The start of the fall semester brings students and faculty members at residential colleges back to the classroom, and administrators back to their offices. But the modern university is much more than the loose association of students and teachers that characterized the early years of American higher education. Major colleges are, in many ways, small cities, and much more work goes into keeping them running than is commonly understood.
The Chronicle profiled five workers whose campus jobs can be overlooked but are, in their own ways, integral to the functioning of the modern university. This is not by any means an exhaustive list of higher education’s unsung labor. Such a list would be impossible to compile. Rather, this is just a small selection of the people who perform higher ed’s less-heralded tasks — what we’re calling the “Unsung Campus.” —Andy Thomason
