Category Archives for Staff and Administrators

Do as I Say, While I Do What I Want: Hypocrisy in the Land of Caps, Gowns, and Headdresses, Part I

This charming portrait of Elizabeth Warren has a place of honor in her Cambridge wigwam.


Faithful readers of CMM know one topic that gives Miss endless delight—and blog fodder—is the double standards college and university faculty use, usually to benchmark their worth against the drones who do staff work on their campuses, but sometimes simply when the Great Spirit moves them. The news brings such a bumper crop of stories that I must share them with you in “Do As I Say, While I Do What I Want,” Parts I and II.

Part I starts with the reigning queen of the academic double standard, Massachusetts’ own Professor-Politician Elizabeth Herring Warren Mann. Professor Warren/Mrs. Mann/Princess Ticklefeather has been much in the public eye lately as the most recent victim of recovered oppression syndrome (ROS) when it was revealed that she is (or maybe not) .03% Cherokee.* Like her noble ancestors the blond, blue-eyed redskin has endured the bows and arrows of prejudice simply because of her complexion. So it is not surprising to learn that she gratefully took a puff from the Affirmative Action peace pipe offered by the Great White Fathers at Harvard Law School, where, surprisingly, she was hired to teach rather than make rain.
Click here for a look at Professor Warren's students responding to her claims of minority status.
We all know that Elizabeth Warren is Heap Big Hypocrite. But what of the GWF’s at the Law School, whose contributions to the defense of affirmative action policies, not to mention the substance of such policies, at colleges and universities across this great albeit stolen land of ours have been instrumental in shaping the landscape of higher education for decades? The magnitude of hypocrisy achieved by these academics is beyond astonishing. While the rest of the academy struggles mightily first to qualify minority students to join the professoriate, then to hire faculty of color, who understandably come at a premium many institutions can ill afford, the good folks at Harvard decide that Princess Paleface qualifies as an “affirmative action” hire. Voila! I can hear them now, “Faculty of color? Elizabeth is kind of pinkish, when she remembers her blusher.” No muss. No fuss. No minorities.

I wonder what the Great White Fathers will think when they get wind of Professor Warren’s plans for casino gambling on Brattle Street. Who knows? Maybe they’ll do the right thing and vote for Scott Brown.

No longer able to live the white man’s lie at Harvard, Princess Paleface makes tracks for the Charles River, where her blood brothers will aid in her escape.


*Professor Warren’s ROS took a turn for the worse when she discovered that she is simultaneously suffering from ROS Type II, Recovered Oppressors Syndrome.

Academic Bombast: A Little Bit of Cis and That

Academics can be full of surprises. Just when you are about to write off the lot of them as pompous and often criminally inclined boors whose bloated prose only a Judith Butler could love, they redeem themselves with a bit of self-aware mockery.

Wags at the University of Chicago have come up with nifty computer program that will write an entire scholarly essay for you.

University of Chicago Professor Lewis explains the sentence generator.

All you need do is populate a few fields with words of your choosing from prepared lists, string together the resulting sentences (order optional) and–voila!–there’s your essay, guaranteed to please the most discerning gender theorist. Drop what you are doing and give it a try right now.

Fun, isn’t it? Until you remember the tens of thousands of tenured faculty whose jobs-for-life are predicated on that argot. Try not to lose your lunch.

For those of you yet to get the hang of the University of Chicago’s sentence-generator, read the passage below:

The trans policy committee is sorry to announce that Kate Bornstein is sick and is not able to make her performance of Men Women and the Rest of Us tonight at 7pm in the [gym]. We are working to reschedule Kate’s performance, and meanwhile are arranging for a Gender Speak Out in the faculty lounge…from 7-9. In this space, we hope to center lived experience of gender oppression at [Liberal Arts College USA]. Cisgender people (those who are comfortable with the gender societally aligned with the sex they were assigned at birth), are welcome and encouraged to attend. It may be beneficial to have a passing familiarity with transphobia and cissexism.

The most famous cisters of all.


Is it genuine? By that I mean did I search the announcements on the Liberal Arts College USA calendar until I hit pay dirt, or did I take a little help from the sentence generator?

Diversity for Me but Not for Thee: Crystal Dixon, the University of Toledo, and the Hierarchy Civil Rights

It all started way back in 2008, when a self-described “middle-aged, overweight white guy with graying facial hair” wrote an op-ed that played fast and loose with the truth about health care benefits at the University of Toledo.

Michael Miller, editor-in-chief of the Toledo Free Press, fresh from a town hall meeting sponsored by Equality Ohio and Equality Toledo, was righteously indignant over what he heard from its participants:

The frequent denial of health care benefits leads to horror stories. According to the panelists, UT has offered domestic partner benefits since then-president Dan Johnson signed them into effect. The Medical University of Ohio did not offer those benefits. When the institutions merged, UT employees retained the domestic-partner benefits, but MUO employees were not offered them. So, people working for the same employer do not have access to the same benefits.

Michael Miller. From his self-description, I'd know him anywhere.


