Thursday, March 06, 2008

Higher Education and The Wire

At The Chronicle of Higher Education's blog, Brainstorm, Mark Bousquet makes a pretty nifty comparison between the world depicted in The Wire (the greatest show in the history of television, which will, sadly, air its final episode on Sunday night) with the administrative culture of higher education.


Hat Tip to my colleague, JLag.

4 comments:

Name: Matthew Guenette said...

Sweet redirect. Here at MATC, a "re-org" has been underway for three years, with the mission of improved "student learning". Far as anyone can tell, the only thing the "re-org" has fascilitated is the impression that managament is hard at work and actively involved in the act of fascilitation.

Joseph Heller, we need you.

Thanks for the words regarding the upcoming readings. Right now it's a race to the finish to have the book ready by next week (f@$%ing press hold-ups). When Richards asked if I'd read, I jumped at the chance. "Local boy, not a total idiot, makes a good"; that's the headline in my head. So long as Richard Dion doesn't show up drunk and picking for a fight (actual nightmare I had), I expect the reading to go well..

dcat said...

Matt --
I think it would be incredibly apt for that sort of scenario to play out in the old hometown. In fact, I think I might find it somewhat endearing. You know, I think I might be disappointed if it did not happen.

Things are going really well with my press with my book, but I imagine that as the preferred deadline for publication comes there will be snafus.

You'll note that I did not make a lot of my standard commentary on the Wire-academia comparison. My admin gets to make a landmark decision about my career this year and I want to provide no ammunition. I'm going to leave it at that. For now.

dcat

Anonymous said...

This from the man (boy?) who wrote, "It deserves a chance to break free for an eighty yard run of its own. Given the chance, it will surely score a touchdown," perhaps the two most inept sentences ever written in a review by an accredited professor of anything anywhere. But I can't blame you; clearly even football literature is way over your head. Ryan and Shaughnessy can rest (very) easily despite your verbal-diarrhea efforts to ape them...I don't really blame Joyce Bolduc for reaming you out, but I do thank God my daughter won't be forced to take a job in (shudder) Odessa, Texas. Y'all be sure and stay there, now.

p.s. Matt, haven't you learned how to spell "facilitate" or even the easier "management" correctly by now?? Sheesh. What has this American education system come to?

dcat said...

Oooohh! Anonymous sniping. And from someone who clearly dug pretty deep in the archives to find something that I reviewed several years ago only to cite two sentences that, while purple, are not inept.

Meanwhile, you start your criticism with "this, from the man (boy?)" without making clear what the "this" alludes to. Do you take exception with something I've said? Do you disagree with one of my assertions?

Meanwhile, way to stay classy with the slap at Odessa. While hiding behind anonymity (and with a bizarre reference to my freshman high school English teacher) you also manage to add a ham-handed insult to where I live and work, not to mention the fatuous anonymous internet commenters favorite gambit -- insulting someone's spelling on this sort of forum.

So, how's about outing yourself, brave anonymous critic? That way I can snipe at something you wrote a few years ago. Or is it just possible that there is no record to critique? So let's hear it -- who is our brave, gutless critic who is, by the way, bothering to find and comment on the writing of someone he or she finds so objectionable. You find me awful, yet you came to my blog, commented on it, made reference to an English teacher I had in 1985, and then nitpicked a couple of sentences from a review I wrote a few hundred thousand words ago. yeah, I'd say one of us certainly suffers from some form of intellectual diarrhea, though I'm pretty certain it is neither me nor Matt.

dcat