A Doctoral
Degree To Administrate?
By Professor
Doom
Administrator: “A
student is appealing her grade, and I need you on the appeal committee. [The
professor] gave an A for final grade scores ‘two standard deviations above the
mean,’, and an F for grades ‘two standard deviations below the mean.’ Can you explain what the instructor is doing?”
Me: “Uh, sure.”
--an Education faculty
member, for some bizarre reason, decided to give final grades based on the
normal distribution. This was double-bizarre in a class with about a dozen
students, since it was all but impossible for two students to get an A with
such a grading system (likewise, it’s nigh impossible for more than one student
to fail). The second-best student in the class complained, since her A grades
weren’t averaging to an A, and the better she did on tests the higher the score
she needed to get an A—always out of reach. The administrator has a Ph.D., used
statistics in the dissertation, but was completely clueless on basic statistics,
as was the Educationist, also with a Ph.D. that used statistics. This was my
first clear hint that administrative Ph.D.s were very different than in other
fields.
In the modern world, a
doctorate is considered the ultimate degree for teaching or research, the terminal
degree. The version of the doctorate-holding professor is a relatively recent
invention in academia—in the 19th century, most academic staff or
professors held no such degree (and the staff were often faculty). A Master’s
was sufficient for teaching, indicative of a mastery of the knowledge
sufficient to help others learn. The primary difference between the two is a
doctorate represents research, generally successful research that contributes
to the field of knowledge. A Master’s degree is obviously desirable in a
teacher by a student wanting higher education. I certainly would want to be
taught and trained by someone knowledgeable in the field, and I’d be willing to
pay for have someone like that. A master in the field that has also extended
the knowledge would be even more desirable for a student wanting to know
everything. But what about for an administrator? Of what use is a research
degree there?
“Your writing is just a
hobby.”
--Administrator, as
part of an explanation of why, since my many paid articles didn’t directly
relate to my job as mathematics teacher, I should expect no particular
assistance or credit from my institution. But the administrator sees nothing
wrong with getting higher pay for a research degree in a job with no research…
Although administrative positions command high pay for doctoral, research, degrees, it’s a little
puzzling why this would be the case. The Dean’s job description I listed
previously has nothing to do with research, or even with teaching. When I go
into McDonald’s, I neither want, nor am willing to pay for, a manager with a
doctorate in meat cooking to ring up my bill on the register, just for a burger
and fries no different than at any other McDonald’s. If the manager pursues
some arcane knowledge as a life goal, good for him. I just want my burger and
fries.
In a similar vein, I imagine
if students had a choice of say, 40% lower tuition, or administrators with
doctorates, they’d take the former in a heartbeat...probably why students don’t
ever get that option.
For all the talk about how
business-style efficiency is necessary to make higher education better, it’s
odd that administrative positions prefer a degree that implies knowledge and
skills irrelevant to the position. In fact, almost all administrative positions
require, or “prefer,” advanced degrees, even though advanced academic degrees
are mostly desirable for teaching and research…the things most administrators
don’t do. A bit of hypocrisy here in light of the talk about running institutions
efficiently, but administrators decide what administrators need (and their
pay), the hypocrisy is merely icing on the cake.
Phone call: “Hello. I understand you’re interested in a Ph.D. in Higher
Education Administration?”
--in my research, I naturally
clicked a box indicating such an interest. For weeks, I received daily sales
calls from institutions wishing to sell me a degree. They were all accredited,
of course.
There are a great number of
institutions offering a wide variety of doctoral degrees in administrative
fields. To be more clear, there are a ridiculous number of institutions, for an
insane variety of degrees.
Particularly disturbing is
these administrative degrees are taught through education departments. This was
an unexpected benefit of my research here. Time and again I was puzzled at
administration’s bizarre fascination and unshakeable faith in Educationist
beliefs. It’s no longer a wonder how Educationists acquired their nearly occult
power over administrators: administrators are beholden to Educationists for
their degrees.
Administration and Education
go hand in hand as “fields of knowledge.” Hand in hand may be too platonic a
phrase, as the relationship is quite incestuous: educationists hand the
advanced degrees to the administrators, who use those degrees to get jobs
allowing them to hand positions to Educationists.
A look at the course titles in
the curriculum for Administration degrees only adds to the puzzlement:
Progressions in Leadership Thought, Governance and Structures in Higher
Education, Fiscal Management in Higher Education (sounds useful, but it’s more
about fundraising; you’ll need actual accounting credentials to get a financial
position), Strategic Planning and Change, Leading Across Cultures…again, it
just goes on. There’s hardly any rhyme or reason to these titles, and almost
nothing relies on anything else for understanding. Much as in many bogus
undergraduate degrees, each course is composed of material that requires but a
few months at best to master, with no applications elsewhere.
Curiously, there are no
courses on “Increasing Retention.” There’s also no instruction on “Acting with
Integrity,” somewhat problematic seeing as this is key to accreditation. Nor is
there anything on how to teach, how to deal with teachers, or how to deal with
students—over-the-top omissions in training for an administrator at an
institution with teachers and students. And yet, it’s assumed these managers
know these, the most important things in their job, have been trained
extensively, in fact, and they’re paid for it accordingly.
Not only is a graduate degree
excessive for administrative positions absent of teaching or research, their
degrees don’t have anything that apply to the position. Now it becomes clear
why administrators seldom know anything about what goes on in my, or any other,
courses, or have much respect for education in general. All those degrees, and
yet completely ignorant of what their underlings do…nothing like a business
model, even as they’re paid as much as highest level managers. My image of an
administrator able to discuss Shakespearean poetry, prove a theorem in
differential equations, run a biology lab, and grade a test in French collapses
like any childhood fantasy: administrative training gives them nothing that
relates to the primary task of the campuses they rule over.
The bulk of college money goes to pay for
administrators, possessing (theoretically) advanced training in degrees and
knowledge that have utterly no relationship to their job. Perhaps I’m making
too big a judgment just from the titles of the courses. I’ll be looking at
their coursework soon, but until then: how is it not fraud that most of the
student debt goes to people that literally have nothing to do with education?
Think about it.
http://professorconfess.blogspot.com/
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