Quelle horreur! Those homophobic academics! How dare they! How dare they combine gigantic organizations with two sets of HR policies, union contracts and insurance plans to be sorted out and fail to put gay rights at the top of their to-do list! Never mind that none of the benefits affecting all employees (including the black and disabled, whose pain Miller tells us he also feels) were initially changed when the two institutions joined forces. UT employees kept their benefits, MUO kept theirs. Policy, procedure, contractual obligations be damned: put those domestic partners at the front of the line!

A few days later, the Free Press publishes a letter in response to Miller’s column from one Crystal Dixon, who identified herself as a “Black woman who happens to be an alumnus of the University of Toledo’s Graduate School, an employee and business owner.” Her letter is a passionate articulation of “God’s divine order” as it relates to gays. How could she possibly know this? Eh. Another sheltered individual afraid of something she knows nothing of, I thought. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about, I thought.

But when she stopped talking theology and began writing about university policy, she most definitely did know her stuff:

The reference to the alleged benefits disparity at the University of Toledo was rather misleading. When the University of Toledo and former Medical University of Ohio merged, both entities had multiple contracts for different benefit plans at substantially different employee cost sharing levels. To suggest that homosexual employees on one campus are being denied benefits avoids the fact that ALL employees across the two campuses, regardless of their sexual orientation, have different benefit plans. The university is working diligently to address this issue in a reasonable and cost-efficient manner, for all employees, not just one segment.

Naturally, a firestorm ensued. Because the editor-in-chief of the Free Press misrepresented the facts about UT employee benefits, you ask? Don’t be silly. Because Ms. Dixon—who wrote her letter to the editor as a private citizen—was at the time the associate vice president of human resources at UT. After she was suspended but before she was fired, the president of the university Lloyd Jacobs also wrote the Free Press:

Although I recognize it is common knowledge that Crystal Dixon is associate vice president for Human Resources at the University of Toledo, her comments do not accord with the values of the University of Toledo. It is necessary, therefore, for me to repudiate much of her writing.

Flash forward to today. Fired from the University, Ms. Dixon today holds a prestigious, high-level position in her field, based, no doubt on her experience and past performance at UT, where, “her work reviews from [her boss] Logie had always been positive and praised her in the area of diversity.”

Crystal Dixon

She is back in the news because she lost her court case for wrongful termination from the university. The always-reliable Scott Jascik of Inside Higher Ed explains:

The University of Toledo was within its rights when it fired its head human resources administrator in 2008 after she wrote a newspaper column in which she said that gay people do not need the protection of civil rights laws, a federal judge ruled this week.

In his ruling, Judge David A. Katz found that the nature of the official’s position meant that she did not have First Amendment protections from being punished for expressing her views in a public forum. The “plaintiff’s interest in making a comment of public concern is clearly outweighed by the university’s interest as her employer in carrying out its own objectives,” Judge Katz wrote.

As a former apologist for a small liberal arts college who did her share of mucking the barn after the door had been left open, the company woman in me is cheering “Right On!” to the judge’s opinion.

But that cheer dies on my lips as I read further on in Judge Katz’s memorandum:

Plaintiff claims that her termination impedes diversity. She claims that accepting Defendants’ employer interest arguments would prevent any conservative Christians from holding managerial positions at the University of Toledo. Plaintiff’s claim is far too broad in two important ways. First, Defendants’ arguments only restrict those who cannot hold their tongues about their beliefs (or fail to submit their beliefs anonymously). Plus, the position would likewise restrict liberal atheists as well.

In other words, says the judge, if you hold an unpopular view, keep your mouth shut or your employer will get you. The bile rising in my throat evidences the bitter vindication of knowing I’d been right all long. If you are a conservative (but not a “liberal atheist”) check your opinions at the door if you want to work in higher ed. Listen to your colleagues spew their views, but keep yours to yourself. It’s kinda like “don’t-ask-don’t-tell,” except that you get told even if you don’t tell.

Judge Katz’s opinion puts the imprimatur of the law on the hypocrisy endemic in higher education. Consider his chilling statement: “Defendants’ arguments only restrict those who cannot hold their tongues about their beliefs (or fail to submit their beliefs anonymously).” Now substitute “sexual preference” for “beliefs.” Appalling, isn’t it.

I’m guessing in the wake of the judge’s ruling, the University will revise its answer to one or more of the questions on its Questions, Answers, and Facts page about “diversity”:

Q: Does having too much diversity weaken an organization?

A: No. While diversity is inevitable, it implies inclusiveness. Having diversity should not ostracize individuals or groups. The rationale for diversity is to provide opportunities where many perspectives and talents can be appreciated and utilized. True diversity is not about hiding differences. It is about capitalizing on them in order to make for a more productive and desirable work environment.

That part about “not hiding differences” is totally outside the parameters of Judge Katz’s sententia about keeping one’s mouth shut.

In the wake of Judge Katz's decision, the Office of Diversity at UT is busily silk-screening tee-shirts to distribute at the big rally for tolerance and inclusion.

Leadership in Action: President Farahi Blames His Staff

Not yet 10:00 a.m., and already I have had my laugh of the day. From NJ.com:

While the governing board at Kean University has launched an investigation about false claims on his resume, university president Dawood Farahi has acknowledged for the first time that some mistakes were made.

