The University of Minnesota’s latest scandal illustrates a bigger problem with major universities.
As my friend Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols has been reporting, UMN’s Institutional Review Board let a computer science professor deliberately dump dodgy code into the Linux kernel, just to see what would happen.
Well, now we know what will happen. The paper has been pulled, the professor has been shamed, and the university has been banned from contributing to Linux. Everyone is being punished by that, down to the last undergraduate.
Yet the university thought an apology would suffice.
It doesn’t.
This isn’t the first recent faculty scandal infecting UMN. A few years ago, a biochemistry professor was found to be sexually harassing students in his lab. This is an incredibly gross violation. It destroyed the careers of promising young researchers, who quit without support. Yet he’s still there.
Both these situations are symptoms of a larger problem. Once you’re faculty you’re untouchable. University administrators treat tenured faculty like mayors do cops. They have virtually unlimited power. They can do no wrong.
The power is only magnified as you go up the chain. How many university presidents just move along after massive screwups? Lots. They’re often hired by other schools. They shouldn’t be.
This is an important issue because universities have become the primary economic engines of our time. Minnesota depends on UMN to fuel its growth. If UMN is corrupt, the whole state is seriously hurt.
This is true for all research institutions. What happens inside impacts us all. Yet most universities are more concerned with maintaining their perquisites than meeting the prerequisites their own students must follow. The people at the top avoid scrutiny by focusing on their athletic programs. More presidents are fired for hiring the wrong football coach than for letting academic scandals go by. Perhaps that’s another story. Perhaps not.
If it were up to me, I’d fire the University of Minnesota President, make sure neither of these professors never taught again, I’d investigate everyone on campus, and I’d insist on an environment where complaints by students are taken seriously. We need to put the fear of God into people. Especially when it comes to state universities, they work for us. If they want to be seen as exalted, their behavior needs to be impeccable.
