How not to run a university - like a business

The very latest example of trying to improve a college by running it more like a business is playing out at Mt. St. Mary's college, a nice enough Catholic school, but with many of the same troubles as many small liberal arts colleges. At the very beginning of TPP's academic career he was offered a job at one such college. The Dean made a single low-ball salary offer, which TPP turned down without ever being asked what salary would be acceptable. Then the Dean explained away the failure to hire TPP, the person the other faculty wanted, by telling them the salary negotiations failed, negotiations which never took place. No regrets about that job at all. At Mt. St. Mary's the new president wanted to game the system of counting enrollment by getting at risk students to quit before an official count took place so that the retention rate would look better. That such an action is educationally unethical is obvious, but the new president has a business background so it might not occur to him that their college is obligated to try to educate any student that they accept. Colleges get presidents like this because trustees or their equivalent are appointed with a directive to run the college more like a business. A couple of tenured faculty who either directly or indirectly criticized the president's approach got fired.  Now this tells TPP several things. A business-type president doesn't give a damn about tenure, and when it comes to faculty, they are employees, nothing more, so their disloyalty must be dealt with, no matter that the primary reason for tenure is so that faculty can speak up to power. It further demonstrates that there is no shared governance at this institution, which always undermines the academic enterprise, the all important student-faculty interaction that leads to education. The fired faculty members have been offered reinstatement as an act of mercy! So like a business to try to improve retention without trying to improve the actual education of the students. Hey, Mt. St. Mary's trustees, check your priorities.  Stories like this will not help your college's reputation or your bottom line.

Those pesky faculty - Wisconsin takes action

Several decades ago a dark comedy on the BBC was called "A very peculiar practice" and it was about academic life at Lowland University. The university had hired a new president from the USA to lead them forward, the appropriately named Jack Daniels, who decided they could save a lot of money by getting rid to the students and any non-revenue producing faculty.  University faculty are a very pesky lot, and running a university without them might be an easier job, but not much educating is going to be getting done. Also the university won't be run very well because it will have adopted stupidly and foolishly the business model. You see, at a university, if run well,and ideas and governance run both up and down and across the organizational chart. Administrators who think things only travel down are soon confronted with textbook order forms (A colleague did this to the one-time chair of our governing board of trustees to demonstrate that in fact faculty did have a role in decision making.). Shared governance is an important part of a university's culture, and please understand, the faculty are usually looking out for the best interests of students and education. But faculty study things like science, and politics, and the like, and their authoritative manner, like they were experts or something, rubs a lot of politicians, and administrators, the wrong way especially when faculty forget who they work for, i.e., the state, for those us in public education. The GnOPe, which has been called the party of stupid for some obvious reasons, has been conducting a war on education, especially higher education, for some time now, and it's no surprise because university faculty tend to disagree with their governing ideology, their knowledge denial, and their social policies, and they can influence students too!  Faculty do tend to be outspoken because our jobs are protected from retaliation by tenure by and large, unless you don't want to hear what faculty have to say. It's a great thing being a tenured full professor, let TPP tell you, and it's true his outspoken reputation might not be so great if protection against retaliation were not in place. So now just north of us, having gone after the unions, Wisconsin is turning its attention to dismantling what is arguably one of the great state higher educational systems including its flagship, the University of Wisconsin Madison. This will be done by cutting their budget, telling faculty to work harder (showing that those making the demand don't know what university faculty do or why they do it), and to make sure the faculty don't bitch too much, well, let's do away with tenure because the state should be able to fire state workers any time they want, for any reason. Now, these legislators and the governor don't think this will actually work out very well, but they don't care if it doesn't work well so long as they have enough teachers to train workers for the state. Oh, wait, that's one of the prime directives for universities in Lincolnland! 

