A Sense of Purpose: Interview with Michael Wesch

Michael Wesch's closing plenary address at SCUP-44 was very well received. Coincidentally, this interview with Wesch is available in EDUCAUSE Review, thus making some of his perspectives more widely available to those who could not come to Portland. Actually, these are a different set of perspectives. Asked about the effect of the budget crunch at the teaching and learning level, Wesch replies:

People I've talked to around campus, in just about every department, are worried about cuts and what might happen. This creates an immediate desire to make your program look better than the others, so that you're not the one who gets cut. If we're talking at the faculty level, what are faculty doing to address the budget crunch? I would say the first thing they're doing is trying to make themselves and their department look good. That is playing out, in some ways, in a race for majors, because the more majors your department has, the safer you are if you're concerned about your department being cut.