After 18 years as a faculty member in a small liberal-arts college, I am spending this academic year learning, as fast as I can, how public higher education works.
I am in the enviable position of being an ACE Fellow for 2010-11. Every year the American Council on Education offers a group of faculty members and administrators who have been nominated by their home institutions the chance to learn how leadership works on another campus. We get to spend three weeks in hard-working retreats with our class of fellows, studying finance, strategic planning, positioning, and lots of other things they never taught us in graduate school.
But the real gift, the part that the fellows all talk about when we get together at our working retreats, is our placements. We spend the year (or a few months, depending on our home institutions' needs) in the office of a president or provost of a different institution. At my host institution, I can be a fly on the wall in high-level meetings, debrief afterward with a mentor to find out what really happened, accompany the president to a football game or a chancellor to a cocktail party, and meet with anyone and everyone on the campus to find out what goes into each job. I get to work on a project at the host institution, following it through over the course of the placement, and I get to feel like a real part of another institution, making a real contribution.
My own undergraduate experience was at a Roman Catholic college, and I teach at a private liberal-arts college, so I thought it would be a good idea to broaden my understanding to include the world of public higher education. I was lucky enough to be offered a dual placement in the president's office of a state university system and in the chancellor's office at one of the system's campuses. That way, I get the statewide picture as well as the single-campus perspective.
In less than two months in my new gig, I have learned many, many things about the differences between private and public higher education, as well as a few things about myself. Here are some:
In public higher education, rules actually apply. As a faculty member at a small private college, I am used to asking, and being granted, favors. A reimbursement form was late? A friendly administrator could get it through quickly so I could get my check. Not enough students in this section of my course? Well, we can make an exception just this once. My computer acting up? Friendly, efficient tech support comes to my office, same-day service.
But public higher education, not least because the institutions and systems are so much bigger, has strict procedures and bureaucracies. No judgment intended here—I imagine nothing at all would get done if a large state university operated the way a small private college does. But it does take some getting used to.
Everyone in public higher education is tied up with everyone else in public higher education. At my small private college, I go to conferences and meet people from other institutions; occasionally I see folks from other private colleges at more than one event. But for the most part, we in the private-college sector operate independently of one another, choosing what we do based on the particular needs of our own institutions.
In the first week and a half of my fellowship placement at a state university, I attended four major conferences in the state, all of which featured issues that applied to all of the sectors of public higher education, from community colleges to research universities (and some applied to grade schools as well). Different sectors and different institutions have different stakes in each issue, of course, but all sectors understand that they are tied to one another.
Everything happens at 30,000 feet. At the system level, you get to see how the university interacts with the state legislature and state department of education. You learn how business groups understand the role of public higher education and their role in relation to it. The work that happens on behalf of the university as a whole affects more than one campus, and it often affects more than one sector of the public system. Sometimes the work at the system level even affects more than one generation. The decisions are that big.
Nothing happens at 30,000 feet. For all that happens at the system level, the real work of higher education in the state happens on the campuses. The teaching, the learning, the actual impact on the community—it all goes on with very little reference, on a day-to-day level, to the work that happens at the statehouse, the education department, or the system president's office.
Of course, ultimately, many aspects of teaching, advising, and job placement depend on things that happen at the system level. But you wouldn't necessarily know it on the campuses, where the foot soldiers never watch the generals at work.
I am not, in fact, the center of the universe. This was a tough one to learn. At my home campus, I am a big fish in a small pond, elected to lots of important committees. I have had what I saw as an important voice: People consulted me, argued with me, or at least recognized me.
In this giant state system, I am a cipher. In my role as an ACE Fellow, I am voiceless, except to a very small group of folks whose role it is to explain things to me. Because I know nothing. Really. Not a damn thing. Talk about humbling.
Perhaps the most important part of the fellowship—and at the same time, the most elusive—is the opportunity for reflection it offers. Meetings, conferences, seminars, football games, receptions, and luncheons are part of the daily work of administrators, and they are great learning opportunities. I'm taking tons of notes and having terrific conversations. But the ACE stresses that fellows need to build time into our schedules to process what we're learning. That, of course, is easier said than done.
I'm trying to schedule in the time to do the background reading I need to do in order understand what's happening in my meetings. On the train or bus I'm indexing the notes I've taken. But I need to schedule some time to try to make sense of what I'm learning, to look at the bigger picture, and to figure out how to apply what I'm learning at the state university to the work back home at my small liberal-arts college.
Like most people who indulge in the personal essay, I process what I learn by writing about it. So I suppose this is a start.
Comments
1. tuxthepenguin - November 04, 2010 at 06:42 am
A small comment on the first observation, that rules apply. I've been at multiple public universities, and there is a shocking amount of variation, depending on the state, culture, and administration. The reason for all of the rules is the need for accountability when it involves state funds. At my current university, most rules can be waived, or exceptions granted, as long as the right person approves and there is documentation.
2. laundrydishes - November 04, 2010 at 09:48 am
Building on comment #1, prior to this year I spent 14 years across three public universities and this year I'm at a private university for the first time. This is the most overly-bureaucratized, rule-bound place I've worked yet. Go figure, eh?
3. 11223435 - November 04, 2010 at 10:14 am
I spent fifteen years at a small public college, and my second job was at a very well-off private SLAC. My boss was explaining the budget for faculty development,one of my new duties,to me by telling me what the funds had been used for in the past. It seemed a wide variety of expenditures, so naturally I asked "What can these funds NOT be spent for?" She looked blank for a moment, then looked out the window to see if the turnip truck had left yet...or if it was depositing another loser like me...
Eventually, I got used to there being no rules other than what we though best or reasonable. Then, I went back to public higher ed, and......
4. librarystudent - November 04, 2010 at 11:52 am
Thanks for this article. One sibling and I are struggling to understand the attitudes of our Ivy League-educated sibling. Your article sheds a great deal of light on the matter.
5. fewgardens - November 04, 2010 at 12:05 pm
This is such an important experience to be reverberated through academe particularly humanities areas. What is particularly striking is that if an administrator were to describe these same points in a separate article with a different title, the administrator would be put on the cross. On the other hand, an accomplished faculty member such as yourself who is effectively "acknowledging that higher education" is soooooooo much bigger than a monograph applying De Paul to Thoreau and that the ability to do this does not automatically qualifies one for administration is so refreshing. By the way, I believe that Paula Krebs is well able to be an administrator par-excellence but everyone is not Paula Krebs. Still further, I am sure that Paula Krebs will be an even better one as a result of this ACE experience. Let's give all faculty members an opportunity to experience the university beyond their discipline, committee work, and RTP process. I suspect that I will many more revelations will occur for faculty that clearly many are devoid of.