In a recent interview, Farahi said even though there were some errors listed on past resumes, he was not responsible. Farahi said the inaccuracies, including claims that he had been acting academic dean at Avila College in Missouri and that he published “over 50 technical articles in major publications,” were made by staff members at Kean who helped prepare his resume for routine accreditation reviews at the university in 1994, 2001 and 2008.

Farahi said the claim about the 50 articles probably originated when a Kean employee condensed his resume and misinterpreted the list of titles, some of which were submitted but never published in academic journals. (NJ.com)


One thing I have learned as a lifelong member of the academy–you just can’t trust those pesky staff. They may come and go, turnover likely in the fourteen years or so since the first “inaccuracy” was added to President Farahi’s cv, but their propensity for messing with the boss’s resume just won’t go away.

Such malicious staff apparently even plagued President Farahi at his previous institution, according to the head of Kean’s faculty union, who points to “questionable claims in Farahi’s early resumes.” Far be it for me to side with a union shill, but in this case, I am more than willing to make an exception.

In the end, though, I suppose Farahi’s passing the buck is simply behavior presidential. Our commander-in-chief, after all, sees nothing wrong with heaping blame for the manifold disasters of his presidency on his predecessor. With that example of president leadership, what’s wrong with a university kingpin throwing a few staff to the wolves? It’s not as if they had tenure.

NOTE to readers: For more on doctored resumes in higher ed, see Alexander Kemos.

Should the Nanny State Intervene to Fix Commencement?

Remember the “African proverb,” “it takes a village to raise a child,” Hillary Clinton borrowed for a book title? One would think this month that the village wise men and women would be out in force to congratulate the children they have nurtured with their tutelage. One would think. But one would be wrong.

My last post, about faculty workload, landed me in deep doo-doo with the academical set, some of whom resorted to ad hominem attacks when my arguments left them sputtering (check out Chandra’s comments). So rather than offering opinion on the matter of faculty failing to attend Commencement, I’ll let the professoriate speak for itself.

First, though, I’ll credit the source, David Galef’s essay “Showing Up” in the May 27 edition of Inside Higher Ed. Galef takes on the growing number of faculty who don’t bother showing up to watch their students graduate; he enumerates and handily dismisses the reasons faculty offer for their behavior. Since he is a seasoned academic Galef I am sure was 100% prepared for deluge of criticism that came his way.
Leading the charge was “erinna,” who self-identifies as an award-winning “highly rated faculty member”:

I don’t go to graduation for several reasons. First and foremost, I just don’t want to. I find it pointless, and I feel like a crowd extra in a biblical epic — there’s masses of people and I’m just one more. So I don’t feel like this is an impactful use of my time.

… the graduation ceremony ….[is] purely symbolic with no real use.

Finally, my school has repeatedly expanded the scope of my duties without expanding my pay. When you do that, people will start to pick things to dump that are not not important to them and for which there will be no reprisal. Ceremony is at the top of that list for me.

I’d love to know what (award-winning) Professor erinna teaches; given her take on symbols I’m guessing (hoping) it’s not mathematics or a humanities or social science subject.

Pop quiz: Is Professor erinna reviewing her awards or her excuses for not attending Commencement?

I’m also wondering what constitutes an “impactful use” of her time, and my guess here is that it’s probably the hours she spends deciding which of her “duties” she can “dump” without “reprisal.” Like the self-respecting and award-winning academic that she is, erinna takes principled action—skipping out on the one ceremony in the academic calendar that has real meaning–only when it won’t get her in trouble. Admirable.

Next, “20-year adjunct” pats herself on the back for attending Commencement:

I did go once because I had a student graduating. It was a miserable experience. We sat in the football field on folding chairs. The wind blew, it was hot, the process took too long, and I felt like wallpaper.

Since my husband and I share a gown, we do not have to pay rental costs. But I got tired of staring at the board of trustees, few of whom even have a graduate degree, handing out diplomas, and the administrators, most of whom are new to their job, overpaid, and have not earned my respect.

Perhaps if the trustees took off their regalia, 20-year wouldn't mind the view.

If I had tenure-level pay, maybe I’d show up more, but so long as I am seen as a temp, I am not really motivated to spend an afternoon sitting like a lump when there is still grading to be done.

Usually I have tremendous sympathy for adjunct faculty. They do the heavy lifting of intro courses for laughable pay and no respect whilst their tenured and tenure-track colleagues fret about missing the last episode of The Jersey Shore. But in “20 years”’s case I’ll curb my feelings. She attended one graduation exercise and was so fatigued by it that she vowed never to set foot on an athletic field again. I understand her point of view, though, after all the newly minted baccalaureates she so recently taught didn’t “even have a graduate degree” yet, so why get all hot and bothered? Admirable.