Majority of university presidents oppose faculty tenure

Here's the finding from a recent survey conducted by the Chronicle of Higher Education:
If the majority of college presidents had their way, tenure would become as obsolete as the slide rule. According to the findings of The Chronicle's survey of four-year-college presidents, 53 percent of them said they agreed that tenure for faculty members should be replaced by a system of long-term contracts. Thirty-nine percent disagreed.
But presidents' backgrounds led to wide differences in how they viewed tenure. Those with no teaching experience were much more likely to oppose tenure than those who had spent years standing in front of classrooms. Seventy percent of presidents who had never taught before favored the contract system, compared with only 38 percent of those who had taught for more than 20 years.
They needed a survey to find this out? A disturbing trend is the number of presidents who now support the view that faculty are just employees, subordinates, to be hired and fired as needed. Now here's my view. The Phactor spent way too much time in his pre-tenure days looking for a better job. It was a tough market, and the grass was not always greener, but the point is that everything done was for my advancement, my reputation, my career. Why commit time and effort to a university that seemed to have little interest in keeping me on the faculty? Tenure was used as a threat to "keep you in line". But the bottom line is this. Faculty and students are the university; presidents have come and gone, some have done more damage than good, others have done more good (thankfully the most recent one especially). Same goes for provosts and deans. If a university wants commitment, wants to improve, wants involved faculty, then the university had better demonstrate a commitment too. Otherwise faculty members find their jobs and the whims and whimsy of administrators, held hostage to the ups and downs of finances and majors, and everyone would be doing just what the Phactor was doing; looking out for old number one. University service? A waste of time. Notice that presidents who were never faculty, a fundamental error to think such a person can run a university, were most enamored with getting rid of tenure. Hmm, makes you think.

A rotten apple in every faculty?

My colleagues and I just met to consider the tenure and promotion of a junior member of our faculty. She presented a well-balanced and well-documented package of accomplishments that made this one of the easiest decisions we have encountered in recent years. With virtually no discussion we voted umpteen to 1 in favor of her tenure and promotion by a secret ballot. Yes, that was umpteen to 1. One no vote. One person thinks an outstanding junior member of our department should be dismissed. Oh, they knew the vote would be overwhelming positive so this was nothing but a personal statement.

Does every faculty have to contain at least one jerk who gets their jollies out of being an a$$? Could there be any more cowardly act than to hide behind a secret vote? What sort of inadequacies prompt such actions? And what do they think it accomplishes? What did their protest vote really mean since no one has any idea whatever it is?

Well, it let us know that there is at least one person among us that you would not and should not trust with confidential information. It lets you know that at least one of us is in not fully rationale and socially mature enough to be treated as an adult. It lets you know that someone is being eaten away by an ethical and intellectual rot that cannot help but damage themselves, a skulking, nasty, venomous sort of rot that leaves your core black, a real rotten apple. And you have to watch and make certain that such apples don't spread their rot to any others. Unfortunately you just don't know which one.

This demonstrates the down side of secret ballots; it lets cowards hide. Someone without any guts dislikes our junior colleague, and maybe the whole department, and they wanted to send a message. Quite a few years ago, a now retired colleague routinely voted against virtually all tenure and promotion decisions, but at least he had the decency to say, "They don't measure up to my impossibly high, arbitrary standards." Of course setting the bar so high no one can clear it, including himself, and withholding his approval of anyone who was not a member of the national academy of science, demonstrates a certain tenuous hold on reality. But at least you knew his reason.

The actual list of potential bad apples is not as long or as extensive as one might expect. You see after my afore mentioned colleague retired this sort of thing stopped happening. In the interim we have tenured and promoted only a few people, and now a bad apple appears. I've worked with some of my colleagues over 30 years, and while all are not necessarily charming, I know of what stuff they are made. None of us liked the way many senior faculty used, abused, the tenure process to bully junior faculty. We changed the department's climate, but apparently one of my newer colleagues did not learn that lesson. How very unfortunate! It hurts to know the department made at least one mistake in deciding tenure. And without doubt such people never get better, they only get worse as the perceived slights and injuries mount up and the rot continues to grow.

I shall tell my young, newly tenured colleague to use the freedom of tenure well because it comes with responsibilities too. One of which is that you deal with your colleagues honestly and forthrightly.