Abstract
The central thesis of this paper is that institutions of higher education and their members need to demonstrate their commitment to collaboration. A humanities perspective is used to frame administrative practices and roles, which provides for an articulation, rather than a critique, of power through an examination of key concepts employed in current educational and administrative literature – autonomy, professionalism, and collaboration. This perspective is further delineated by its setting within a state comprehensive university. Additionally, descriptions of roles, responsibilities, and obligations of faculty and administration are provided alongside descriptive and normative evaluations of these roles, offering a view of the University as a place of shared, concrete commitment to collaboration and education. The potential obstacles of “insistent individualism” and corruption are also addressed. Finally, a continuum of collaboration is constructed, with the goal of elaborating ethical collaborative policies that are plausible and possible, through an analysis of various scenarios which arise in university settings.
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Notes
- 1.
Correspondence with Dr. Mark Mossman.
- 2.
Various researchers have grappled with the conception of autonomy, particularly in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Medical ethicist Barbara Secker makes a distinction between “Kant’s concept of autonomy” and “the Kantian concept of autonomy.” Arguing that both concepts may be troublesome when applied to bioethical issues, Secker offers “a more promising concept of patient autonomy.” Unfortunately, this account, like many other attempts at refuting or revising the conception of Kantian autonomy rests upon a simplistic Kantian concept of autonomy, e.g., Mappes’s and DeGrazia’s introductory remarks in Biomedical Ethics, 1996, which perpetuates the dichotomy between autonomy and beneficence (Secker, 1999; Martinelli-Fernandez, 2005).
- 3.
Correspondence with Dr. Joseph Rallo, President Angelo State University.
- 4.
I thank Dr. Dan Wise for suggesting this example.
- 5.
I thank Michael Pritchard for this point.
- 6.
Correspondence with Dr. Joseph Rallo.
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Martinelli-Fernandez, S.A. (2009). Collaborative Administration: Academics and Administrators in Higher Education. In: Englehardt, E.E., Pritchard, M.S., Romesburg, K.D., Schrag, B.E. (eds) The Ethical Challenges of Academic Administration. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2841-9_9
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