How to run a university – the pseudobusiness model

Our great public university says it is a “student-centered” institution.  Wonderful!  No arguments from TPP.  It also promotes the idea of shared governance where students, faculty, and administrators cooperate and collaborate to decide on various policies, but when it comes to the fiscal side of things, somehow this sharing comes up short.  The Provost seems to want to run things based on the corporate model.  Now actually TPP is willing to give this a try, at least if they really mean what they say when they say a business model.  But here’s an example of how it really goes.  A whole bunch of lab classroom stools all break at about the same time; apparently 12 years is their useful life expectancy due to a design flaw (who knew?), and they were all bought at the same time, so where do you get the money for stools?  There’s no money in the dept budget and the need could not have been anticipated, and recently even well justified needs go unfunded.  So you ask your dean, who also has no resources, so they turn to the provost.  The provost says that this instructional infrastructure is the responsibility of the dept.  Now you would expect a student-centered institution to want students to have a seat in a classroom, but apparently only academic departments are student-centered enough to care.  So what’s the problem?  Why can’t this be solved in a business- like manner?  BECAUSE THE FREAKIN’ PROVOST HAS ALL THE TUITION MONEY!  Yes, in a real business model the academic unit that earns the credit hours should get the tuition money.  Then we could decide which services the department needs and wants to pay for.  Custodians? Sure. Grounds maintenance? Why not?  Administrators could submit their reason for existing, and we academics could decide if we want an assistant to the vice provost.  Provost?  Let us think about that one awhile.  So our university is being run on a phony baloney business model where the person with all the fiscal resources turns around and tells you everything is your responsibility but they withhold the resources you earned and need to take responsibility.  So whose fault is it if students find themselves standing up?  Perhaps we need a peasant revolt because something around here is revolting.   

Provosts are mostly annoying

Most of what provosts do in the modern college or university is annoy faculty. It is here that the top-down style of administration begins; and if they don't know or at least acknowledge that quite a bit of what we do begins down in the trenches and moves up, it's real annoying. It's also terribly annoying because provosts are so removed from life in the trenches that they no longer relate. Our latest tiff resulted from asking the provost to rebate some tuition back to the department so that students taking a rainforest ecology class don't have to pay instructional costs twice. It should be obvious that students don't study rainforests in Lincolnland; they get ready to study rainforests on campus, but they really study rainforests in Costa Rica. And to do this students must pay for the costs of instruction twice, once in their tuition, and once for the cost of instruction in Costa Rica. Now everyone understands that studying overseas costs the student travel money, and this isn't the issue. About 40% of the course instruction takes place in Costa Rica, but they pay tuition as if all the instruction took place in Lincolnland. So has the dept received any additional instructional support money, any travel money, anything at all? Silly rabbit, no! And in the official response our course just does not "meet the parameters for direct cost recovery". The students will be glad to hear this, and the Phactor would like to know what those parameters are. As a suggestion the provost tells us how to shift the expenses elsewhere so it won't be so obvious to students that they are paying twice, and that we hit alumni up for scholarship support. And then lastly asks that we contact them "if they can be of any further assistance". Bloody hell you can! Your weren't a nanogram of assistance the first time. Please explain how these students are getting what they are paying their tuition for? Now of course, when it comes to bean-counting as a means of keeping the cost of education down, provosts are in a league of their own. But when they actually have a chance to help out students lower the costs of their education, or actually just give students their tuition money's worth, you can pretty much count them out. Some leadership; some lesson. Oh, look, an evaluation of top admin performance is due! Let's see, where to begin?

New Provost charging forward into the past.

Yes folks, our great institution of higher learning located here in the maize and soybean desert of Lincoln land has hired itself a new provost. Well, actually no provost is actually new, virtually all are used, administrators who occupied slightly subordinate positions at bigger institutions, or who occupied the same position at a smaller institution, both looking to move up, but in different ways. Each promises to bring new and better ideas, modes of operation, and innovative practices to your institution, retreads of ideas somebody else had at their former institutions. And for some strange genetic reason, these administrators are compelled by the Peter Principle to seek ever higher positions until their true level of incompetence is reached. So I welcome our new provost with no great enthusiasm, which is not personal at all, but a general cynicism born of experience.

