<p>For so many English professors to give up tenured or tenure-track jobs, they must really be fed up. And they must be good, if they could all get other suitable positions.</p>
<p>[VMI</a> English faculty quit in dispute - Richmond Times Dispatch: Education](<a href=“http://www.timesdispatch.com/news/local/education/vmi-english-faculty-quit-in-dispute/article_81fb865e-9c05-5cc5-8e31-36c5be46fbd4.html]VMI”>VMI English faculty quit in dispute)</p>
<p>Universities generally run on a principle of shared governance, and curriculum decisions generally rest with the faculty, who have the academic qualifications to decide what constitutes a solid program in a given discipline. VMI, in contrast, imposed a top-down shift from literature to composition without widespread support from the English faculty. Maybe VMI wanted to get rid of a bunch of expensive, stubborn tenured faculty and decided that making them teach all composition would do the trick. </p>
<p>The comments from the VMI spokesman that there is a “war these days” between literature and composition/rhetoric are not true, but simply a poor justification for VMI’s decision to work around the long-standing principle of shared governance. That’s like saying there is a war between orthopedics and oncology, or first-grade teachers vs. high school teachers. Faculty in academe are not interchangeable widgets who can plug in to teach whatever an administrator wants them to. Someone who has spent his whole career teaching the 19th century American novel or English Renaissance Drama is not going to want to start teaching nothing but first-year composition. Who can blame him?</p>
<p>I am one of the professors leaving. I have not yet resigned, choosing, instead, to remain behind as a serving member of the faculty so that I may counter the claims of the administration regarding what has happened.</p>
<p>NONE of the people who left did so because of having to teach composition. We ALL taught composition anyway. There is no “issue” in terms of comp itself; rather what is at issue is a whole list of concernes regarding faculty governance, academic freedom, personal integrity and autonomy, and the breakdown in the normal academic and administrative functionings of a state college.</p>