By Professor Doom
“…a major east coast university maintained an office in a centrally
located European capital. The nominal purpose of this office, directed by a
senior vice provost, was to build connections….The vice provost spent his time
traveling around Europe and holding dinner meetings with…scholars,
administrators, and minor government officials….after several years, the vice
provost retired and his European office was closed…the vice provost drew a
hefty salary. He employed an assistant and other staffers…he required an
adequate travel, dining and entertainment budget…
---and he accomplished nothing at all, and never intended to do so,
eventually retiring from the position and from higher education. From Benjamin Ginsberg,
The Fall of the Faculty, p70. Considering the pay of all the staff,
we’re talking $500,000 a year or more being spent like this.
I can’t emphasize strongly enough how the
complete lack of checks and balances on administration has led to extreme waste
in higher education. It’s hard to estimate how much money was thrown away by
the vice provost’s sweetheart job, as a precursor to his retirement…most people
retire then travel, he just did it the other way around. Ten million dollars
were spent on this fiefdom, maybe? And nobody in administration thought
anything of it, being far too busy securing their own fiefdoms.
Administration is unstoppable and fast in
its growth. One young institution I was at began with just a handful of
administrators. Every year, another classroom or two was taken over for
administration purposes; soon, there was no office space left for faculty,
which were then housed in classrooms. After a decade, less than half the
floorspace of the campus was available for classes, supposedly the primary
mission of the institution (as opposed to providing administrative office
space).
About the only check on administrative
greed is the trustees, but far too often, the trustees are “in on it,” to the
point that it’s not in their interest to do something about it.
Naturally, accreditation is supposed to
cover this sort of thing, but it’s a joke. Auburn was placed on probation
by SACS (their accreditor) due to serious violations of trustees doing big
business with the institution—I’m hardly the only faculty member to notice how
often the logos of companies owned by trustees can be found on vehicles doing
work at the institution. As always, such probations are really just gentle
pokes…even with millions of dollars of insider/corrupted money changing hands,
Auburn gets years to change their activities so they can be performed in a
way even a blind incompetent regulator like SACS can’t see legitimately.
Faculty who wonder why
their school’s board continues, year after year, to support an utterly
incompetent president, or why the board has opted to summarily fire a competent
one, might do well to follow the money.
--Benjamin Ginsberg
While for now I’m avoiding discussion of
activities at the top since that is just too easy, I feel Daniel
Goldin at Boston University merits a special mention, because he didn’t
actually make it to the top. The main purpose of the board of trustees is to
pick that top guy, and they chose Goldin. Goldin made the mistake of announcing
his intention to examine the institution’s business relationship with the
trustees, and to remove those that were engaging in improper activities. The
mistake, of course, being that he announced that before he’d entrenched his
position. The trustees rescinded the offer, but paid him $1.8 million to
keep his mouth shut as a consolation prize. Much as administrative control
of faculty hiring has led to spinelessness and subservience to administration
as common faculty traits, trustee control of the presidency leads to corruption
in administration.
Institutions in higher education complain
often of budget issues, but when you read story after story like this of
millions sloshing around, it’s tough to believe there’s a real shortage of
money. Meanwhile, faculty struggle to get light bulbs for their classrooms, or
pay for their own toner for the printer, or scramble to find paper so they can
give tests…because there’s no money, you see.
It isn’t just about the money,
administrators also have the power to award degrees, above and beyond the
“honorary” Ph.d.s that can be sold like party favors. In addition to “misappropriating”
over $2,000,000 to fund a lavish lifestyle that people complained about for
years, an Education dean at the University of Louisville awarded a Ph.D. (in
Education, and I’ll gratuitously add “of course”) to a student that had
attended few classes, in exchange
for $375,000. I’d also discuss the Master’s degree handed out by a university
president to the daughter of a governor, but that’s for later. I suppose in
comparison the administrator who
gave himself and his son some minor degrees hardly merits mention, even
with the dozens of other infractions he committed.
Me: “Do you have any idea who that graduate is?”
Other faculty member: “None at all.”
--at a small school I taught at, every graduation would have students
I KNOW I failed, nevertheless getting their diplomas. There would also be a
handful of students with specializations in mathematics, and some of them I had
never seen before…it was such a small school that there was only one other person
who could possibly have had the students. He never knew who they were, either.
We would stand at gradation with looks of complete mystification on our faces,
as though we were at another school’s graduation ceremony. I emphasize: the
school only had a few hundred students, on a campus with a score of rooms…there
wasn’t a way to miss a person over the course of years.
I emphasize again: the above stories are
just the corruption that is known about. Considering that it’s primarily
egregious behavior over the course of years that leads to anyone getting
caught, it’s fair to consider the possibility these stories are but the tip of
the iceberg.
It’s easy enough to come up with stories
of “friends” of administrators getting an unjustified admission to an
institution. I’ve seen a few myself, but honestly, if the department head wants
to enroll his nephew into a mathematics Ph.D. program, as long as he can do the
work, I’m fine with it (he couldn’t, but I don’t begrudge him the opportunity).
On the other hand, knowing that degrees
can simply be handed out by administrators is pretty scary, from a faculty
point of view. Already, the content of my courses is heavily influenced by
administrative pressure, as is my grading. Even the courses offered are
determined by administration…now that administration can award degrees too, how
long is it until faculty are no longer needed at institutions of higher
learning? As I’ll address later, faculty are now a minority on campus, and the proportion
of administrators rises every year…my question isn’t that rhetorical at all.
Should administration, which such a track record of corruption, even remotely have the power to hand out degrees? Should there be any limit to the power of administration in higher education? I’m struggling to find a question relating to this level of corruption that would require to the reader to think even a little about an answer.
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