The Shadowy (Work) Side of Academia

I do all my own tech support, and if you teach online courses, there’s a host of tasks associated with that kind of teaching that are not involved in campus teaching–uploading all the documents, creating web versions of syllabi, recording, editing, compiling, and uploading video lectures, etc. This is a significant amount of work, and adds hours to my already long work week.

We just received a 2-page notification detailing work that our Office Managers would no longer do.  As far as I can tell, the only reason I would have to talk to them now would be to ask about their grandchildren.

My own current gripe is letter of revs. Each student needs 4-12 letters from me. Inter folio bankers some bu not all academic job sites. The undergrad situation is chaotic. There should be one clearinghouse for all universities!

In my humanities / languages / English department, a couple “big boys” get all of their typing and other clerical work done for them by the dept. assistant.  That includes typing their manuscripts.

As a result, the rest of us can’t ask  much of this assistant.  I asked her to Word-process a 3-page student paper so that I could have an e-copy of it, and she said that it would not be possible for another week, due to her obligations to the big boys.

When I was a work-study undergraduate student, my duties included typing tests for professors from their handwritten copies.  I often wondered why they wouldn’t want to do this themselves, instead of trusting it to a student worker.  Now I know.   A lot of profs just abuse the work staff because they are too “important” to do that work themselves.  And the other profs work overtime because of the haughtiness of a few.

This is why I write in chalk on the blackboard (I pay for and bring my own chalk) rather than making PowerPoints or doing anything remotely fancy that’s audiovisual. It just means more work for me. I also don’t use our course management system, and tell students they must hang on to their papers and calculate their grades according to what the syllabus says. They learn how to do it, and it is character building.

I think this article ignores the tasks the your former professors performed
that you no longer have to perform or can perform in much less time. For
example, even if a secretary typed the letters and papers of a former professor,
that professor had to take considerable time proof reading the spelling and
grammar. Now much of  that can be done in a fraction of a second using a
word processor (although some of us don’t bother enough to use spelling and
grammar technology in our email messaging). The same can be said for those
student essay answers and term papers that are now submitted electronically by
students.

Former professors sometimes suspected plagiarism, but to do something about
it might’ve entailed a rather time consuming trip to the campus library, search
of a card catalog, and wandering about somewhat lost in the stacks. Now we use
high speed technology to detect plagiarism more efficiently and effectively —

http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm#Detection

For mathematical equations, professors had to spend considerable time
checking the accuracy of what students derived in examinations and term papers
and theses. Have you tried the absolutely fantastic Wolfram Alpha lately?

http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm#WolframAlpha

Some former professors wasted considerable time flirting with staff and even
students. Have you read your college’s policy of sexual harassment these days?
And to top it off those pools of departmental secretaries and student workers
evaporated into thin air.

And finding an item in your university’s faculty handbook, student handbook,
course catalog, transcripts of committee meetings, etc. sometimes took ages in
the past. Now faculty and staff can go online and find that item in lightning
speed.

Former professors often spent a lot of time having face-to-face office hours
with students. Now we make students watch our video answers online, and if they
still are confused we correspond with them via email. And yes, I do know that
some things are lost (other than time) by not getting to know our students
better face-to-face.

And when I passed the CPA examination as a senior in college, I had to
“memorize” upwards of 2,000 (a wild guess) paragraphs of accounting and auditing
standards. Now instructors of accounting, auditing, and tax must be familiar
with upwards of 50,000 (a wild guess) paragraphs. The good news is, however,
that those paragraphs can found instantly online along with Bob Jensen’s
perfected interpretations of those paragraphs —

http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm

For example, for paragraphs and interpretations regarding interest rate swap
valuation use Google Search and [" interest rate swap valuation" AND "Bob
Jensen" ].

What do you think takes more of your time these days, and what takes less
time if you’re an accounting instructor?

What happened to work-study students?  They can’t all be launching internet start-up companies in their spare time.

Sadly, understanding comparative advantage and specialization of labor is no longer in the vocabulary of many deans and provosts.  Perhaps you are a tad optimistic because you were once a dean who understood this principle.

Actually, at many higher educational institutions, there has apparently been an upward movement in the ratio of admin/faculty, including support staff.  At those same institutions, faculty will tell you they are less supported than before.  It seems as if we are utilizing support staff to work very ineffectively.