At least Steve Thulin, professor of history at Northwest College, doesn’t cite lack of eye candy on the podium as his reason for ditching Commencement. “I have worked at a small college here in Wyoming for over 20 years and until recently would not have missed a graduation,” he boasts, then delivers his zinger, “But I did this year and last because my administration crammed our finals ‘week’ into a ‘Wednesday-Thursday-Friday’ format (it was convenient to their needs?) and insisted that graduation would be on a Saturday morning — and grades are due on Tuesday. Some of us did not even get most of our finals until the day before graduation — and for myself, I was still under a pile of term papers when they arrived anyway.”
It’s hard to untangle Professor Thulin’s stream-of-consciousness rant, but I think it boils down to he’s mad because Commencement takes place on Saturday morning. God forbid a faculty member be asked to show up on the weekend. Thulin also takes a gratuitous shot at those vile 9-to-5 Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday-Friday administrators. They had the temerity to schedule a six-day work-week for themselves so that families members of the working class kids whose ranks make up Northwest’s enrollment could watch their sons and daughters graduate without the fear of lost wages.

Thulin goes on to say he’s watching Commencement on TV from home, where he’s correcting papers so his grades can be turned in on Tuesday. Admirable.

But leave it to a greybeard to sum things up. “OldCommProf” takes aim with the most predictable arrow in the faculty quiver—he blames somebody else for his behavior:

I’m considering skipping graduation, even though we’re encouraged to go and know all the arguments about honoring the grads. And I’ve been to 28 of the 32 that have been held since I’ve been here.

The reason I’ve come to this point is that it has lost all sense of decorum and dignity. The kids do handstands on the stage, hoist the chancellor in their arms instead of shaking his hand, hold up the line as they take multiple pictures with their pocket digital cameras (the let’s-get-our-faces-really-close kind that that they usually take in bars and at parties) and sometimes even kiss him.

It’s a mess and I’m embarrassed to be part of it.

With seconds to go before they never have to deal with the likes of erinna, 20-year adjunct, Thulin, or OldCommProf again, is it any wonder graduates are turning handsprings?

Before we put the Pomp and Circumstance CD away for another year, let’s let JE, Prof at Private U, have the last word, for his is a call to civility:

I think what is lacking in this discussion is a mutual respect for people’s individual decisions- faculty and student alike. I admit I don’t attend ceremonies. I didn’t as a student and I don’t as a faculty member. I don’t think there is anything wrong with this decision regardless of my reasons, just as I do not think there is anything wrong with choosing to participate in or even enjoy ceremonial events on the part of others.

In JE’s private universe “mutual respect” is defined as: “I do as I please. The rest of you can sod off.”
Sometimes I think Thomas Hobbes wasn’t writing about all of mankind. Just the professoriate.

When faculty speak for themselves: two outta three ain't bad.

Robert Harlan Puts the “I Owe” in Iowa!

SEPTEMBER 26, 2011 UPDATE! Drake University embezzler agrees to plead guilty after charges consolidated. This sad, sad story began in April…

Another week, another academic arrested for embezzling from an institution of higher learning. Ho-hum. The miscreant du jour is one Robert Harlan, late of Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. Iowa educators have been in the news a lot lately, what with UI Professor Ellen Lewin self-medicating with profanity to cope with these difficult times, and now light-fingered Bob, who in his position of director of student accounts, managed to spirit away some $600,000 over the last seven years.

According to the Des Moines Register, Harlan has admitted to the theft, and, unlike the ethics-challenged Professor Carmola of Middlebury, seems dimly aware that what he has done is wrong, although he thinks the $600,000 figure is inflated. He can only account for $470,000 of the loot so far.

Like Professor Carmola, however, his defense is that he had a good reason for taking what wasn’t his: says the Register, Harlan “told investigators he gave the money away to friends, family, the needy and a church.” There are unconfirmed reports that the offering to the church arrived in the form of plaque engraved with the Ten Commandments. Suspicions were aroused, though, when it was discovered that one of the commandments was missing from the engraving.

It's understandable Mr. Harlan took the cash; the church's social hall needed reburbishing.

What it is about campus culture that makes it so easy for some employees to steal? I’m not talking about an absence of financial controls, but rather an absence of character in those faculty and staff who seem to have no problem pocketing other people’s money. I have no clue as to whether embezzlement on college and university campuses is statistically in line with embezzlement rates in other industries, but at times I think that conditions on campus make it easier for some employees to confuse sticking it to the man with sticking their hands in the till.

Why do I think this? Well, first of all, the myth of the underpaid academic is embedded so deeply in our collective national psyche it’s no wonder that the occasional faculty or staffer is led astray. Faculty, in particular, are convinced that their wages are below poverty level, even though their value to society as intellectuals, agents of social change, and teachers hovers somewhere beyond the ether. Neither conceit, of course, is true, but the cognitive dissonance these thoughts engender is enough to send a handful of academics around the bend.

For staff who live day after day with the knowledge that they are second among equals (faculty always come first in the democratic society that is the academy), and who year after year put up with reminders of their lowly status–such as the eight-week maternity leave they are granted as opposed to the fourteen-week leave a faculty member scores for the same activity–it also comes as no surprise that a few find unorthodox ways of making up the difference.

A faculty member performs her annual self-evaluation.

