Abstract:

My paper focuses on what we may call the ivory tower symptom. What does this mean? Basically, it means the tendency of most European university professors to consider that their main task is only to teach and research, while administrative work is not part of their current duties. But is this right? For instance a normal contract of a tenured North American professor stipulates the following duties: 35% Teaching, 35% Research and 30% Administrative work. I consider this an important and sensitive aspect of our academic life, and I think that up to a certain point to provide some administrative work should be a mandatory requirement for all faculty members, for it increases the organizational capacity of the institution, providing more coherence and unity. Certainly, such work is time-consuming and is a burden on anybody’s shoulders, yet it may consolidate the cohesion among faculty members, offering a feeling of working together, of being part of an organic structure.
We tend to characterize our modern societies as knowledge-based societies, where the collective intelligence, obviously, plays a key role. Also obvious it is the fact that such societies could not be based on collections of ivory towers, so such practices should be discourages, and our universities should try to find better ways to communicate and integrate its faculty members.

Keywords:

Ivory tower, administrative work, knowledge-based society.