By Professor
Doom
When I cover the madnesses affecting
higher education, California comes up often, although I certainly cover schools
in the rest of the country.
Wisconsin has avoided the madness, with
nothing in the way of riots or flamboyant frauds that seem commonplace
elsewhere. You’d think the state
government there would leave well enough alone, but such is not the case. Are
they jealous? It would seems so, because when I write of events in Wisconsin,
it’s always about the ways the government there is working diligently to
undermine the success higher education has seen in Wisconsin.
I’ve written of the methods to
destroy higher education going on there, but the latest move is even more grotesque:
One of the key factors in the destruction
of higher ed, identified by everyone who works in it, has been the infestation
of a greedy administrative class filled by people with no actual education
experience.
Dean: “We need to have a meeting
regarding a student complaint about you. She said the final exam she took
didn’t have the questions on it that it was supposed to have.”
--the gentle reader needs to
understand the only way a student could make this complaint is if she had
access to the final exam questions—I was tipped off that the student had access
to the final, so, yes, I changed some things around. The Dean, having no
education experience, could only determine there was an unhappy student.
Every campus has legions of
administrators, filling hives which eventually turn into palaces. The way how
higher education is set up, especially community colleges, makes it
particularly easy to stick a few dozen friends and family into 100k a year “do
nothing” administrative jobs with nobody the wiser. Yes, every once in a blue moon we
find out about it,
but it won’t surprise me to eventually learn that dozens of states have systems
with such activity in them.
Admin: “It is now mandatory that on
the first day of class, you are to assign all students into groups, for
purposes of group projects and in-class work. You will maintain these groups
for the entire semester.”
---I’m serious, yet another utterly
inexperienced Deanling tried to cram this down our throats, because “group
projects improve retention.” Only after faculty explained to her repeatedly
that attrition made this idea completely unworkable (because about half our
students were fake students who were only there for the checks) did she
relent….I can’t recall if it was 3, or 4, weekly meetings until she
acknowledged reality. I kid myself to think the faculty convinced her directly,
but we were smart enough to tell the students stuck in 1-person groups to
complain to the Dean about it.
While many of the deanling positions on
campus are pure patronage, the top position is particularly precious: as I’ve
shown many times, the Poo Bah, the self-aggrandized leader of the campus, can
rake in millions in plunder. Thus it is we quite commonly have campuses ruled
by leaders with no understanding of a university’s mission of education and
research, and thus become more interested in flitting around the world and
living the high life than serving as a steward (the gentle reader is encouraged
to search my blog under “administrative corruption” for a 6 part series
relatively briefly covering the highlights, and I’m not even talking about
Napolitano’s 100+ million dollar looting).
Administrator: “You need to be more clear in your writing on the board. The little numbers, the ones up top?”
Me: “The exponents?”
Administrator: “Yeah, those. You told students that there’s
always a one up there, but you don’t always write it. You should always just
put a one up there.”
Me: “Thank you.”
---When I do open my mouth to an administrator, it’s usually to
say ‘thank you’.
A clueless Poo Bah can do great harm to
an institution (for example, Bernie Sander’s wife’s school is doomed because of her
leadership), although the higher ups, like chancellors and provost, can
ameliorate some of the damage.
‘…Madison campus policy holds that its chancellor,
provost and vice chancellor must hold a tenured faculty rank -- effectively
disqualifying nonacademics.“
The institutions in Wisconsin can be led
by political friends, but those other positions must, by Wisconsin rules, be
academics, with a record of scholarship and all that entails. Could this be why
Wisconsin has avoided so much scandal? Moot point, as the state government
there seeks to remove one of the few remaining roadblocks to plunder. The
change of rules was nearly stealthily accomplished:
“There was no advance notice, it was never given a public
hearing, and no legislator publicly took credit for it,” the group wrote.
“Although PROFS had been meeting with members of the committee as well as
legislative leadership, this proposal was never mentioned. In addition to the
lack of transparency or opportunity for constituent input, this is also
inconsistent with the committee leadership’s expressed desire that nonfiscal
policy be removed from the budget.”
--PROFS is a group of the Faculty Senate.
Honest, allowing academics to have a role in academia is a good idea. Is
there any other industry (and I hate that higher education is considered an
industry) where there is such an active effort to assure the managers have no
knowledge, experience, or understanding of the industry?
This requirement is among the reasons why Madison is
consistently ranked one of the top universities in the world.” Rebecca Blank,
Madison's current chancellor, is a professor of economics.
The
power grab here is pretty obvious, and, again, everyone who works in higher ed
knows exactly what’s going to happen when they change these rules. The article
I’m quoting from naturally is unwilling to call the spade a spade, but one
comment sums it up nicely:
The
professors are opposing the converting of university presidencies into sweet
plums for political hacks and termed-out partisans and giving political
appointees power to take away livelihoods of scholars whose research or
teaching counters the party line. With so many universities in WI, where real
tenure no longer exists, a lot is at stake here.
I know, I’m at the age where being opposed to change is hardwired into
my nature but I just don’t get it: Wisconsin has avoided the riots and huge
scandals of other states. Why is there such a push to debase Wisconsin’s system
to the level of known failing systems?
Trying to answer that question gives me no choice but to consider the
possibility of a conspiracy here…but I still lean towards simple greed.
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