None of this excuses Harlan’s behavior any more than it does Carmola’s or Pletz’s or Sainfort’s or Jacko’s or the Fishers’ or Hardin’s or Burnham’s or Thornton’s or Davis’s. But it does force one to wonder if rather than yet another workplace training on diversity the campus might be better served by holding a session on that missing commandment.

This is Getting Serious, Folks! Vassar’s Short $1.9 Million–More Academic Embezzlers Out on Bond!

Every year about this time, the competition within the academic world revs into high gear.  High school seniors are frantic to know if they made the cut at their first-choice institution. Admissions officers are holding their collective breath in the hopes that their offers of admission will yield the perfect class: students whose parents can pay the full freight of the whopping tuition bill; students whose high school GPAs and board scores will make the class look smart; students who have a special talent with an oboe, a tennis racket, or a paint brush; students who are not white.  The competition in the world of college admissions is gloves-off, bare-knuckled, and implacable.

This year is no different, except that in 2011 the competition is not about who gets in and who does not as much as it is who steals what and how much from the campus coffers.

First there was Middlebury Associate Professor Kateri Carmola’s penny-ante pilfering of historical society funds up in Vermont.  Not to be outdone, the heartland’s own Queen of Embezzlement Karen Pletz scored something in the neighborhood of $1.5 million from the Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences.  Now comes a mom-and-pop appropriations committee late of Vassar College, located in scenic Poughkeepsie, New York.

Fortunately, as a construction manager Fisher could borrow the equipment necessary to scoop up the cash he removed from Vassar's ample supplies.

According to the Journal News, Arthur Fisher and his wife Jennie have brought the embezzlement record back to an East Coast elite institution, where some might argue it belongs. The Fishers stand accused of ripping off Vassar to the tune of $1.9 million over five years.  Mr. Fisher, until December, was a “project construction manager” at the college.  His management skills netted himself and his little woman quite a haul:

four late-model BMWs and one Ford F150 truck, worth approximately $500,000 combined; three Rolex watches valued at $50,000; 10 unregistered handguns and one military style .223-caliber rifle; and various fraudulent law enforcement IDs and badges from a host of agencies, including the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the FBI and the New York Police Department, among others.  Police said the IDs contained Arthur Fisher’s name and photograph.

Found among the badges cops seized from the Fishers.

You’ll be relieved to learn, as I was, that police are fairly certain the fake badges and ID’s do not “appear to be stolen….They appear to be replicas.”

Perhaps you’ll also be comforted to learn, as I am not, that Vassar was all over locking the barn door that in their haste the Fishers left wide open when they absconded with their loot.  Says hapless college spokesman Jeff Kosmacher, “There have been steps taken at the college in terms of financial and project management oversight that will strengthen how we handle the business of the college in the future.” Kosmacher went on to insist that “the college maintained strong control systems before the alleged embezzlement.”

Artist's rendering of Vassar's strict financial controls.

I am not comforted because I feel so bad for Vassar.  It’s just announced a fundraising campaign with a goal of $400 million, $262 million of which is already in hand.  Will donors who give less than $1.9 million now wonder if the college will be able to keep track of their giving?  Imagine the donor contemplating a gift of $1.5 million.  Will she now feel compelled to make the donation directly to BMW and Rolex, rather than letting the funds pass through the college?  What a terrible state of affairs!

The Fishers' garage, before the Feds arrived.

But, this story has a punch line.  Guess where the Fishers live: Ossining.  How convenient.

The Fishers prepare to enjoy conjugal relations at their home on the Hudson.

Administer with Care

Every enterprise has its own in-jokes, I suppose. In academic circles, and by that I mean in ballrooms of tony convention hotels in Washington, San Francisco, Miami, or San Diego where porcine college presidents, vice presidents and deans gather for top-level meetings on issues of national importance. In academic circles you are guaranteed a chuckle or two of recognition from an audience of your peers if you make one or more of the following three jests:

• Leading the faculty is like herding cats
• A secret on campus is what you only tell to one person at a time
• Academic politics are vicious because the stakes are so low

I’ll pause for a moment while you wipe the tears of laughter from your eyes and the milk that shot out of nose from your chin. But I’m betting that you already knew that academic administrators, or “leaders,” as they prefer to be called, are a fun group.

Fun, but not exclusive. Oddly enough, in an organization that prides itself on thinning its faculty ranks through the gymnastics of the tenure process, packing the payroll with administrators is widely regarded internally as the mark of a successful, well, administration. If a leader is really, really committed to establishing the importance of his contributions to the campus, he (feminists, forgive me, but what I am talking about here is universally a male behavior) methodically begins building his empire by bulking up his troops with senior executive associate vice presidents, senior associate vice presidents, associate vice presidents, senior assistant vice presidents, assistant vice presidents, executive directors, directors, senior associate directors, and so on down the line until you reach coordinators and dog catchers.

Academic leaders sit in wonder at their latest creation, the 3-D organizational chart.

Needless to say, the addition of administrative expertise makes the institution stronger; after all, how could a college ever get along with just a “director” when it could hire an “associate vice president” or a “dean” to do the same job? Of course, along with the title change comes a significant change in salary (upwards) because after all you get what you pay for. Or, as a recently appointed vice president I had the all-too-brief pleasure of working with once said to a faculty that had lived for decades with below-market salaries, “people with my expertise don’t come cheap.”

