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[mcrunkleton]

All praise to Provost Marcy for her insightful essay comparing and contrasting institutional presidents to the presidency of the United States.
She is correct that the analogy to CEOs of corporations and companies does not quite capture the unique, valuable organization of colleges and universities. I have worked closely with three presidents, two of whom were great. The qualities that John Brooks at Holy Cross and Don Harward at Bates displayed exemplified Marcy's thesis. I suggest that AGB consider distributing this article to all trustees of colleges and universities. Few people understand the difficulties and complexities of the college/university presidency, but Marcy does.
Martha A. Crunkleton

[mountain_ivy]

Amen, wart, amen!!!

[daniel_von_flanagan]

Articles which are not linked might as well not exist.

FWIW, the Chronicle seems to have articles almost monthly in which university presidents, chancellors, and so on are fired for being sleazy crooks.  They usually get hired somewhere else.  Is that what this article is about? - DvF

[cajun]

Amen, wart, amen!!!

Okay, I'll bite.  (I'm a newbie.)  What's a wart.  I mean, I think I get it from context (some sort of planted cheerleader?), but what's the derivation?

[fiona]

Warts is a shorthand from LarryC's comment a few years ago on a spam thread:

"How nice that sellers of genital warts are able to promote their product here," or words to that effect.

I'm now mostly in charge of saying "Warts."

My reaction to this thread is perhaps predictable:

Warts.

The Fiona

[cajun]

Thanks, Fiona,

So much to learn ...

[mountain_ivy]

Warts is a shorthand from LarryC's comment a few years ago on a spam thread:

"How nice that sellers of genital warts are able to promote their product here," or words to that effect.

I'm now mostly in charge of saying "Warts."

My reaction to this thread is perhaps predictable:

Warts.

The Fiona

I, humbly, apologize to The Fiona for overstepping the boundaries of wart declaration.  Mea Culpa

[fiona]

Warts is a shorthand from LarryC's comment a few years ago on a spam thread:

"How nice that sellers of genital warts are able to promote their product here," or words to that effect.

I'm now mostly in charge of saying "Warts."

My reaction to this thread is perhaps predictable:

Warts.

The Fiona

I, humbly, apologize to The Fiona for overstepping the boundaries of wart declaration.  Mea Culpa

Thank you for abasing yourself, but it is not necessary. When I am not present, my minions and henchpeople are empowered to declare "Warts" at any moment.

I am glad that you stepped up to do the deed.

The Fiona

[pavlovian]

Okay, I'll bite.  (I'm a newbie.)  What's a wart.  I mean, I think I get it from context (some sort of planted cheerleader?), but what's the derivation?

"Warts" is code for "any topic that a small handful of longtime posters on these fora happen not to be interested in at the moment, for any number of reasons."  Thus, other posters should not be discussing such things.

[daniel_von_flanagan]

More often than not, when someone registers on the CHE with the sole intent of posting a glowing review of some book or program or article, the person in question is a spammer engaged in self-promotion.

In this case it is not clear; if the OP is really Martha Crunkleton from UNC, then she is an administrator who is praising another administrator for an article on the importance and hard work of administrators.  My objections to this are: (a) There is no link to/citation for the article in questions.  Someone with a PhD in the humanities should know better. (b) I would rather see administrators acknowledge that there is a serious problem in university administration, with administrators at the root.

As this year's salary report from the AAUP points out, University COO salaries are spinning way out of control, with no clear connection between salary and performance.  In fact, in many cases institutions which are in financial trouble also have very highly paid presidents and provosts.

50 years ago it was common for an administrator to come to an institution and make his career there (as many professors do).  He would get to know the programs, faculty, and students, and generally act in the informed interest of the institution.  Nowadays administrators move from school to school, landing just long enough to impose a "vision" they either brought from their last job or made up out of thin air, having little to do with the reality of the new institution or its institutional history.  The faculty and lower-level administration will struggle to make this work, often having to discard the previous few years work on implementing the previous administrator's conflicting vision, and it usually results in several giant steps backwards and a tiny step forward. The administrator then packages the tiny successes into the dossier for his next job, either quitting the university on short notice or (with increasing frequency) getting thrown out on his ear.  Since the new institution's hiring committee rarely talks to the previous institution's faculty, these itinerant administrators are able to work their way up the ladder, school by school, leaving chaos behind them, each time improving either their title or their host institution.