Provost Plodder has introduced a “new” policy that will return us to the teacher’s college mentality we have for so long attempted to out grow. Faculty positions are one of the largest resources the provost has to dole out. Provost Plodder has announced that staffing decisions will be based upon number of majors, credit hour generation, student demand, and job demand in Lincoln land. Wow, such innovation really takes your breath away. Of course bean counting in Lincoln land is common enough, but usually it’s done in bushels.

This means Provost Plodder takes our primary charge as a state-supported institution seriously. Our venerable institution is supposed to train workers for the employers of Lincoln land. Yes, that’s right, train, not educate. Sit. Roll over. Fetch. And just for Lincoln land too; it’s no good providing an education to a tax paying citizen if they move to Iowa or Ohio. Next the 60% of our alumni who live out of state will probably be asked to retroactively pay out of state tuition. And it’s our fault entirely because we educated them and instead of training them. Maybe I didn’t mention the Provost’s first name, Parochial.

Yes, folks Provost Parochial Plodder made no mention of scholarship, makes no exceptions for departments with graduate programs versus those without, and takes no qualitative aspects into account. Why what if some bright, creative student, a native of Lincoln land, wants to study botany? Well, those students who have an interest in low enrollment, low demand, no jobs in Lincoln land programs are just crap out of luck. And besides they should seek job training, not an education. There’s always a demand for de-tasselers and bean walkers, if properly trained.

Years ago the state of Ohio applied Provost PP’s system to state liquor stores after they found out that 20% of their stock made up 85% of their sales. Bud Light and Seagram’s 7 drinkers didn’t even notice the change. PPP will bolster those programs that currently have the most people, fill the most seats, are most popular, those pandering purveyors of the ordinary, and of course, that’s only what's popular in Lincoln land. If you like something a bit unpopular like maybe philosophy or religion, or a nice chianti with faba beans, well, too bad. And you might even wonder how your kids would grow up if you let them decide what to eat the way our provost decides what to support. Letting student preferences determine academic programming makes just as much sense.

Now I do not argue that numbers are unimportant, but scholarly programs that engage students in scholarship and do so with the aid of graduate programs are without question quality programs where students can become so educated that they can seek careers anywhere. Such programs are high quality, but they are not going to be the biggest producers of credit hours or the most popular. Provost PP’s policy ends up robbing peter to pay paul, removing quality to bolster quantity. And this is why the bad old days may return. It reminds me of President Doofus all those years ago when I was hired. “We’re a teachers college so you should teach, and teachers are in demand. It’s that simple.” And so was he. Our institution was the K-mart of education under his guidance. And guess which college had a flashing blue light on top?

The faculty finally got tired of this go nowhere, do nothing administration, and we responded to his state of the university address in detail, in full harmony. And to our amazement he resigned. Dang! If we knew he'd fold like a cheap suitcase, we'd have gone after him sooner. But in recent years our institution has voiced a new image, one quite antithetic to Provost Plodder’s policy. Quality does count, and not just in teaching.

Provost Plodder is threatening 15 years of academic progress by demoting the most important decisions a university can make to an exercise in bean counting. Oh, did I mention PPP’s academic background was in education? Did I have to? Where else do such innovations come from? So these will not be happy days for programs that have labored to provide our institution with something of a scholarly reputation, quality academic programs, and highly qualified students. Now we’ll be staffing those high volume, popular, we-can-train-you-for-a-job programs, and our university will be little more than a glorified community college. Maybe we can install a drive-up window. But the best and brightest students of Lincoln land would do well to consider universities in neighboring states, unless they too have recently hired a provost from Kneebitska. The next state is not too far to drive for a really good education or bottle of wine. You won’t be getting one around here.