Account, Accounting, Accountability

Abstract

80 Before I discuss what it means to work in and chair an English department in a University of Excellence, I need to clarify what a university dedicated to excellence means, at least in my experience. For four years, I chaired an English department on a campus with a mission to be excellent (Strategic, “Goal #1”). Then, as a dean in Minnesota for four years, I worked on strategic plans and performance indicators that pointed toward accountability in the context of total quality management (Franz, ch. 1). And now, back in the California State University system as a dean at California Polytechnic State University, I work in a system that is guided, in part, by a document, The Cornerstones Report, that dedicates us to excellence (Broad et al. 2). I have not read the Cal Poly campus strategic plan this week, but I am sure that, since we are all children of Lake Wobegon, Cal Poly aims to be above average, nay, excellent, too (California Polytechnic, secs. 2, 3, and 7). Experienced as I am with such excellence, it is nonetheless difficult for me to explain. And maybe that difficulty tells us something about excellence—that term of “no content”—as the word is used today in universities (Readings 13). Thinkers like Jean-Francois Lyotard in The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge and Bill Readings in The University in Ruins theorize excellence in ways that capture humanities faculty members’ despairing view of the fate of learning today. The central claims run something like this: contemporary “incredulity toward metanarratives” has undermined collective faith in those stories or public myths that have legitimated higher education and, supposAccount, Accounting, Accountability