BY MARTHA MCCAUGHEY AND SCOTT WELSH

Digital collage here and on the blog’s home page by Martha McCaughey.

In the fall 2021 issue of Academe we describe the problem of a “shadow curriculum” in the form of student-affairs programming that (re)shapes students’ education on campus, encroaching on the faculty’s role in governance of courses and curriculum. From our perspective as faculty members guided by AAUP principles, such programming is creeping into the traditional curriculum, despite not being vetted by the faculty, and therefore challenging the faculty’s authority in educational decision-making. This shadow curriculum focuses on training, undermining the spirit of inquiry when it is framed as education.  

In a recent Chronicle article, Elizabeth Corey and Jeffrey Polet criticized campus trainings for faculty members as more indoctrination than inquiry. They speak generally about the problem of an expanding number of trainings that contradict institutional norms that prioritize “the free contestation of ideas.” In our article, we speak specifically about trainings for students, some of which exemplify this problem. Insofar as students need to learn codes of conduct, safety protocols, and how to get along with other students whose identities and views are different from their own, such trainings, conducted by student-affairs staff, have an important place at colleges and universities. We value and support that work. But when such training takes on the guise of anything more than helpful orientation to college or university life, students get mixed messages about what the mission of higher education truly is.

Certainly many student-affairs professionals understand the primacy of the faculty in students’ education and appropriately see themselves as supporting the faculty’s role as educators and student life on campus. Some, however, see themselves as educators for the moral development of students and the political transformation of campus and the larger society. As self-described student affairs “educators” Kaler and Stebleton say, “student affairs educators must continue supporting students and themselves advocating for social justice” (2020). They go on to state, “Education is not neutral, and neither is student affairs. Educators at all levels should get comfortable sharing their stances” on “political issues that may be controversial or unsettling” both “on and off-campus.” This version of student affairs appears to be guided by an ethos of student affairs staff as educators and education as activism. Members of both the faculty and the student affairs divisions are divided on the question of who educates, how they do so, and for what purpose. 

As Corey and Polet remind us, the institution organizes us for the disciplined practice of intellectual humility—not self-assured indoctrination. A university’s faculty, at its best, embodies a spirit of inquiry in all that it does. We formulate questions, gather data, sift evidence, and draw careful conclusions, noting potential problems with even our most well-founded ideas.  The mission of the university is educational and disciplinary, not activist  or moral, and only the faculty has the expertise to carry out that mission. The AAUP’s 1966 Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities holds that the faculty should have “primary responsibility for such fundamental areas as curriculum, subject matter and methods of instruction, research, faculty status, and those aspects of student life which relate to the educational process.” The 1966 Statement implies that campus initiatives affecting the education of students should be faculty-driven and based on faculty expertise.   

The AAUP’s recent statement In Defense of Knowledge and Higher Education defines knowledge as “the dialogue that produces expert knowledge occur[ing] among those who are qualified by virtue of their training, education, and disciplinary practice” (our emphasis).  Acknowledging the primacy of the faculty in creating and vetting courses and curricula is of course not suggesting that the study of global perspectives, social justice, or civic engagement has no place in a college education. Indeed, many faculty members rightly teach about these things, based on their scholarly expertise. Nor is it suggesting that nonacademic speakers have no place on college campuses. Speakers from across the ideological spectrum should be a part of campus forums. And of course it is not suggesting that student affairs or extracurricular activities should not exist. It is only to suggest that student affairs staff cross a line—no less than the faculty—when they start to confuse their essential support for the educational, disciplinary mission of the institution for which they work with pursuing a separate, social, moral, or political mission to be carried out within colleges and universities.

In shining some light on the shadow curriculum, we hope that faculty, staff, and administrators alike might begin a process of renewing their commitment to the fundamental, academic, disciplinary purpose of higher education. Criticizing what some student affairs professionals are doing or saying does not mean that we advocate speaker bans, or that we want government officials to step in to determine who should be teaching what to college students. Several contributors to Academe Blog have taken persuasive stances against shouting down speakers and government interference with university curricula. For the same reasons they are concerned with defending the faculty’s disciplinary authority from these forces, faculty members, academic leaders, and the AAUP should also be concerned about the shadow curriculum of student affairs. As Stanley Fish reminds us in his book Save the World on Your Own Time (2008, p. 152), “In 1915, the American Association of University Professors warned that if we didn’t clean up our own shop, external constituencies, with motives more political than educational, would step in and do it for us.” 

Martha McCaughey is a professor of sociology at Appalachian State University who writes about academic freedom, gender, violence, and privacy. She is also a HxA Writing Fellow at Heterodox Academy.Scott Welsh is an associate professor and chair of the Department of Communication at Appalachian State University and author of The Rhetorical Surface of Democracy. 

Articles from the current and past issues of Academe are available online. AAUP members receive a subscription to the magazine, available both by mail and as a downloadable PDF, as a benefit of membership.