There are, in fact, many good administrators out there, even at the top, but there are far too many who are either carpetbaggers or parasites or both, and what we really do not need is more pap on the importance of the college presidency.  -DvF

[pavlovian]

[hijack]
DvF, the opening comments in your last post seem especially unwarranted in this case.  Labelling comments about a recent Chronicle article posted in a forum called Discuss Chronicle Articles "spam" seems to rely on a pretty unusual idea of what "spam" is.  Whether or not she has some particular agenda to push is another question, which I can't comment on, but it all seems squarely in-bounds for this board.

As for linking to the article one is commenting on, it seems more often than not that new posters don't provide one because it's not obvious that it's expected.  A quick persual through the last several threads suggests that most, or at least a lot, of OPs don't include a link.  The OP made it pretty unambiguous (the title of the thread) what article she's referring to.  It took me all of five keystrokes and one click to find it.

The rest of your post, DvF, makes a persuasive argument. But not yet having carefully read the article the OP is commenting on, I am stepping out now to leave the discussion to those who have.
[/hijack]

[fiona]

DvF's statement is excellent and deserves its own thread.

I hope he'll move it and create one.

The Fiona

[daniel_von_flanagan]

[hijack]
DvF, the opening comments in your last post seem especially unwarranted in this case.  Labelling comments about a recent Chronicle article posted in a forum called Discuss Chronicle Articles "spam" seems to rely on a pretty unusual idea of what "spam" is.

Very often the same post shows up on a large number of forums with a university or professional theme; this was the case, for example, with recent posts about "best colleges in [statename]".  I think that qualifies under most modern definitions of "spam".  For those posts that are simply commercial posts on this one forum, I should probably have used a broader term, like Unsolicited Commercial Post.  Even that likely does not apply in this case, but it often does, which is why the reaction is often to call it "warts", especially if it is the poster's only post.   I only pointed this out in my last post to counter your suggestion of a clique of posters trying to stifle conversations in which they are not interested, I never called this post "spam" or anything else.

As for linking to the article one is commenting on, it seems more often than not that new posters don't provide one because it's not obvious that it's expected.  A quick persual through the last several threads suggests that most, or at least a lot, of OPs don't include a link.

Yes, it is very common, and whenever I read a post in Discuss Chronicle Articles discussing an article that sounds interesting but does not include a link, I ask for one roughly the way I did this time. Whether or not I can find the article with some work is irrelevant, I think the link should be there, since the thread might be active long after the article spools off the "Current Issue" page and becomes much harder to find, especially if you don't give the correct title of the article (as was the case here).

Fiona, threads I start have a dismal track record of survival.  I'm sure we will have plenty of other opportunities to talk trash about college presidents. - DvF

[mountain_ivy]

In this case it is not clear; if the OP is really Martha Crunkleton from UNC,

Or is she this Martha A...., as seen in an Amazon.com profile?

Vice Consul
U S Dept of State
(Government Agency; 10,001 or more employees; Government Administration industry)

June 2005 — Present (2 years 11 months)

diplomat

[pavlovian]

DvF, I acknowledge your points, but all things considered - on the one hand we have a post about a Chronicle article, posted in a forum designated for that purpose, posted by someone who seems to have read the article.  On the other hand we've got snark a bunch of us (myself included) who haven't read the article.  It'll never make sense to me when posters suggest that the OP is what doesn't belong.

And I was mistaken.  "Warts" is usually aimed at people, not topics.  I don't know about cliques and didn't claim there was one.  I've seen individuals call "warts" on all kinds of things that aren't spammy.

Apparently I was also mistaken when I said I was abandoning this hijack.  I will redouble my efforts.