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Academe, Jul/Aug 2003 by Hanley, Lawrence

The caps, gowns, and diplomas may look the same, but the groves of academe have changed radically over the past quarter century. Most fundamentally, perhaps, the people who learn and work at American universities and colleges are very different today. Students and faculty of color are present in larger numbers. The same can be said of working-class students and faculty. The most obvious gains in higher education participation belong to women, who now earn a clear majority of associate, bachelor's, and master's degrees in the United States. Women have also significantly increased their membership on faculties nationwide.

From afar, these changes seem to signify a more open, democratic higher educational system. But up close, the situation is more complicated. For one thing, opportunity has been distributed unevenly. As Sue Rosser points out in her article, women are making gains in the fields of science and engineering, but recruiting and retaining female students and faculty in disciplines like computer science and the physical sciences remain persistent problems. There are also more intentional disparities. Renny Christopher paints a disheartening picture in her essay of the class stratification of higher education in California. Likewise, William Crain documents recent efforts to roll back admissions policies that were launched in the 1970s to increase minority participation in the City University of New York. On closer examination, progress in democratizing higher education seems more variable and contingent.

Numbers, however, fail to describe fully the situation of higher education's new constituencies. Gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered (GLBT) faculty confront an academic workplace and culture that varies wildly by institution and state. As Doug Steward chronicles in his article, this bewildering landscape unduly-and sometimes traumatically-complicates professional identity and life for GLBT faculty. Meanwhile, in his article, Benjamin Baez analyzes the dilemmas attending our whole paradigm of "minority representation." Minority faculty, as Baez argues, occupy a borderland tense with spoken and unspoken assumptions, demands, and responsibilities. Faculty with hidden disabilities inhabit a similar borderland: because chronic illness or other medical conditions may not present themselves in immediately obvious ways, faculty with hidden disabilities are often viewed as somehow suspect. Elaine Beretz describes what institutions should do to help these faculty to sustain their work and careers.

Accommodating new kinds of faculty and students is only half the game; the real goal for universities and colleges should be to harness fully the tremendous talents and resources of their new constituents. Realizing this ambition, as many of our contributors explain, depends on flexibility. If the goal is maximum professional achievement, structures and expectations sanctioned by tradition will have to become more nuanced and pliable. This proposition forms the explicit basis of Cristina Gonzalez, Debbie Niemeier, and Alexandra Navrotsky's advice for incorporating the interdisciplinary desires of a new generation of American scholars. Each of our contributors, however, offers valuable insights into recreating a more flexible, and more humane, university.

This kind of revisionist thinking is hard, challenging, and necessary work. For those who need an occasional break, however, Paul Many in his article samples the deliciously unreal campuses offered by contemporary college "viewbooks," those glossy, happy brochures describing institutions in which we all might dream of teaching.