Enough About Me: What is True Commitment?

Me expressing my enthusiasm for my TU MA in history by reading my thesis atop the sign, 2014.
Photo by Arley Ward.

If you know me very well, you may know of my extreme affinity for my alma mater. I spent five years there, entering as a freshman who thought I might "want to write, maybe;" who had no idea what the difference between a master's and a PhD was; who struggled to afford application and test fees to get into college in the first place. I left Tulsa with bachelor's and master's degrees in history and admission to a PhD program at an R1 university. I say this not to brag but rather to give a sense of how the experience changed the possibilities I had-- how it allowed me to envision myself as a person and a scholar.

As I've gone along the path to PhD, I've often envisioned returning to the University of Tulsa or someplace like it. I loved the small department, the dedication to teaching, and the support I received from faculty and fellow students while I was there (did you know my advisor met with me every week during the last year of my masters and read whatever I was working on?) Every department has its conflicts, of course, but I admired my professors at TU for the passion they brought to their research and teaching, and I wanted one day to be their colleague.

So it hit me hard when, on April 11, TU announced a restructuring they're calling "True Commitment" (insider tip: they love starting things with the word "True"; it's part of their "brand.") The proposed plan, which you can read all about in the administration's words here and in more critical words here, basically involves cutting a bunch of programs and smooshing departments into interdisciplinary megaglobs in support of the "professional super college" the administration wants to create. Closer to home, among the programs slated to be cut is the History MA, without which my life would look very different. The program not only set me on a course I'd never anticipated; it also served as a powerful symbol of my achievement. The degree was meaningful to me and to my colleagues-- so much so that I and my friend Arley Ward, fellow MA graduate and Doctoral Candidate at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, did a photo shoot around campus with our master's theses.

Duncan and Ward having one last coffee in the library cafe, 2014. Photo by Arley Ward. 

There's a lot of useful critiques and great organizing going on in opposition to this plan (which could use your help-- see this petition and this list for descriptions of the plan and quick, easy action items). The language in both of the links above notes the lack of transparency and participation of many student and faculty voices (other than a handpicked few) in the process being a problem, which it certainly is; inconsistencies and vagaries in the plans proposed; the speed of the process seeming hasty for the review of as many departments as the committee was tasked with reviewing. However, for this post, I want to pontificate a bit: about the assumptions surrounding first generation students and the pitfalls of the language of "practicality," about the role of larger trends of higher ed being evoked by this, and about my own disappointment with this turn of events. 

In his piece for City Journal, TU philosophy professor Jacob Howland noted that "At his first meeting with TU faculty in late 2016… Clancy announced that he was turning the ship around: we would now focus on recruiting first-generation college students and offering them job-ready programs." Perhaps because of the obvious problems with messaging-- the university is going to make money by recruiting broke students?-- The Academic Strategy for the University of Tulsa brochure announcing True Commitment does not rely on this language, in favor of veiled and value-laden terms-- the new focus is "professional, practical," (3) "high-touch," and involves something unsettlingly referred to as "secret sauce" (5). It's mystifying to this first generation college student, who found in college a way to interpret her experiences as well as simply learning a trade (in my case, research and writing). If this is an attempt to reach out to first generation students, it undersells what we are capable of and what we are interested in. If this is not such an attempt, it leaves us in the lurch anyway. 

So, what is True Commitment? What does it mean? Who is it for? It seems clear that higher education is broadly afflicted by an administrative obsession with simplistic, neoliberal approaches to reforming how we think about and practice "college." Higher education was never perfect, historically dominated by the powerful and privileged, but the modern solutions seem designed not to reform the intellectual system but to further entrench its inequities by claiming that it is not practical for those without money to think deeply; that the study of the arts and humanities is best left to those who are independently wealthy or parentally supported. "True commitment" is what I had to the institution that taught me who I am, and who I could be, in the most significant, shaping five years of my life. True commitment is what every faculty and student org on campus who has taken up the issue has shown when they voted against it. If this reorganization occurs in the way it has been planned, that commitment will be broken-- I'll have no reason to support, speak highly of, or donate to the institution I've cared so deeply for-- all things I've done or aspired to do. I hope that institution remembers the worth of that sort of commitment, and shows the same to all of us. 

Related Links:
Anyone can sign this petition opposing the "True Commitment" changes. Every signature helps!
A useful piece from 2000 on "The Neo-Liberal University" from New Labor Forum, which focuses more on the role of public universities but is interesting nonetheless. An evocative snippet: "the fundamental roles of public higher education, including providing increased upward mobility for underserved populations, have been displaced by the economic role of serving corporations' global competitiveness."