Hi folks,
Long-time reader, occasional commenter, first-time poster here. I'm not a proffie yet, merely a lowly PhD student. But I'm hoping to grow up and be fully miserable in a few years.
So, my first post is about observing the misery of others: namely, the unfolding brouhaha at the University of Virginia. By now many of you have likely read about the
forced resignation of UVa's President Teresa Sullivan (it's been covered in the
Chicago Tribune, the Washington Post, etc). Basically, the scoop is that
Sullivan has served two years at UVa, seemingly doing a fine job. She is, by
the way, the school's first female president. On Sunday, the Rector of the
university, Helen Dragas, sent out an e-mail announcing that Sullivan is
resigning and that an interim president will be in place by the time students
return to school in August. No substantive reason was offered, just a lot of
administrative double-speak about "moving forward" and some hints
that UVa needs a more effective fund-raiser/budget-maker.
Faculty, along with students and alums, were outraged; the Faculty Senate passed a resolution condemning the removal of Sullivan, and over 30 heads of departments signed a letter calling for a real explanation of what's afoot. Bits and pieces of the story began to come out; while all the facts are still unknown, the coup seems to have been engineered by Rector Dragas, who is an alum of UVa's business school and currently a real estate developer in Virginia Beach (which makes sense because, you know, selling condos and running an institution of higher learning are totally like the same thing). It is also clear that venture capitalist Peter Kiernan was deeply involved in "the project”" to oust Sullivan. Kiernan is NOT a member of the Board of Visitors, the University's (ostensible) governing body. In fact, some members of the BoV were not even informed that the plot against Sullivan was in the works until a couple of days before her resignation was announced. Kiernan has ties with Goldman Sachs, which has recently acquired ownership in EMC, a group of online universities accused of “predatory pursuit of students and revenues.” (Kiernan did hold a post at UVa as chair of the Darden [Business] School Foundation Board, but has resigned in the wake of this fiasco). Although the official reasoning behind President Sullivan’s removal has yet to be made public, Dragas’s e-mails have repeatedly stressed the financial pressures on the University “to prioritize and reallocate the resources we do have”, which she links to the not-so-subtle hint that “higher education is on the brink of a transformation now that online delivery has been legitimized by some of the elite institutions.”
All told, it seems like a nefarious plot to force UVa in the direction of becoming a for-profit business endeavor rather than an institution of higher learning (what an outdated concept, right?) The whole university is up in arms. I've even heard from friends there that some faculty are contemplating a teaching strike in the fall. I doubt it'll happen, but it sure would be interesting. It's about time for somebody to take a stand on the idea that universities are about something other than the bottom line, dammit. I don't envy the next president, whoever he or she may be. Who knows, though- maybe there are some people who actually would enjoy being a corporate shill for the likes of Dragas and Kiernan. Eesh.
Long-time reader, occasional commenter, first-time poster here. I'm not a proffie yet, merely a lowly PhD student. But I'm hoping to grow up and be fully miserable in a few years.
