A theatre major, an education graduate student and a writer are sitting at a bar discussing ASU President Michael Crow's New American University.
No, it's not the setup to a bad joke, just an actual conversation I had with a friend and her mother.
The dialogue moved from change to sweeping change enacted by Crow. Bother mother and daughter argued that he was doing too much, too fast and ignoring the arts and social sciences in favor of the hard sciences, which bring in more money.
Both could speak from personal experience.
My friend's stepfather is a former professor and researcher in the Justice Studies department at ASU.
Until recently, he worked primarily on a research team that investigated homelessness.
As the vision of Crow's New American University began to take shape, funding for his research was repeatedly cut until he finally had to shut down and leave the University in search of another job.
He learned the hard way that there was no place at ASU for research that didn't bring in lots of grant money, no matter what its goals or successes were.
My friend argued that the disappearance of her father's job was just one example of how Crow's emphasis on money is changing the University into a corporation.
ASU is no longer a place where the intrinsic value of research and learning is recognized for its own good, she said.
Instead everything is judged based on its monetary value to the school.
And what could be more American than that?
The argument in defense of the money-centric policies of the University could indeed come from Boeing or General Electric.
ASU invests money in research that returns a high annual monetary yield, and cuts money to research that does not.
Profits from the research go back to the general University fund, allowing ASU leaders to invest the cash in new ways of making money.
This policy has been incredibly successful over the past few years in bringing in cash to ASU. As detailed in my column last week, both grants and private donations to the school have seen a huge spike since Crow took over.
More money for the school does equal better professors, better equipment, and the ability for the University to be more selective about which students are admitted.
These things will, in turn, bring even more money and prestige to ASU.
But where does it end?
If we really want to make money at ASU, we should have all freshmen take a required class, SWT 101. There they will work making basketball shoes for 10 cents an hour, which we can then sell for $90 a pair.
Meanwhile all professors will stop teaching and work night and day in the Biodesign Institute, cranking out patents and crack cocaine.
With this plan ASU will soon be richer than Harvard, and we will finally be able to hold regattas on Tempe Town Lake.
Seriously, though, Enron and Worldcom showed the world what happens when the money at all costs strategy is taken to its logical conclusion.
Academia is supposed to be a place above and beyond the worries of the everyday world. It's meant to be a place where learning is its own end, not a means to money (although I'm sure a lot of business majors would disagree with me there).
ASU is poorly funded by the state, our professor salaries suck, and there is a really ugly fountain in the middle of campus. Money can fix all those things. But money cannot fix a University that is rotting from the inside due to greed and a single-minded chase after the almighty dollar.
Think I'm a dirty pinko commie who hates money and America? john.e.dougherty@gmail.com.
