By Professor
Doom
Our colleges campuses are drowning in
leaders. I’ve literally taught courses where I had to report to 4 different
bosses (in addition to the department head and Dean) during the semester
regarding every issue that came up in the class.
It takes some effort to teach a class, but
not that much (it’s why faculty often teach 4 or 5 classes a semester, and
adjuncts often teach 10, so as not to starve to death on their
pay). Teaching is
the real work requiring actual time, but every semester or so, you do get one
problem that the teacher really can’t, or shouldn’t, handle on his own.
But, that’s it. I’ve never really
understood all the “extra” leadership we have now, even as I concede you really
should have someone in a position of authority to step in on those occasions
where an issue between student and teacher requires an impartial arbiter.
Where do they get these leaders? Well, in
times past, they were drawn from faculty. Usually an older faculty member
(because you needed someone with wisdom) would step in and serve as Dean. He’d
get around $2,000 extra a semester, because it really isn’t a full time
position, and in exchange he’d have to handle the occasional crappy situation
where someone needed to do something.
It was considered good money, but fair enough: you might well get put in a
position of angering a colleague, so the money had to be good enough to take
that risk.
Today, we pay full-time Deans around
$100,000 a year to do what used to be a
part time job for few thousand bucks if that much. These new Deanlings aren’t
even faculty and never were, so they often have no idea what’s going on. Thing
is, the job doesn’t require any particular skill, just experience as a teacher,
and so the requirements for the job was simply having an advanced degree in,
well, something—keep in mind, back when you drew from faculty, about the only
thing all faculty had in common was having some sort of advanced degree. And experience.
But the job itself requires no particular
talent. We now have advanced degree programs in Administration, so that you can
“train” to be a Dean or other administrative apparatchik without actually
knowing anything. I’ve examined the programs, and even
the most advanced material is laughable. These programs require no effort to succeed.
And so our campuses are drowning in
administrators with fancy know-nothing degrees, mostly working tirelessly to
debase education in the name of growth. Adding yet another topic to the “I
can’t make this stuff up” category, is our institutions of higher education
think we need more of them:
NC State wants to
help solve the community college leadership pipeline problem amid broader shift
in focus of doctoral training programs.
The insanity here is jaw-dropping. Our
campuses are breaking out in riots, tuition is skyrocketing, on-time graduation rates of 0.6% are
considered successful (on the curve), administrators outnumber faculty
across the country,
student debt is well past a trillion dollars and…the issue is we have a
“community college leadership pipeline problem”! Yowza!
With all the serious problems affecting
higher ed right now (and the previous paragraph only has some highlights), our
leadership is worried about the pipeline for getting more leaders at the
community college level. Obviously, the real issue is we have a leadership problem, not a pipeline
problem.
The “pipeline” refers to the fact that
community colleges are having a tough time getting enough “leaders” to fill administrative
positions. I guess hiring some of the impoverished faculty there isn’t a
possibility? I can totally see why they’d have a problem if they were to hire
faculty, as community colleges represent a huge source of fraud in higher
education today. Faculty attached to a school don’t approve and enhance fraud
like the nomadic mercenary administrative leadership we use now.
For at least the past 20 years, everyone from community
college advocates to trustees has been bemoaning the increasing number of open
and unfilled presidencies at two-year colleges across the country.
While one faculty position might open up
every few years, ever semester sees multiple new administrative positions, so I
can see how it’s hard to fill them all. They especially seem to have a problem
with finding Poo Bahs. I’ve highlighted many of the frauds community college
Poo Bahs committed (my favorite being the personal 5 star
restaurant), but
obvious fraud aside, I do ask the gentle reader who went to community college:
do you remember the Poo Bah doing anything at all for your education? I know in
my decade working at a questionable community college, the Poo Bah, nice as he
was, was only seen on campus a handful of times, and had nothing to do with any
of my students, ever.
