
· May need smaller office space, less
furniture and/or less equipment
· Fewer parking spots required
· Reduced absenteeism and/or lateness
· Increased productivity because of fewer
distractions or interactions between colleagues”
The Canadian human resources site does
point out however that there are issues to be considered around the question of
flexible schemes in the workplace, among which are: “Trust and supervision,”
and lack of “Communication between staff who work at varying times and may
therefore meet less frequently.”
According to businessculture.org, “Dutch
companies are well aware of the business case for a work-life balance. There is
a trend towards more flexible systems of working time in order to make more
effective use of employee resources.”
And
a Dutch expat website
reports that there was a survey conducted by the consulting firm McKinsey for
the Dutch newspaper Telegraaf, which
concluded that “More Dutch people would like flexible working arrangements,
with the ability to decide where, when and for how long, they work,” and that “Four
out of five employees currently, or would like to, work from home (thuiswerken).”
It does not therefore come as a surprise that as of
“April 14, 2015, the Dutch Senate accepted the Flexible Working Act, allowing employees of companies in the
Netherlands more flexibility in respect of working hours and working from home.
As per – most likely – 1 July 2015, employees can not only ask for changes to
the number of hours they work, but also changes to the times they are required
to work and their place of work.”
So for all those who voiced an opinion in
the Telegraaf survey – you are now in
a much stronger position to negotiate working from home. Yeah!
And then you just have to love working in
the Netherlands for the following aspect of the Dutch Flexible Working Act—that employers have to agree to stuff the
workers ask for! Try making that happen in the US!!!
“An employer has to agree with a request to change the
number of working hours, unless there are substantial business reasons for not
doing so. Case law shows that business interests are rarely considered to be
weighty enough. An alternative distribution of working hours as a result of a
reduction in working hours also has to be accepted by the employer, unless
business interests outweigh the preferences of the employee. […]
Employers
should be aware that their duty of care extends to the employee’s workplace at
home; the employer remains responsible for the workstation. Altogether, it will
become more complicated for employers to organize their workforce.”
From these
progressive moves in terms of the Dutch work environment, an NL expat website
concludes that,
“Thanks
to digital connectivity, work practices are indeed changing, with people taking
their work out of the office and onto a café terrace, a park with wifi, or at
the kitchen table. […] The Netherlands
Institute for Transport Policy Analysis (KiM) found that the
total number of employees who routinely work from home or another remote
location rose from 27 per cent in 2008 to 32 per cent in 2012. […] Work sectors
that have a higher proportion of home or flex workers include education, ICT,
and the financial services.
But despite the
general optimism on the question of flexibility in the work place, the site does not fail to warn
that, also according to the KiM, “the main
obstacles preventing more people from working at home include a work culture
that discourages working remotely, a lack of mutual trust, employee’s limited
knowledge of relevant regulations, and habitual behavioural patterns.”
In the Netherlands the
Collective Bargaining Agreement governing education is the CAO, which already takes a broader view of daily work-time
for academics (Article 4.3), premising that the “38-hour working week is
implemented within a business hour period of 78 hours.” So contractual business
hours are “Monday to Friday between 7:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m. or between 8:00
a.m. and 10:00 p.m., and the hours on Saturday between 7:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m.
or between 8:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m.”
In
case any teachers out there in the Netherlands did not realize it, then, this
means that it is conceivable that academics would (also) work evenings and
weekends, or at least Saturdays.
Second
and third contractual points of interest for function-based contracts falling
under the umbrella of the CAO, is that 1) “presence” is consistently equated
with “availability,” and that 2) “the details of function based
contracts, such as the availability and presence of the employee, are
negotiated between employer and employee.” The key word in point 1 is availability; and the key word in point
2 is negotiated.
Despite the clear egalitarian heritage of
the Netherlands, not all jobs are created equal. So in thinking about the
question of where a job “happens,”
and especially the job of the professional university teacher, it seems
reasonable enough to translate space or locus in terms of function, because it
is important to avoid fusing and confusing institutional positions. There are faculty
teachers and researchers, administrative positions, and institutional positions
(those who fix and repair and clean and maintain). And while these latter types
of positions are absolutely essential to the smooth functioning and even the very
material and financial existence of the institution, they are support positions
to an educational institution’s primary mission of ensuring that good teaching
and research happens. Normally these different job functions are already profiled
differently in human resources, with academic jobs linked to classrooms,
research expectations, and the necessary teacher-related admin, while job
descriptions for administrative positions routinely set out standards and qualities
and skills that relate to the, well, administrative well-being of the
institution. Each type of employment is absolutely necessary to the health and
vitality of an educational institution, but each also fulfills entirely different
functions in the institution. Administrators are not normally researchers, for
example, nor do they ensure classroom teaching, etc.
University
Faculty. Teaching/Research:
Generally speaking, the professional academic’s life is contractually divided
into the three areas of Teaching/Research, Tutoring, and Institutional Service.
Formal teaching traditionally happens in the classroom, but teaching in the
absolute sense happens everywhere and anywhere, even, it is sometimes rumored,
outside the classroom. Hence, at least in part, the interest in the residential
campus in the Liberal Arts & Sciences tradition. Research in the
humanities, on the other hand, is a much quieter kind of activity, requiring in
the first instance books and libraries and ateliers and laboratories, and afterwards,
locations that allow for uninterrupted reading and writing and editing.
Tutoring/Advising: Both in the U.S. and
in the Netherlands there are some functions of the Tutoring/Advising Task that,
because of the proprietary nature of the computer software generally used to
manage student records, need to happen in the faculty office. Otherwise, I have
discovered that my tutees (and students as well) also enjoy coming with me to
walk the dog, or find it nice to come to the house for tea, or apéritif, or even for dinner.
Institutional Service: Finally, Institutional
Service can take sundry & diverse forms, such as writing letters of
recommendation, supervising research projects and theses, committee work, et
al, and where this happens is
normally determined by the function at hand.
In each of the traditional contractual
areas of Teaching, Tutoring, and Service, where
the scholarly life of the university instructor ‘happens’ at the end of the day
is perhaps best negotiated by the particular needs of the activity and by the
individual faculty member. This is the gold standard of the Liberal Arts &
Sciences undergraduate education.
UCU has chosen 21st century
tools to address the question of academic presence and the creation of scholarly
community; and that institution has found responses that are both consistent
with the evolving workplace laws in the Netherlands, and which respect the
traditionally autonomous and independent culture of the university as a
scholarly workplace environment. Such solutions will also be effective in
encouraging a type of professional academic atmosphere that will sustain
scholarly community, both faculty and student, both near and remote.
