Thursday, October 27, 2016

"Shared Governance." A Big Thirsty from Three Sigma.

Our little university recently has had a major fight about a big change to the curriculum. Although advertised as a money-saving measure, there was much debate about how much money it would actually save. It went through our shared governance system, and failed.

The Board of Trustees, at the urging of the top-level adminibuzzards, just overturned the ruling and instituted the chang. They seemingly ignored the objections because "something must be done".

Q: WTF do we do now? Set fire to the school? Boycott the shared governance? Whine? Quit? Sulk? I'm seriously at a loss for how we're supposed to go on with the charade.


18 comments:

  1. Your faculty senate should officially pass a vote of no confidence for all the top-level adminibuzzards involved, as well as the Board of Trustees. That'll show THEM!

    This may seem a really futile and stupid gesture, but the faculty senate are just the folks to do it. Of course, it's not binding in any way whatsoever, but go ahead and do it anyway. People do notice this sort of thing. The press certainly does. Chico State passed a vote of no confidence for their president and provost, and within 2-3 years, both of them were out of there.

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    1. We're discussing this. One problem is that few faculty wanted the change, and seem not at all aggrieved that the change was made in this way.

      Another is that we know there are more fights coming down the pike.. do we save our ammunition?

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    2. Save your ammo? Why? I'd suggest going online and stock up. Then take back your campus.

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    3. At my joint, "shared" governance is more usually pronounced as "shed" or "shred", as that seems to be our current direction.

      Maybe adminibuzzard beaks can't deal with diphthongs?

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    4. It's just that the adminibuzzards are diphthits.

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  2. We have one newspaper in my state that always highlights this sort of hypocrisy in higher ed administration. For the really big stories, the more mainstream papers often pick it up, too. Try to get this public exposure. I'd love to see the administration embarrassed by their duplicity, at the very least.

    The college senate could also contact your accrediting body directly and make a formal statement about what happened. Those same administrators are going to want you all to play nice and make them look good when it is time for your self study. Refuse to go along with that. Tell your accreditors (who are big into shared governance right now) what is going on.

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    1. I'm not sure the local papers know of our existence, let along care about how curricular changes are made...

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    2. Well, Chico State ain't exactly Harvard. One reason I take an interest in that case is that one of the parties involved is such a dishonest, destructive little slug. Schadenfreude may not be nice, but it feels SO out of sight when it's SO richly deserved.

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  3. Oops, typo. I didn't mean they'd institute the Chang, whoever he is. I'm sure the Chang is a very nice person who is totally ok without becoming an institute.

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  4. AAUP? IHE? CHE?

    Seriously, I would get in touch with the AAUP (via your local chapter if you have an active one; via the national office if not). Then, yes, some combination of following whatever formal grievance procedure is available (always go through channels first, or at least concurrently) plus trying to attract the attention of the press (via anything from an old-fashioned letter to the editor or op-ed to whatever is the most cutting-edge social media approach this month). I've seen change.org petitions (or similar), plus twitter/facebook/blog/etc. publicity, work well to garner support and publicity in such situations (actual change may be another matter). Make some well-respected, tenured senior professors the public face of the campaign, and let the more vulnerable (untenured, contingent) work behind the scenes and/or sign on once there's a critical mass of senior faculty on board.

    But, seriously, write (and speak) your objections, via whatever avenues are available and most likely to be effective. It may or may not do any good, but free expression and petition are well-established, protected rights, inside academia and out (give or take a non-disparagement clause, but I'm pretty sure those won't fly in the academy). To be honest, I fear that faculty governance, like tenure, is dying, and probably can't be revived, but some things are worth fighting for, and this, to my mind, is one.

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  5. Concern with student learning is seen as a peculiar obsession of the professoriate, or worse, a manifestation of professorial arrogance. No one above department chair cares about it. I'd love to be wrong about this, but I've encountered approximately one exception in my career.

    In fairness to administrators (I'm nothing if not fair to administrators), I believe it's structural, not personal. When your costs are exploding, your mandates are multiplying, and your budgets are shrinking, educating students takes a back seat to making payroll.

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    1. Heh. Why care about student learning when you can care about student *success*??

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    2. The structural issues are real. Administrators are facing multiple mandates, incentives (some of them perverse), metrics, etc., etc. many of them arising from good intentions (with most of the others arising from the profit motive and/or a desire to save money), but we all know about the paving of the road to hell. Add to that the fact that most administrators are trying to serve all too many masters, and you've got a mess.

      That said, if it is, structurally, the administrators' role to try to respond to all of the above (and they do usually get paid nicely for doing so), then it's the faculty's role to stand up for things like faculty governance, rigorous curricula, accurate measurement of student achievement, etc., etc.

      It is, however, sometimes tempting to imagine what would happen if the faculty just bowed out of the whole mess and left the administrators and students (and parents, and legislators, and everybody else) facing each other, trying to figure out what to do next.

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    3. Altneratively, it would be interesting to see what happened if legislators, employers, parents, governing boards, etc. left us alone for a decade or so, leaving the faculty, administrators, and students to talk about what we each/all want out of a university, to take some steps toward creating that. While I suspect some administrators (and a few professors) would be lost without outside metrics/an outside audience, I'm pretty sure most would adapt, and we might even make some actual improvements.

      Of course that would be undemocratic from an outside-the-university perspective, but one can dream.

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  6. Sorry to go off topic...

    HOLY SHIT. As I was reading the page, the email icon on the left went from green to some kind of autumny brown. Did I do it? Did the seasons change? Is it Daylight Standard Time? Or am I have a stroke?

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    1. It's like the dress that looks like different colors to different people.

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    2. It's now brown(ish) for me, too. I can't remember what it was this morning, but green sounds plausible. I like the way the current color kinda sorta matches several of the colors in the background, but doesn't exactly match any of them. Very much in keeping with the traditions of the page.

      I also appreciate the preview of autumn leaves in the background. We aren't quite there yet in my own neighborhood, but I'll be driving northward and uphill this weekend, so I expect to see some fall colors.

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  7. Why are there marijuana leaves in the background?

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