With all this brain power, I deserve a couple of big paychecks.

Some experts have observed that academic administration, being the growth sector that it is, is a bright spot in our flagging economy, while others, the pessimists, have pointed out that

Between 1993 and 2007, the number of full-time administrators per 100 students at America’s leading universities grew by 39 percent, while the number of employees engaged in teaching, research or service only grew by 18 percent. Inflation-adjusted spending on administration per student increased by 61 percent during the same period, while instructional spending per student rose 39 percent.

As long as all spending trends are up, I suppose everything is hunky-dory, except for the cash-strapped moms and dads who are picking up the tab—and the faculty who are patiently waiting to stick their mitts in the cookie jar for the crumbs the vice presidents et al in their largesse leave behind.

A handful of campuses are bucking this trend. At Washington State University, for example, university President Elson S. Floyd, PhD recently informed his faculty and staff that he was implementing a “new organizational configuration [that] reduces the total number of vice presidents from nine to six.” Floyd continues: “I would expect budget savings of between $700,000 to $900,000 resulting from these actions, although the ultimate savings will depend on a number of personnel actions and salary adjustments, which will be determined going forward.” He concludes his announcement of the vice presidential holocaust by saying, “Streamlining the administrative leadership of WSU will require all of us to work smarter, harder and faster. I have no doubt that the WSU family is up to the task.”

For those of you whose first language is not academic administrativese, allow me to translate for you: the Washington State Legislature slashed the university’s budget, so the president had to find some quick savings. Thinking fast, he collapsed three vice presidencies into one, and eliminated a currently vacant vice president’s position. Right away we know there’s something just a little fishy about the claim of “eliminating” a position that, being unoccupied, is not costing the campus anything. The piscine aroma grows a little stronger when we read the part about “ultimate savings” having to “depend” on “personnel actions and salary adjustments”; in other words, it has yet to be determined just how big a piece of the savings pie the surviving VP’s will carve up for themselves, given that they now must work “smarter, harder and faster.” The reward for the rest of the campus—the WSU family—for also working “smarter, harder and faster” is the comforting knowledge that their president believes they are “up to the task.”

It’s one thing, of course, for a large state university to be awash in administrators, and maybe even justifiable, given the multiple mandates the public trust demands it fulfill. But what about liberal arts colleges? Must these beleaguered institutions also beef up the administrative ranks in order to remain competitive in today’s diverse, multicultural, gender-neutral global educational market?

Of course they do. Take the fictional Liberal Arts College USA in fictional Collegetown USA as a hypothetical example. At LCA the president found a nationally recognized expert to lead a newly created dean’s office. The charge to this dean was to put the faculty on notice that its educational rubrics, learning objectives and classroom outcomes needed to be assessable, because assessment is, you know, important. Woe to the faculty member who could not break down Finnegan’s Wake into learning units, assigning each unit precise learning parameters, and ensuring each student derived the same learning outcome from each unit. Sayonara to the professor who believes students should be encouraged to establish their own educational goals. The point here is, LCA has a new dean, and he is a nationally recognized expert. On what, nobody is quite sure.

The national expert ponders his reputation.

Sometimes hiring more administrators makes a lean-and-mean institution even more efficient, and nowhere has this been more true than in the president’s office at LCA, where a year ago the then-president replaced one staff member with three, and announced plans to hire a fourth. Of the four, one failed immediately at the task she was given but was kept on anyway; one was an equal-opportunity hire, whose qualifications were based on her cohabitational preference; and one was a unusually sane appointment. The fourth is still in limbo, but will be, when (and if) he arrives, LCA’s newest vice president. And you thought administrative bloat was just for state schools.

I got my job the old-fashioned way!

Things are looking up at LCA, however. Its trustees are a remarkably dedicated group of people who are continuing to deliver on their promise to steward the college wisely. Their collective judgment will untangle the threads of the crazy-quilt organizational chart that has grown and grown over the last few years. More power to them!

NOTE to readers: “Administrative Bloat at American Universities: The Real Reason for High Costs in Higher Education,” a just-released report from the Goldwater Institute, makes for interesting reading if you want to get a sense of how universities operate and spend money. The link is above, where I have quoted from the report. I also remind readers that universities and colleges may look alike, but they are not alike, and efforts to run one as if it were the other are doomed to fail. I have drawn on the Goldwater report to make a general point, and not to compare university practice with what goes on on a well-run college campus.

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Plus ca Change : Transitional Analysis

A former boss of mine was fond of needling me and various colleagues with a constant reminder that “change is hard.” He chose his words carefully, not so much to point out the obvious (although he did a lot of that, too), but to let us know directly how much pleasure he was taking in our discomfiture at many of his dicta. While no one could call such behavior “harassment” in the traditional sense, it certainly created a chilly if not downright frosty atmosphere in the workplace. I tried my best to soldier on in this decidedly hostile environment, Nancy-Reagan smile plastered on my face and swallowed critiques that burned like acid in my throat and my thoughts. My eventual departure from the inner sanctum of my boss’s enablers was all but inevitable, I suppose. My leaving my job was a change that was hard for me, but in retrospect I see that living with the specter of the kind of change that continued to haunt the campus after I was gone was even harder for those who stayed.

