“A Well-Regulated Faculty …”

Calls for accountability, long the focus of stewardship for public monies and public employment in institutions of higher education, have now exceeded their original purposes. The growing “managerialism” and corporatization of public universities had created an “audit culture,” one effect of which is to regulate the use of faculty time away from teaching, research, service and student advising and toward multiple, and often overlapping, reporting requirements. Several examples from three separate states are offered as brief examples of the restrictions created by institutions and legislatures on the freedom to teach, as well as academic freedom more broadly. I argue that increasing calls for accountability as well as legislative regulations on teaching and student challenges to teaching effectively abridge long-standing faculty rights and absorb critical time for thinking, teaching, research and even public service the traditional missions of a university.