So, my first post is about observing the misery of others: namely, the unfolding brouhaha at the University of Virginia. By now many of you have likely read about the
forced resignation of UVa's President Teresa Sullivan (it's been covered in the
Chicago Tribune, the Washington Post, etc). Basically, the scoop is that
Sullivan has served two years at UVa, seemingly doing a fine job. She is, by
the way, the school's first female president. On Sunday, the Rector of the
university, Helen Dragas, sent out an e-mail announcing that Sullivan is
resigning and that an interim president will be in place by the time students
return to school in August. No substantive reason was offered, just a lot of
administrative double-speak about "moving forward" and some hints
that UVa needs a more effective fund-raiser/budget-maker. Faculty, along with students and alums, were outraged; the Faculty Senate passed a resolution condemning the removal of Sullivan, and over 30 heads of departments signed a letter calling for a real explanation of what's afoot. Bits and pieces of the story began to come out; while all the facts are still unknown, the coup seems to have been engineered by Rector Dragas, who is an alum of UVa's business school and currently a real estate developer in Virginia Beach (which makes sense because, you know, selling condos and running an institution of higher learning are totally like the same thing). It is also clear that venture capitalist Peter Kiernan was deeply involved in "the project”" to oust Sullivan. Kiernan is NOT a member of the Board of Visitors, the University's (ostensible) governing body. In fact, some members of the BoV were not even informed that the plot against Sullivan was in the works until a couple of days before her resignation was announced. Kiernan has ties with Goldman Sachs, which has recently acquired ownership in EMC, a group of online universities accused of “predatory pursuit of students and revenues.” (Kiernan did hold a post at UVa as chair of the Darden [Business] School Foundation Board, but has resigned in the wake of this fiasco). Although the official reasoning behind President Sullivan’s removal has yet to be made public, Dragas’s e-mails have repeatedly stressed the financial pressures on the University “to prioritize and reallocate the resources we do have”, which she links to the not-so-subtle hint that “higher education is on the brink of a transformation now that online delivery has been legitimized by some of the elite institutions.”
All told, it seems like a nefarious plot to force UVa in the direction of becoming a for-profit business endeavor rather than an institution of higher learning (what an outdated concept, right?) The whole university is up in arms. I've even heard from friends there that some faculty are contemplating a teaching strike in the fall. I doubt it'll happen, but it sure would be interesting. It's about time for somebody to take a stand on the idea that universities are about something other than the bottom line, dammit. I don't envy the next president, whoever he or she may be. Who knows, though- maybe there are some people who actually would enjoy being a corporate shill for the likes of Dragas and Kiernan. Eesh.
Sounds terrible, but I cannot help but be grateful for this smashing piece of gossip. The Trib did not do the situation justice. You did.
ReplyDeleteThanks AM! As dreadful as it is, there is some schadenfraude in watching the spectacle unfold.
ReplyDeleteWhy Schadenfreude? Did the ousted UVa president, or UVa or anyone at it, do you wrong? I'll confess that if something like this happened at the university where I was treated like a serf as an Accursed Visiting Assistant Professor, I'd giggle, but I'm appalled whenever this happens at a good unviersity, as I used to think the UVa was. (They have a fine astronomy department, and the National Radio Astronomy Observatories have their headquarters there.)
DeleteNo, no, I have nothing personal against anyone at UVa, or UVa as an institution (like you, I have- or had- a good opinion of the place overall). And I'm much, MUCH more concerned than I am pleased. But to the extent that I do feel a dash of Schadenfreude, it's about the way that this whole thing has blown up in Dragas' and the Board's faces. I wonder if Dragas & Cronies thought that they would get away with this; would they have had the guts to attempt this coup if they knew it would cause such a huge outpouring of public protest? Either way, I'm very glad that the faculty, students, and alums of UVa have the guts to stand up to them.
DeleteGod, they already privatized what was once a public university. What more do these bloodsuckers want?
ReplyDeleteAs a science nerd, I can get away with answering an obviously rhetorical question:
DeleteThey want MORE!
And when will they have enough?
NEVER!
A successful parasite doesn't kill its host, though, at least not before it can propagate. When syphilis was introduced to Europe, it had different symptoms, and killed more quickly. The bug evolved, so it wouldn't burn out its host so fast. THESE parasites appear not to be as smart as a spirochete, however. Great.
The only solution:
DeleteDestroy the Capitalists.
Sounds similar to what happened to Radford University--the new president used to run the lottery for the state. Google "Penny Kyle" and I bet you get an eyeful of just how bad she's been for the university.
ReplyDeleteJust want to toss out there ...
ReplyDeleteWhile this certainly does sound deplorable and I am strongly opposed to the current "everything should be privatized" trend, let's not broad brush every for-profit venture as anthetical to higher education.
