November 04, 2009, 02:00 PM ET
Ignoring the Obvious
I worked in private business for a few years before moving into
academe. One of my mentors noted that most companies spend their
time trying to eliminate inefficiency by lamenting a few drops of
blood lost through paper cuts rather than looking at the great
gaping holes in their arteries. They would cut back on toilet-paper
purchases while ignoring problems in their business models that
cost them piles of cash.
My observation has been that higher education does much of the
same. When revenues are flush, we ignore areas of significant
weakness, but when times are tight, we often end up trying to save
nickels and dimes when we have much more severe problems that
impact budgets.
When you look around your campus, do you see any obvious
inefficiencies that are being ignored by and large?
October 15, 2009, 11:00 AM ET
More Bad Economic News
Late last week Chet Culver, the governor of Iowa, announced an
immediate, across-the-board 10-percent cut in the budgets of all
state agencies that report to his office. As far as I can tell,
this cut is retroactive to the beginning of the fiscal year last
July, which makes it even worse, as this year's budgets are already
probably 25-percent spent.
There's some comfort, perhaps, in the knowledge that historically,
Iowa almost always lags behind most of the country in going into a
recession, hitting the bottom, and in recovery as well. While we
had tough times last year, they were nothing like those afflicting
much of the rest of the nation. So this pattern may mean that other
states are on the road to recovery, which would be good news.
However, the other bit of news—less openly discussed—is that the
state government is preparing for another round...
October 13, 2009, 08:00 AM ET
My Accreditor Says . . .
I noted a recent
Chronicle article that describes new pressures on
specialized accreditors because of their budgetary impacts. It is a
dilemma, because many, if not most, of these disciplinary alliances
are at least somewhat objective markers of excellence. They apply
the peer-review process, which is so crucial to academe, to
academic programs themselves.
The wonderful thing about professional accreditors is that they
provide disciplines with incredible leverage for budgets and
personnel. Programs that enjoy specialized accreditation may, in
fact, find themselves the target of jealousy and even some
subterfuge from departments that do not have such an extra level of
certification.
As a dean, I have often chuckled at the way that some of these
other departments try to...
October 12, 2009, 10:00 AM ET
Is Hiring More Rational in the 'Real World'?
A well-worn topic of discussion in The Chronicle's forums
is the differences between the faculty and corporate (or so-called
"real world") hiring processes.
The invidious comparison usually goes like this: An academic search
takes months, a corporate one takes weeks (at most). An academic
search involves all sorts of silly rituals based on outmoded
traditions (the conference interview, the multi-day campus
interview), while a corporate one is rational and driven by
verifiable, objective data that simplify hiring the "right person."
An academic search is characterized by unprofessional and
thoughtless conduct, such as committees not getting back to
candidates in a timely fashion or communicating with them clearly,
while a corporate one is smooth, professional, and efficient.
A recent...
September 30, 2009, 09:00 AM ET
Faculty Characters
A new faculty member sat in the faculty lunch room listening to
two seasoned senior faculty members (both of whom enjoyed
reputations as very entertaining lecturers) lamenting the good old
days. They spoke fondly of the personality quirks of now retired
professors, describing in humorous and wistful ways how the life of
the university was weakened by the relentless conformity of our
current stage of history.
"Ah," one finally sighed, leaning back in his chair, "the trouble
with us all today is that we have no real characters teaching on
this campus." The new faculty member could barely suppress his
laughter at this conversation: One of the senior faculty members
was wearing a kilt (he enjoyed playing the bagpipes at the end of
the day on Fridays) and the other was wearing a bathrobe (having
just completed a swim at the university pool). "No real characters,
eh?," he...
September 29, 2009, 12:00 PM ET
An Interesting Proposal
Are you sick of your tax dollars going to institutions that value big-time athletics over their educational missions? So is Benjamin E. Rosenberg, a New York lawyer who argues in a recent op-ed in The Christian Science Monitor that the U.S. government should withhold federal funds from universities that pay athletics coaches more than professors. The purpose of a university education, he writes, is to ...
gain professional skills and to cultivate a love for learning–tools that will ultimately help carry us through life. In a world that has become increasingly dependent on technology, information, and clear communication, American universities cannot afford to falter on this.
And yet, schools are paying outrageous compensation to the coaches of their football...Read More
September 23, 2009, 09:00 AM ET
Around the Web
• A recent Ticker post noted that some retired University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill professors have offered to teach free. So why hasn't the administration jumped at their offer? Historiann and Margaret Soltan share their theories.
• Brian Leiter considers whether interviews are a help or a hindrance in hiring the best faculty members.
• GayProf...
Read MoreSeptember 18, 2009, 11:00 AM ET
But What About Grade Deflation?
In the discussion of a previous post about pressures on faculty members that led to grade inflation, a commentator mentioned that his/her home department at least subtly pressures faculty members to fail students, as many as 60 percent in one instance. I personally had an experience with such a department as an undergraduate, though the institution allowed students to drop a course or two the week before finals to prevent such grades from being posted to student transcripts.
Now that I'm an administrator, I see such drops as a perverse
revenue producer: The students paid full price twice for one
course's worth of credit. I do see, however, a certain value to
such a strategy in that it allowed for high standards without
punishing overall G.P.A.'s.
I am certain that such grade-deflation pressure is a...
September 11, 2009, 09:00 AM ET
Nice 'B' (wink-wink)
A former colleague of mine once told me that when she taught at
a for-profit institution, there was a policy where if a professor's
grade distribution fell below a 3.0 average, she could be suspended
from teaching for a semester (without pay!). To combat this, many
faculty members showed movies in class (it was a brick-and-mortar
institution) and did little substantial grading. The students moved
along happily and the faculty members just lamented, "What are we
supposed to do? We've got to earn a living."
Those of us in more traditional settings shouldn't feel too haughty
about such a story, though. Many of us teach in states that require
students to maintain a decent G.P.A. in order to retain their
scholarships and grants (especially those derived from lotteries).
A professor in Georgia once lamented to me how this played out at
his institution; he said that almost...
September 03, 2009, 10:00 AM ET
Things They Do Teach You in Grad School
I've discussed here several times the discontinuities between graduate education and what's really called for from faculty members at small, teaching-oriented institutions. I've also discussed the even bigger discontinuities between my education as a Ph.D. in 17th-century English literature and my current administrative role. These gaps sometimes yawn widely, though I have certainly found that a lot of the skills I developed as an English student and professor have served me extremely well in my administrative career.
Sometimes my academic training and interests come to the fore in surprising and rewarding ways. At the moment, I find myself especially well served by my scholarly interests, which focus on travel writing around the time of the English civil wars in the mid-17th century through the death of Queen Anne in 1714.
"How?," you might ask.
Well, my...
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