A president consults his checklist for change.

Small liberal arts colleges have a vexed relationship with the notion of change. Like every organism, these institutions must regularly experience change to renew, refresh and survive. Even the doughtiest alumnus and crustiest professor recognize this simple truth. And so there is curricular reform on a pretty predictable cycle; offices of student affairs are always trying some new, sure-fire technique of encouraging undergraduates to embrace diversity and celebrate difference; and, difficult as it is for some of us to believe, faculty do eventually retire and are replaced by shiny new PhD’s with state-of-the-art ideas about their discipline. But like any host organism fighting off an unwanted parasite, a campus will resist change its collective psyche, spirit, gut—call it what you will—apprehends as hazardous to its health and future well being.

Liberal Arts College USA, like every other small baccalaureate institution, prides itself on being unique. Let us pause for a moment to reflect on what it means to be unique. Some colleges take their uniqueness very, very seriously. Consider, for example, Ithaca College. Ithaca is a typical liberal arts college with a typical faculty in upstate New York, but by golly, it is unique—and if you visit its website, it will tell you so 2870 times. Here’s a sampling of what you will find. (Thoughtful readers will not blame Call Me Miss for the errant adverbs modifying “unique” in a few of the sample texts. I guess when everything around you is unique, you need to muster a little extra verbiage so that your program can stand out as one-of-a-kind.):

The Theater Arts Management (TAM) degree is [sic] very unique program.

One of the most unique programs administered by the Gerontolgy [sic] Institute is the College’s relationship with Longview, an Ithacare Community.

CMD — A unique program in which you will develop a comprehensive mastery of communication as well as an understanding of the impact of communication on an organization’s success.

Human Anatomy provides the unique learning experience of human cadaver dissection and hands-on experience to study anatomical relationships, assess gross structure, and begin to appreciate the range of normal variation and pathological changes in different types of human tissue.

Undergrad was just the beginning.
Come to Ithaca for a unique graduate experience.

The Ithaca College sport club program mission is to provide students with a unique opportunity to develop leadership, organizational and fiscal management skills in a fun and safe supportive learning environment in which participants can build a sense of community.

International Students
Come to Ithaca College for a unique and challenging experience

Besides our unique major, we also instruct all entering students in first-year writing;

Culture and communication is a unique critical-studies degree program that makes connections between two areas of inquiry: the study of how culture informs and shapes all aspects of communication, and its corollary area of investigation — how communication is the process through which culture is created, modified, and challenged.

Our group-based all-college mentoring program is unique and nationally recognized.

Even universities—the big siblings of liberal arts colleges—are in the business of being unique. Just down the road from diminutive Ithaca looms the behemoth Cornell University, a campus that sparked the War Between the Tates and the War Between Keith Olberman and Principled Argument. Given that Cornell’s enrollment of 20,300 graduate and undergraduate students dwarfs the teeny tiny Ithaca’s 7,000 or so student body, it’s not at all surprising that Cornell is 13 times more unique than its petite companion school, scoring no less than 38100 invocations of the sacred appellation on its website.

Unique colleges all in a row, artist's rendering. Surely you can spot the differences!

But there are a handful of colleges that really and truly are unique, for example, the jewel-like Conway School of Landscape Architecture, an institution with a single focus that awards a master’s degree to its exceptionally talented graduates. Or Thomas More College of Liberal Arts, a Catholic great books school with a beautifully articulated sense of purpose and grace.

Liberal Arts College USA legitimately stands in the company of these unique institutions. Although it shares in common with other colleges many challenges, among them insufficient resources, lagging building maintenance, and occasional administrative chaos, its students, faculty and the things the two groups together study represent a remarkable and, yes, unique achievement in 20th Century higher education, made all the more remarkable because all efforts to quantify, analyze, or even replicate the transformations LCA effects in its students stymie even the most ardent devotees of “assessment.”

LCA USA grads leave the college determined to do things their way, on their timetable, and woe to anybody who stands between them and their goals. Whatever mojo the faculty works on students, the “outcome” (as we in the educational enterprise are fond of intoning) is a dazzling array of men and women who don’t just say they want to change the world—they do.

So, why, one might ask, would a president looking to make a mark on such a special place seek to change the very fabric of what makes the college unique? Is change so important that it drives the essential out the door with the expendable?

As always, it comes down to the simple matter of vision. College presidents, in order to steward the precious entity over which they hold sway, must be far-sighted. A myopic president whiles away his time at the helm tinkering with a policy here, changing a title there, fretting that somewhere, in some dusty document lurks a phrase so infelicitous it will bring Erin Brockovich and her ilk running. Rather than keeping his eyes on the prize of a fiscally robust, intellectually electric college—he focuses instead on the kind of change he, and only he, can believe in: the kind of institutional changes that will look impressive on his cv when he begins his job hunt. Thankfully for LCA USA that hunt is now underway. Its faculty, staff and trustees can go back to doing what they do best: squabbling about what the future holds for LCA USA while making its present the best it can be. And that will be the most welcome change in a long time.

