By Professor Doom
Prudent and wise
leaders care for those that they lead. When times are lean, such leaders know
to scale back, and in times of plenty, leaders might expand, but do so
cautiously, being careful to set aside some of the surplus for when times
become lean again.
Our leaders in
higher education boast, and brag, and boast some more about their amazing
leadership. They’ve awarded themselves impressive degrees, splendiferous
titles, and, of course, sickeningly large salaries and perks based on their own
self-assessed impressions of their leadership skills.
I don’t begrudge a
wise king his palace, there should be rewards for doing good work, keeping
honorable stewardship over those ruled.
Our leaders in
higher education insist they are great leaders, why, they even have Ph.D.s in
the field of Leadership—I’m serious, type in “Leadership Ph.D.” in Google and
see with your own eyes that such a field exists. It’s pretty much the degree
you need to get a high-paying job in higher ed…it’s curious I never see TV ads
for such degrees, even though it’s been far more a growth industry than most
everything else. But I digress.
The last decade or
two has been a time of plenty in higher education, torrents of money have
flowed onto campus via the student loan scam. Our rulers, for the most part,
have squandered the money, building themselves ever more elaborate campus
palaces, hiring ever larger legions of sycophantic deanlings under them, and
well, I’ve already mentioned the kind of loot these guys personally plunder
from the system.
Admin: “If
we don’t keep at least 90% of our students, this school will need to shut
down.”
--I’ve
heard many warnings like this over the years, because even public institutions
never seem to put anything aside, or have any capacity to deal with more than
slight hardship. I’ve seen schools lose 10% of their students and
collapse.
I reckon the
plentiful years are coming to an end, and the lean years are coming. Across the
country, our states are starting to suffer badly under the Keynesian policies
of our government, specifically the money-printing that transfers so much
wealth to DC…transferring it away from everyone else.
One of the first
major state schools to show the true capabilities of our leaders in higher
education is Chicago State University. I’ve discussed the hand-over-fist
plundering of the Chicago Community College System before…but the
plundering by the university leadership has also left the universities
vulnerable to the slightest downturn.
With funding
being cut, the university is shutting down practically overnight—nothing was
put aside during those years of plenty:
Chicago
State University announced
Tuesday the elimination of spring break this year to ensure its students will
finish the semester before the school may be forced to close down due to a lack
of state funding.
It’s so bad that the school can’t
even stay open for the length of being shut down during spring break! They
literally have nothing. Ok, it isn’t as quick as all that, the school actually
has gone for almost 9 months without money beyond tuition:
Illinois'
public universities and community colleges haven't received state money since
summer because of the budget stalemate between Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner and
Democrats who control the General
Assembly.
I grant not having money coming in
is a problem, but…the leaders had to have seen it coming, and did nothing.
They’re looking at solutions now, at least:
"We're
looking at how to be efficient in the summer," he said. "We have a number
of buildings on campus that are really minimally used, we can close
those."
--like most
campuses, this place is hugely overbuilt. Despite the unused buildings, here’s
a 4 page list of construction projects for this campus, with tens of millions budgeted…
Read that
administrative plan again: they’re going to close the unused buildings. Gee,
you really needed a Ph.D. in Leadership and 8 months to come up with that plan?
These guys get paid hundreds of thousands a year for this level of acumen…
I’m not merely
criticizing the leadership of CSU here. Across the country, campuses have been
choking on the dust of construction for years. Even as on-campus student numbers
have been falling (due to far more profitable online coursework being offered),
even as class sizes have been doubled-and-doubled-and-doubled again, and
faculty positions have been cut, more and more and more administrative palaces
were erected. I haven’t been on a major university campus yet that doesn’t have
buildings that are basically empty, even during peak operating hours on
campuses with nothing but growth.
Our leaders have
taken that loan money, turned our
campuses into amusement parks for the students, and built
palaces for themselves. They can’t even sell these useless buildings, merely
shut them down for lack of funds.
Truth be told,
the money is still available, but the politicians just don’t want to budget it,
for reasons that, well, seem credible to be me:
Rauner's office has also criticized what it called "waste," ''cronyism" and lavish administrator perks in Illinois' other public universities…”
Again, read
between the lines. The school was a financial wreck, but once admin had no
choice but to show a little integrity and responsibility, then there were few
problems. Hey, leaders, maybe you could have behaved with integrity when you
weren’t put up against a wall?
As far as
assertions of waste, cronyism (I see no need for quotes for these), and lavish
administrator perks --so blatantly lavish that the paper saw no need to put
quotes around this phrase!--well, yeah, no kidding, I’ve shown many times in
this blog that waste, cronyism, and lavish perks for the administration are
part and parcel in higher education today.
Of course, the
gentle reader needs to understand that if this school shuts down, it’s the
students and faculty who will pay the price. It’s always a disaster for
students when their school closes, as transferring more than a few credits is
usually problematic and not every student is in a position to go to another
university. Faculty have been reduced to adjuncthood; when the school closes,
they’ll just be fired without benefits.
Ah, but admin?
Those are still full time public employees. You can believe there will be
plenty of golden parachutes to go around…
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