By Professor
Doom
When I tell people what’s going on in
higher education, the tales are often so bizarre that I completely understand
why I’m greeted with disbelief.
Many times I’ve mentioned the epic
arrogance of administration, how it is simply impossible to tell them anything
besides what they want to hear. If you’re not being sycophantic, you’re not
part of the team, and greeted with contempt, at best, or petty rage that can go
on for years, at worst.
Mercifully, administration is often eager
to document their behavior, so I have at least something to show (justifiably)
disbelieving eyes when I claim yet again that administration in higher
education is out of control. Another example administrative arrogance to the
point of insanity has come to pass.
Some time back, I mentioned how the entire first year
class in a (former) top graduate school resigned, after a year of trying to negotiate
with admin. A year where all these students could get was lies and
stonewalling.
They weren’t alone, and knew they weren’t
alone:
So, rather than continue to be suckers in
the higher education system, they resigned, in writing, publicly, making it
very clear that they simply would not take further abuse. This was an act of
despair on their part—their year of coursework will mostly not transfer, and
has minimal market value, nothing compared to the debt they took on for that
coursework. They wanted to be part of a noted fine arts program, but after a year
of being in that program, they saw it was not as advertised, or as it once was.
A new administrator came in, and plundered
the program between the times the students signed up, and showed up, on campus.
Everyone outside knew what happened:
Not just old alumni above, but faculty and recent graduates responded with overwhelming support
for the mass resignation, agreeing that these students were not treated fairly
by any understanding of that word.
Now to consider administration’s response
to the students saying in writing, in unison, “We are not going to take it
anymore, we quit!” with the support
of every non-administrator aware of what was going on.
I wouldn’t believe the administrative response
to the mass resignation if I didn’t see the source, in an open letter from the Dean to
the students:
“…we have not recorded your withdrawal. Instead, we have granted each
of you a two-year leave of absence. If you let us know that you wish to rejoin
the school before fall classes commence this year, or before the date that
students are admitted next year or the year after, we will welcome and
celebrate your return…”
--emphasis added
That’s right: the Dean won’t let them quit
school. The epic, epic, arrogance here is, well, epic. These students aren’t 10
years old, they’re adults, and they’ve already returned to the real world,
leaving the foulness of their experience with administrators in higher
education behind them.
And the Dean has “granted” them a leave of
absence, instead. For two years, no less. Seriously, she granted this. You don’t grant something that nobody asks for…you
might offer it, I suppose, and hope for the best, but this is pure arrogance.
Please, gentle reader, imagine if you quit
your job after a year of lies and abusive treatment from a boss that you’d
established was invulnerable to input.
What conclusion would you draw if, after
you publicly submitted a letter of resignation with the support of everyone
else involved with the company, your boss wrote that he was “granting” you a 2
year leave of absence instead? You’d consider him insane at the very least,
right?
At least with a job, you might be
desperate in two years, but who really thinks the students are going to be
desperate to get deeper into debt two years from now? There are plenty of other
art schools where you might not get cheated as badly as Roski.
Here, the Dean’s letter is online, for all to see, exactly how insane administration in higher
education is today. Recall, the only thing administration in higher education
cares about is growth—the size of the school is everything. I’ve documented
many times how admin will use fraud to inflate the size of the school, with
many campuses having large enrollments but empty classrooms once the checks
come in. We’re now at the point that even students that publicly resign are
still counted as students, just “on leave of absence.” And I thought promoting cheating and Pell Grant fraud was bad enough. What’s next? Forced
enrollment of high school students into college programs, where they must take
debt (and, of course, won’t be allowed to resign…)?
Since obviously the Dean (and her
superiors, who had to approve the granting
of leave) is quite insane, it would be piling on for me to tear apart the rest
of the Deanling’s writing, which is filled with insincerities and outright
lies. The students have no such reservations, and prepared a helpful fact sheet basically correcting every
sentence the Dean wrote.
I’ll give one quick example (the very
first from the fact sheet) of how out of touch admin here is:
“I regret that several of our MFA
students have stated they will leave the program…”
I state this one because it’s about as
close to truth as an administrator gets. It’s not “several” it’s “all,” 100%,
every single student, all of them. The Dean has probably been told this dozens
of times, and still doesn’t understand how badly she’s failed. She naturally
hasn’t been fired, despite losing 100% of her customers…higher education is the
only business where this level of failure still has no repercussions for the
bosses. It’s probably why there are so many wildly incompetent bosses in higher
education, but I digress.
Now, I grant that graduate classes aren’t
overflowing with students…but they never are, not in legitimate programs. Using
“several” in this instance is severe spin, covering up the complete failure of
the Dean to trick any students into staying in a program that changed
dramatically after the students agreed to enter it.
Honest, there are many reasons for higher
education’s debasement into, in many cases, a scheme for trapping people into a
lifetime of inescapable debt. The primary reason, by far, is higher education
has been taken over by people such as this Deanling, who are beyond reason, care
nothing for education in general, and cannot be removed no matter how
thoroughly they display their incompetence.
The students continue to respond
rationally to admin:
We already officially withdrew
from USC on May 15th, but the dean’s statement forces us to withdraw once
again. We wish to fully withdraw from the University of Southern
California, effective immediately.
I
do hope the students are generously granted
a withdrawal, but this really is worrisome. Considering the recent legislation to give
administration more power in Wisconsin, should we give people like this more power? Will someday
police drag college students on to campus for their enforced classwork?
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