Regarding the Winter Issue:
"Faugh! this smells very strong of some musty old song." --Aristophanes, The Clouds
This academic year, like most, has begun with eager, upwardly mobile administrators confronting the bemused faculty with the startling news that this is to be a year of change, a musty old song we have heard many times before. However, this year was different from the others in one respect--the Commissioner and the Regents issued their proposed Phase II of the restructuring of the university system.
What makes this so different from is that the Regents can actually force some real, and not necessarily benefical, changes on the system, for example, they can enforce limits on degrees (120 hours) and can penalize students for taking more than 135 credits by taxing them for any hours over that limit. But perhaps more troubling is the Sophistry implicit in the plan. Its "get in, get out, get a job" attitude and the related view of education as a retail business with the student as the customer (and professors as store clerks?) is as demeaning to true education as was the work of most of the Sophists in Plato's time.
In all this, the faculty has been strangely silent. We believe our readers can and should speak up loudly on this issue on either side. We therefore solicit contributions for the winter issue from any interested party. We will include anything of publishable quality.