My first reaction to Whitney’s note and Lambert’s article was “What world are they talking about?” In my first position in the academy, more than 40 years ago, I was hired as an Assistant Professior of Mathematics at a very small and struggling liberal arts college, that had a total of 50 faculty members. Twenty of us had offices in a building that began its life as a dormitory for migrant farm workers had staffed the gardens of an exlusive hotel that gone bankrupt soon after the 1929 market crash. THe hotel and its grounds were sold to a finishing school which made good use hotel rooms and dinning hall for what you would have expected. Since the hotel had been a very exclusive hotel, it had an excellent barn with stables and a riding circuit. The finishing school used these for teaching its young ladies the equistary arts for had been converted to the main building of the it’s fine golf course was sold to a private country club which for the early years of the LPGA held annual tournaments on it. The finishing school used the hotel property effectively for more than a dozen years until the bottom drop out of the demand for finishing schools with WWII. The finshing school closed and the liberal arts college bought the property. WHen the college first moved in, all 30 faculty were housed in the main hotel building along with administration offices, the library, the cafeteria and dorm rooms. The second floor of the hotel’s recreation building was converted to science labs. One hint: science labs and chlorine fumes from an indoor swimming pool don’t go together well. THe pool was quickly closed. The first building the college had to build was a gym. Athletic fields replced the riding circuti and the stable become the maintenance barn for college vehicles and equipment. By 1970 when I arrived in the early 70′s, the faculty numbered 50, and the migrant farm workers dormitory had been converted to more classrooms, one additionnal laboratory and faculty offices. There were 2 telephones in the building, one on each floor.There were 3 faculty offices and one secretary’s office on the first floor and 17 faculty offices with no secretaries.on the second floor. The reason for the secretary on the first floor was that on of the faculty members on that floor had some grant money that paid for a secretary. The 3 faculty on the first floor shared the one phone of the first floor.    Under the conditions of the grant, she were suppose to only work for him. However, the telephone ended up her desk and since all three faculty had the same telephone number, she would have to answer the phone for any calls and give messages to the other two faculty members. THe 17 faculty members on the second floor shared one phone that was centrally located on the wall of the hallway. The four faculty members closest to the phone took the brunt of the work taking messages for the 13 faculty on the floor. There were no work study funds available so none of us had work study students, we had to do all of our own grading, typing (not much in the way computer technology available to help then), and mimeograph graph. How many of you remember the smell of mimeographic fluid. Since the school was watching its pennies, each depatment had a fixed allottment of paper that was centrally stored in the main building, so those of us in the other office building had to check out paper when we needed it and carry it to our offices. When a department’s allotment ran out, that was it. If you want more paper, you could buy it with your own money at the office supply store in town.
In my second year at this institution, due to health situation with our registrar, I was asked to take on the role of registrar. The only relief that I was given the first year was a one course per semester relief, plus an office in the main adminstration building. Their were two clerical assistants in the Registrar’s office but I was not suppose to use them for duties related to my teaching.. THe second year in administration, I was also given the title of Director of Instritutional Research and Planning. This meant a second course release per semester, plus about 5 more weekly committee meetings that I had to attend. The third year in administration, I was named coordinator of the school’s self-study work, which meant another one course per semester release, and at least two or three more weekly meetings with self-study work groups. In the fourth year, I was also given oversight responsiblity for admission and financial aid offices and releived of all teaching duties with the exception of a few independent studies when a student was caught in an impossible trap. At this school, faculty were not paid extra for independent studies. They were your expected service to the community and students. Somewhere along the path I picked up the title of Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs. In this role I oversaw the curriculum and faculty assignments. For this role (along with everything else) I was given a full-time secretary.
THe institution was not very technologically advanced. I bought myself an early apple and automated several of the admissions, financial aid and registrart communictation to students. Registration was done by hand, class lists and transcripts were typed. I pushed and finally got the institution to agree to buy an institutional computer. The straw that pushed the institution over the edge was when they saw the fund raising recording keeping and extra capabilities of using technology instead of doing it by hand.So I defacto interim direct of IT for a year until we hired a full-time recent grad to do this work for us.
Throughout this whole time I had to remember that the contract that I signed annually contained the clause, “and other duties as assigned.”
There aren’t too many colleges that are in as tight a position as this one was. However, not all colleges are as well off as their university big brothers. 

At my university, we empty our own trash, clean our own offices and some other areas, do all our own copying, and have even resorted to cleaning toilets at times. I don’t feel I am above doing this work, but this was not in my job description and takes time away from more student-centered duties. As budget cuts and other issues have become worse, my department, the largest at my university, has been without a secretary for at least six months. The ultimate result is that students often can’t get the answers they need, facilities are filthy, if faculty are busy with other work their offices are dirty, and trash overflows. Without an influx of money, I don’t know what the answer is.