Indeed, there are some truly predatory for-profits, mostly the certificate/AA "tech schools" pawning off nursing assistant diplomas and generic liberal studies Associates while charging Ivy League tuition.
On the other end the spectrum though, I teach for both a for-profit graduate university and a state-run undergraduate program. I am part of a union in the latter, most certainly not the former. However, I am paid much higher from the for-profit. Both have plusses and minuses, their unique sturm und drang. But, at both I have the general feeling of being supported in my work, tenuous though it may be as lowly contingent faculty.
The problem seems to always boil down to no one has the fortitude to take the best of both models and mix ... it has to be all or nothing.
I had the chance to talk to a grad-school friend who's now at UVA (and has a few ties to mid-level administration), and her take is pretty much the same as marginalia84 suggests: the situation involves some combination of an unhappy major donor (probably Darden-affiliated) and a board that wanted even more radical changes in the budgeting system than Sullivan was proposing. Faculty were not thrilled at Sullivan's proposal, which would have made departments and programs compete for money based on enrollment (among other things), but they're even less happy with what the board wants (which is apparently more centralized and involves even more sweeping change planned/imposed by a single powerful executive, with less conversation/consultation). Most of the faculty did like Sullivan personally, and felt she understood the university's mission, and was good at listening and generally keeping lines of communication open, including with those who may have disagreed with her. And they're horrified by how her ouster was handled, and what it says about University governance (or lack thereof), and by the damage it's done to the school's reputation and its chances of getting another equally good (let alone truly better) leader.
ReplyDeleteMy contact hadn't heard anything specific about competing visions for online education, but from what I've seen Sullivan seemed to be envisioning some sort of homegrown model in which existing UVA courses would be transitioned into an online or hybrid model, presumably by current UVA staff (or at least people hired to work with current UVA staff along the same lines). That's a viable model, but not a cheap one, and definitely not the profit center that leasing the UVA name to a for-profit (which I suspect, without any evidence other than what marginalia84 has posted and what I've seen elsewhere is more what some members of the board are envisioning).
I'm not sure it's so much a nonprofit vs. for-profit issue, except insofar as online teaching can either be done in a labor-intensive (and therefore unlikely to be profitable) but high quality way that closely resembles traditional teaching, or in a much more standardized way that focuses on "content delivery" with a little bit of interactivity built in. The latter is not, in my opinion, a class; it's more like a multimedia textbook with some tech support included in the price.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: information delivery is *not* education. If it were, education would have been revolutionized in the way that Dargas and others envision (i.e. in a direction that eliminates or drastically reduces the need for faculty) by moveable type, or cheap printing in the 19th/early 20th centuries, or the filmstrip, or the videotape. The key difference in online education is that it allows for immediate, multimodal interactivity; the rub is that it still matters very, very much whom the students are interacting with.
That's very nicely put, CC. It's easy to forget, particularly since every effort is made to make us forget, that good teaching matters, is necessary, and is human.
Delete"Who knows, though- maybe there are some people who actually would enjoy being a corporate shill for the likes of Dragas and Kiernan. Eesh."
ReplyDeleteMay I recommend my university's provost? He's been here for three years now and has tried several times to make his mark, so obviously so he can get a job as a university president. He usually does this by pissing on something: heaven forbid he do something helpful to teaching or research. Thanks to an alert, participatory faculty, donors that support us, and a strong faculty union, he's backed down from several of his grand schemes. I'd be willing to write him a splendid letter of recommendation, I promise!
He sounds like just the man for the job, from the Board of Visitor's perspective... sorry you're stuck with him (at least for now.)
DeleteOne way to look at it is free entertainment. He tried to break up our College of Sceince and Mathematics, and our College of Arts and Humanities, and thought we'd all go along with it cheerfully. He appeared to be quite genuinely surprised at the outcry, particularly by the major donors who stopped donating. I hope the culprits at UVa have some similar surprises ahead.
Delete