Tuesday, June 21, 2016

Don't blame “THE ADMINISTRATION,” from Froderick Frankenstien from Fresno

In that past year, I've noticed multiple university administrators decrying how faculty decry "THE ADMINISTRATION." Apparently, it's the new buzzphrase making the rounds in their seminars, or maybe it's the subject of one of those management books you see for sale in airports. Members of THE ADMINISTRATION say "it's not productive" for faculty to complain about "THE ADMINISTRATION," or even use the phrase, "THE ADMINISTRATION." If we faculty persist in doing so, it will elicit a condescending response from THE ADMINISTRATION—well, even more condescending than usual.

This strikes me as not very good logic. If THE ADMINISTRATION are good at anything other than rewarding themselves at the expense of everyone else, it is using the anonymity afforded by their ever-expanding SHEER SIZE to evade responsibility for their bad decisions. WELL, if THE ADMINISTRATION wants me to NAME NAMES from now on, I will certainly DO SO.

But of course, I have tenure.

- Froderick Frankenstien from Fresno



11 comments:

  1. This may actually be good news, in the sense that it indicates that, after several years of various people, from faculty of all ranks to economists to politicians, pointing out that increases in higher ed/tuition costs track much more closely with the growth of higher ed administration than with any other factor (except, perhaps, declining support from the states), administrators are feeling a bit embattled.

    The less-good news is that they seem to be girding their loins/digging in their heels to defend the necessity of their jobs, rather than, say, contemplating the return of a legion of sub (assistant/associate) Deans, Provosts, Presidents, etc. to the classrooms from which they came.

    Mind you, I actually like/admire/respect a good many of the people who have risen to such positions (often from my own department) in my own university over the past decade or so. I'm also sympathetic to their desire for the greater voice in administrative decisions (and, presumably, better pay) that comes with such appointments. But those feelings are based partly on my knowledge that these people are good teachers and department-level administrators. If the administrative positions they occupy are going to exist, I'm glad to see them (as opposed to some higher ed administration Ph.D. who rarely if ever teaches undergraduates) occupy those positions. At the same time, I can't help thinking that it might also be dandy if some of the newly-created administrative positions were eliminated, greater decision-making power (and more of the salary pool) was returned to department-level faculty), and incumbents capable of functioning in traditional departments returned to their original homes (something that is still possible as long as sub-whatevers do, indeed, have Ph.D.s in traditional fields).

    That's my utopian take on solving the problem of the proliferation of administrative positions. My somewhat-less-utopian take would have people rotating in and out of such positions on some reasonable schedule (since there is a learning curve, say every 3-6 years, a la department chairs), with at least a 3-year gap between administrative appointments, so that administrators stay in touch with the life of rank and file (tenured) faculty, and administration has the advantage of input from various people/perspectives. It goes without saying that this system would only work if the minimum qualification for such administrative positions were tenure (or perhaps equivalent experience, but I don't really think non-TT faculty can function well in such positions, so probably tenure) in a traditional department, with the full range of teaching and research and department-level service experience that implies.

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    1. My fear is that the "administration" will solve the problem of an ever-growing "administration" by eliminating positions that technically fall under the category, but aren't really at the root of the problem: librarians; IT support; physical plant management/maintenance; learning/psychological support personnel; other folks who quietly keep things running behind the scenes (as opposed to filling their days by assessing or demanding self-assessment from faculty, and/or spinning the university's activities to outside audiences such as legislators, donors, etc. -- not that those activities don't have value, or aren't engaged in by some very good people -- they do/are -- but they do strike me as extras that an administration that increasingly talks to itself, and less and less to students and in-the-trenches faculty, has begun to view as necessities).

      tl;dr: more administrators need to teach more, especially labor-intensive intro/core courses. At the very least, they'll be too exhausted to worry about what others are saying about them.

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    2. > they seem to be girding their loins/digging in their heels to defend the necessity of their jobs

      Cue up one Blazing Saddles quote and give the Governor a Harrumph.

      They have a built-in defense in some cases. The Disability Office and the Title IX people (and probably some others who aren't coming to my mind just now) are mandated by Washington DC at this point. Oh, we could (if we were getting our way) look closely at the size and pay-scale for those offices, but there's no way to get rid of them while the law remains as it is and our institutions run on federal dollars in the form of guaranteed student loans and federal grants.

      And what those offices do are generally good things, but because It's The Law, there is no way to balance those benefits against costs and come to a different local arrangement in Podunck State University than in Barrio College or Glass Tower Polytech.

      But I suppose that even getting every deanlet into some gen ed classroom once a year would make a big difference.

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    3. Some of them are, indeed, doing useful and mandated work. And when I think about the people I know in administration, I tend think they're making a real contribution to the institution (even as I still think there's something to the argument that too many resources are going to administration).

      So I guess the other option is for us all, administrative types and faculty alike, to band together and argue that the real problem is the decline in state support for higher ed. There's certainly a lot of truth in that argument as well. . .

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    4. Don't forget also the job placement center. Nevertheless, as Dave Barry has observed, most colleges could be run by a dozen secretaries, who could use the titles, "Vice Provost," "Associate Dean of Institutional Effectiveness," "Assistant Dean of Faculty Affairs," or "Assistant Dean of Student Involvement" (all real ones created recently here), and interchange them whenever the whim catches them.

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    5. I like that idea. If I were to wake up one morning and find that the inhabitants of the president's/provost's suite had magically been replaced by the usual inhabitants of my department's front office, I'd be delighted, and expect things to run smoothly in the short term, and better in the long term.

      Whether the inhabitants of the front office would be delighted is another question. Many of them, for all their competence in university matters, also have lives outside the university that they value. I'm not sure they'd welcome the chance to fix the place, for all that they probably could.

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  2. Apparently disagreeing with them can lead to the 'Dignity at Work' process being invoked, because they felt that your tone in questioning their wisdom made them feel slighted. Not my university, thankfully, but from a very reliable source.

    ---Grumpy Academic---

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    1. Whenever they try to sell me the old "America is facing an imminent and long-term shortage of scientists" nonsense, I don't hesitate to scream at their fatuous faces immediately, in the finest tradition of Ian Gillan. (Kudos to Ian for getting into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame, by the way: about time they took notice!) If THE ADMINISTRATION call me "uncollegial," we here in America have a saying: Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke---although the work lives of our students after graduation ARE serious concerns.

      It's also amazing what one can get away with if one is in the physics department. Recently, our university president presented us with some statement on the impact of laser-focused strategic goals or some such admini-babble, chock full of cliches. Since I remember how my high-school English teacher told us that cliche-d writing is a symptom of cliche-d thinking, I immediately pointed out to him that one can't focus a laser: they come that way, already. My hope is that this will be one less buzz-phrase we'll have to endure: but of course, there still will be more than enough for a rollicking game of BINGO!

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  3. Hmmm...well, perhaps some of them administration-identify and experience these trigger phrases as microaggressions....

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    1. I think part of the problem is that the system of rewards in higher ed increasingly invites highly competent, well-intentioned people who have the good of the university at heart (as well as, apparently, some others) to administration-identify, in present or prospective terms.

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  4. Our Dean of General Education was hard-working, competent, rational, creative, and intelligent. He got fired. Our provost was intelligent, very effective, dedicated to education foremost, and very rational. He got fired.

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