ALAN WOLFE
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tional experience: ending grade inflation, restoring a common curricu–
lum, requiring the study of foreign languages, imposing standards, elimi–
nating frivolous majors, expelling the unqualified, pruning courses, re–
warding merit. Anyone of these reforms could absorb the full-time en–
ergy of a college president for years; think of what would be required
just to eliminate grade inflation in higher education. From the perspec–
tive of a new class administrator, the traditionalist agenda is utopian,
and, even where possible, expensive. And if that were not enough to
damn them, the advocates of traditionalism, like utopians everywhere,
appear to the new class administrators as unlikeable people: obsessive, im–
practical, old-fashioned. They constitute a hindrance to the new presi–
dent's plans, irrespective of whatever those plans happen to be.
By contrast, administrators may find some of those arguing for in–
clusion shrill in demeanor or exotic in language, but they recognize that
their demands leave in place those features of the modern university with
which they are familiar. Generally speaking, the reformers want three
things: programs, power, and money. None of these are all that difficult
to give, especially when compared to what the traditionalists want.
No college president makes a reputation by strengthening and im–
proving old programs; the new class craves new initiatives. Presented with
a demand for a new major or institute, the president's mind wanders to
the Rolodex. There is always a foundation executive, potential donor,
or new recruit who would be interested to hear of plans for a new pro–
gram, especially one so resonant with the contemporary Zeitgeist. It may
even be possible to find hard money for the program; after all, the clas–
sics department is losing majors, its faculty are overtenured, and there are
a couple of retirements coming up. The president may have no particular
intellectual sympathy with the proposed program, but the faculty mem–
ber urging its creation is getting nibbles from other institutions; it would
be a blemish on the president's record to lose a person who contributes
to the university's diversity. There is everything to be gained, and very
little to be lost, by accepting a demand - no matter how militantly
made - for a more inclusive cuurriculum.
Of course adding new programs means adding new members to the
governance structure of the university.
In
the old days, this would have
been a stumbling block, for presidents, believing themselves to be the
embodiment of their institution's tradition, were jealous of their power.
Power in the contemporary university, by contrast, is diffuse; already di–
vided into innumerable committees, the addition of one more level in
the structure - say, a committee to pass on whether any particular course
satisifies a concern with multicultural issues - would hardly be noticed.
Administrators expect to sit on committees; that is the nature of their
profession these days. But so, surprisingly, do a significant number of fac-