Dawn at LCA USA: A new day brings welcome change.

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Forget about Killing All the Lawyers; First Let’s Call the Consultants!

What comes to mind when you hear the word “consulting”? The folks at McKinsey who brought you Enron? Bob Shrum, who ignited the dynamite Kerry-Edwards campaign? Or perhaps that unfortunate laid-off fellow next door, who has added “consultant” to his resume in a futile effort to conceal his unemployment.

When I see the words “consulting” or “consultant” I think about PT Barnum’s philosophy of doing business, and how consultants have adopted it with great success to sell their services to higher education. Take Liberal Arts College USA (LAC USA) in the bucolic hamlet of Collegetown USA. The manifold consultants suckling at its budgetary bosoms are sapping the alma right out of this mater.

The national average for consultants at liberal arts colleges is approximately .0005 consultants PSI; at LAC USA that ratio is closer to 1:1. These are important numbers to know, because one of the key assignments that keeps higher ed consultants busy these days is helping colleges develop “metrics” by which they can “measure success” and “demonstrate accountability.” Having a higher than average consultants/per square inch ratio can be read several ways. The positive interpretation is that the institution has buckled down and is calling on outside expertise to identify and provide solutions for the college’s numerous “challenges.” A less positive interpretation might suggest that a campus chock-a-block with consultants is a campus whose administrators lack the requisite skills and experience to do their jobs without the training wheels and steadying hand a personal factotum affords them.

Consultants: Follow their advice and they'll take the hit for you.

So just who are these hired hands, and whatever do they do? Let’s discuss.

One of the first ways you know you’re in trouble is when the college president suggests a review of the office where you are in charge. Such a review is never, ever good news. At LAC, some years ago the president decreed that an office key to the success of the college and his presidency should undergo such an exercise. To make a long and predictable story short, Consultant “A” was hired to do the review, at the conclusion of which the head of the office met with an ignominious end, and was replaced by a highly inexperienced, callow youth. So young and inexperienced that the consultant—who recommended the appointment—urged that the pup be advised by a more mature, experienced coach. And so it came to pass that Consultant “A” has for years been enjoying a fruitful gig as Yoda to the apparently permanently-too-inexperienced head of the office. One could ask if a more sensible recommendation might have been simply to hire a qualified individual to run things. But then Consultant “A” might not have had the opportunity to fly cross country several times a year on LCA’s dime and enjoy 100% return on the recycled advice he shares with the college, advice that has no basis in, and is in fact counter to, the college’s interests.

Consultant “B” doesn’t have to make a transcontinental flight to reach LCA, although he followed a circuitous route to arrive at its ivied halls. Consultant “B” helps the “expert” hired by the president to sort out the various jurisdictions of the campus’s internecine jurisprudence. He is also the expert’s former boss. The expert had served in the faculty senate of a previous institution, so therefore of course not only possessed deep knowledge of this particularly thorny briar patch of college life, but without question also had the requisite street creds to give LCA faculty the reassurance they needed in order to be guided—expertly, of course—to enlightenment. Have you spotted the emerging pattern yet? Time for a pop quiz.

Consultants “C” through “F” are such fixtures at LCA that one of them even has a permanent office on campus and gets invited to official college celebrations. These guys earn their keep, and it’s a good thing, because they are in possession of intimate knowledge of every nook and cranny of LCA as well as licensures nobody on staff can lay claim to. But, wouldn’t you just know it? LCA chooses not to listen to the advice offered by this phalanx of hired hands. Just this spring decades of expensive and remarkably consistent recommendations were blithely ignored because another consultant—one with a negligible relationship to the college, but advising a new “report” to the president—tossed out a suggestion concerning buildings and grounds. The bloodshed from the ensuing mayhem has yet to prove fatal to anyone, but some vital signs are not looking good.

But..but..but...the consultant told me if I built it they would come!

And then, finally, there is the granddaddy of LCA consultants, the president’s own amanuensis. Gramps has been around since the early days of the president’s tenure and provides recommendations almost as fast as he cashes the checks he receives from the college’s capacious and opaque “general administrative” fund. I came to know this graybeard when he offered me advice on a project that comes around every ten years or so on most campuses. It’s a project I had undertaken more than once (I won’t tell you how many times lest you think I am getting long in the tooth) and for which my expertise had been recognized both on and off campus. Let’s just leave it at this: the president was none too happy when I showed him the how-to manual from which the consultant had cribbed his recommendations. Need I add that the displeasure was not directed at the consultant?

What is the take-away here? It’s not that all consultants are charlatans or never offer original advice. And it’s certainly not that all administrators at LCA are sock puppets animated by unseen and unaccountable hands of off-stage consultants. No, it is, rather, the simple suggestion that if the right person is in charge, then consultants count their stays on campus in days or at the most weeks. They do not become long-term “cost-centers” for the college. And Alma Mater does not become their cash cow.

Food for thought? Why not let the consultants decide.

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