So how can a true steward of higher
education, one who knows higher education is about education, care even a
little about non-education positions being empty? That should be a good thing,
right, the savings of a million tax dollars a year per Poo Bah position
unfilled?
North Carolina is working hard to fix a
problem that shouldn’t be fixed:
So this past year, NC State redesigned its three-year
doctoral degree in adult and community college education
Weird, a Ph.D. program in many fields
takes 6 years or more, and 4 years is considered fast. But you can slam down a
Ph.D. in “adult and community college education” in 3 years? I’m telling you,
there are valid questions to be asked about the legitimacy of such a degree, or
of any administrative degree for that matter…
Now the program is focused more on labor market outcomes,
learning, equity and completion in an effort to make future presidents more
effective,
Make presidents more effective? What? Let
me explain the business plan of most community colleges: advertise as much as
possible to find people who want checks. Pell Grant fraud is massive in
community colleges, as it’s easy to sign up and get actual grant money in your
pocket.
It doesn’t take 3 years of training to be
successful at this.
Well, it didn’t used to, anyway, but
nowadays we have community colleges all over the place, and the vast bulk of
our citizenry has already shown up on campus to get the free checks. Heck, we have bands of nomad
“students” wandering from campus to campus to get these checks, because admin doesn’t care about
the fraud. There are so many such colleges that the market is saturated, all
they can do now is cannibalize each other, as campuses within 10 miles of each
other have no choice but to fight to take each other’s students. Is this really
what higher education is supposed to be about? They race to offer to the most
convenient, easiest, fastest coursework possible.
That’s what being a community college
leader is today: be effective by committing greater fraud than the other
leaders…and now you can get a Ph.D. in this “skill” in a mere 3 years. Neat!
“Every
decade we say there’s a leadership crisis, but it almost deserves that designation now,”
O’Banion said. “The job has become too difficult…
--emphasis added.
So, uh, you were crying wolf for 10 straight years before, but now you
say it “almost” is a problem now? Seriously, do these people listen to
themselves? That said, I concede the job is difficult, but
only for the reason I’ve touched on above: our country is overwhelmed with the
fake schools plundering the tax dollars. The reasons given in the article are
laughable, but I’ll highlight the most hysterical:
Faculty unions are in control of a lot of places.
Really? Where? I’m sorry, but this is insane.
If faculty unions had any power, any power at all, this might be a concern, but
honest, if faculty were “in control” tenure wouldn’t be nearly dead and there
wouldn’t be food banks specializing in feeding your average college teacher
because the pay is so low…like there are today.
The article drones on about the “almost”
problem , but the comments section laughs at how idiotic it is. A few
highlights:
Why
don't these colleges simply announce the jobs when these people retire? I'm
sure a bunch of qualified people will apply, especially since NC community
colleges pay presidents very well compared to the size of the colleges. NC
community colleges are typically quite small, and the presidents still make
very good money.
Seriously, a
Poo Bah can make hundreds of thousands a year at even a tiny college, and there
are no particular skills needed. Just advertise the position, I’m sure you’ll
get applicants. In particular, consider hiring faculty to the position, get
someone who will serve not as a plundering leader out to debase the school as
quickly as possible, but someone who has invested years of his life in the
school, and doesn’t want the place to be considered a joke. What a silly idea!
This
feels like a solution in search of a crisis. My community college just hired a
new president and we had over 200 applicants (reducing the pool of highly
qualified down to around 70). There are plenty of VPs and Deans out there,
along with many "business leaders" that local Boards of Trustees seem
to like to hire more and more. Most Dean-level (and up) administrators already
have doctorates, usually in their current subject area, whether academic,
student services, etc, so I'm not sure who the target audience is for this
program.
Yeah, no
kidding. Times are tough right now, lots of folks would be interested in a
$250,000 a year job where you advance and get bonuses no matter how badly you
screw up, and get a
golden parachute if they fire you, or even if you
quit.
Seriously,
please, no more leaders for higher education. The system is at its breaking
point already trying to support the leaders we have…
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