More on that Administration Course, 8000 level

A Deeper Look At An Administration Course

By Professor Doom

To successfully complete this learning unit, you will be expected to:

1.     Examine the factors to consider when creating a research study that affect the effectiveness of your data entry and analysis.

2.     Examine the use of archival data and standardized instruments for measuring and understanding learning.

3.     Analyze the advantages and disadvantages of using pre-established, standardized survey instruments in research studies.

4.     Discuss the differences between validity and reliability in qualitative and quantitative research methodologies.

--Two months into the normal semester, the course half over, and we start to see some actual skill development. The actual assignments don’t quite reach toward the level of these skills.    

     Last time around, I discussed the first two weeks of the semester, which set the standards for how an 8000 level course for a Ph.D. in administration goes. Again, this is the most difficult, most challenging material an administrator will ever need deal with.

     After weeks of this course format, I’ve long since adapted to reading the assignments first, then reading the exactly appropriate passages from the reading assignment. There’s no testing on the material, so information I’ve glossed over or missed completely won’t be an issue—courses in this program have no prerequisites, so even if I planned to take others, information missed here will be irrelevant. There’s no reason to believe administrators even know this meager material, which still never requires more than an hour of reading a week, and still I never need demonstrate in a way that doesn’t let me just look up the information if I want to.

Me: “In these forms, you’ve confused the words ‘average’ and ‘consensus.’ They don’t mean the same thing.”

Administrator: “Yes, they do.”

Me: “No, they don’t. It’s why none of your numbers are adding up like they’re supposed to, and why what you’re doing doesn’t adhere to policy. If you’d just check that dictionary on your shelf, you can see for yourself these words have different meanings, and then we can fix this easily…”

Administrator: “I’m not going to argue with you.”

Me: “…”

--conversation with an Administrative Ph.D.-holding administrator.

     In addition to being brief, the reading is never technical in this book. New terms are introduced; if I had to demonstrate actually knowing these terms, I’d have to study a little, but it’s clear that I won’t need that level of knowledge, administrators don’t need to know the meanings of the words they use.     

     The normal distribution, the key concept of statistics, finally gets a mention in the book, even a picture of the bell curve, and some z-scores…no real work is done with it however, and the students, researchers, in the course will gain no more understanding of the normal distribution than what anyone might gain from glancing at a graph of the bell curve. The chapter exercises for the section with this minimal discussion, for example, are three questions, none of which address key concepts in statistics-based research.

  Administrator:    “We’ve compiled the data from the tests that many of you gave up a week of classes for last semester so we could administer them. Unfortunately, all we have is the average. Other colleges have bell curves for their tests; we expect if we give the tests for another five to ten years, we’ll be able to do the same.”

----We really did give up a week of class time so that students could struggle with some weird competency tests. Unfortunately, nobody on campus knew what to do with the data…and that includes all the Math Education majors attempting to teach statistics. I can’t begin to explain the colossal incompetence here on many levels; the story was passed on to me after I’d left the institution, or I would have helped…I got tired of being told my work in statistics was of no value or relevance to my profession.

     While the book has some discussion of bias and other concepts, it’s very clear this research methods course isn’t really going to go over precise details of the statistics one might use in, well, research. All that the book wants from the student is to discuss some things, and that’s all the course seems to want as well.

     The SPSS book  has a 30 page reading assignment: the student is to read how to create a data file, graphs, and charts. Certainly, these are basic skills of considerable use to a researcher…the student is once again on his own for learning this, and once again will never be tested.

Project Name: Criminal Justice writer needed

Project Description:

Hey I have a weekly assignment in police admin and its usually in narrative format, they are usually 500 words, I also have a discussion due weekly on 

various of “law enforcement” topics… they are usually 150 words.. they are fairly easy but the teacher has been killing me because of grammar and spelling 

issues.. If your interested in this let me know.. and let me what you charge..

Here is an example of last weeks discussion..

Do you believe chain of command is important in a police agency? Would a private employer organizational structure work in law enforcement? Why or why not?

---student requesting “help”  for a Criminology online course. I sometimes see requests for a writer to make weekly posts, for pay, to a message board. I didn’t understand what those were about until I registered for this course, which requires such weekly postings. Not only can you hire someone to write your papers, you can hire someone to pose as you in the online course. I’d take this opportunity to warn employers to trash resumes with online degrees, but they already know this…instead I’ll take this opportunity to warn my readers not to pay for such degrees under any legitimate circumstances.

     The course assignments for the 7^th and 8^th weeks of the course are slightly more involved than the first week, but only slightly. First, use a database to find examples of reliable and valid instruments created in the last five years, and, of course, discuss them. This, admittedly, takes some time, and a scholar should be able to use a database; note that the course itself doesn’t really address this, merely assigns it.

Why is it important to understand the difference between validity and reliability?

--question from a course assignment for this 8000 level course. This is an advanced graduate question, apparently. Why is it important to understand the difference in meaning between any two different words? Seriously. It wouldn’t surprise me if many folks could answer this well enough without even looking up the words. On the other hand, consider this question:

Find the following, if it exists. If it doesn’t, explain why.

                                   x⁴   -  y⁴

 Lim                           ----------

(x,y)--> (0,0)            x²   +   y²

--question from the first week of a 2^nd year mathematics course I’m teaching as of this writing. I doubt most folks can answer this in detail without having already taken the first year of mathematics courses. I certainly understand people might call this useless knowledge that doesn’t apply to everyday life…but at least it’s knowledge. Why does an 8^th year Administration course require so much less than a 2^nd year course in most every other discipline?

     So, I’m two months into the semester, and still not spending more time on this course than what I would by simply sitting at a desk, or learning anything that takes any real effort to understand. There is more to the course than reading simplistic essays and having brain-dead discussions on a board, however. There are two papers to write, and an actual statistics assignment. Once those are done, I’ll have passed through the most advanced material that my bosses have ever seen. Maybe I’ve just been faking it, or think I know more than I do, so these assignments should help me to see that I’m wrong about how simple this all is.

     We’ll be going over those critical assignments in detail next time. Until then, what if this course, that I took at an accredited school, and I remind the reader I’ve worked “with” Ph.D. graduates from this school, really is representative of what passes for higher education in Education and Administration? If true, it would mean that the leaders of our system of education literally have no knowledge or skills relating to their positions. Does that go far enough to explain why the decisions made in education always seem to be the most incompetent and corrupt decisions possible?

Think about it.

The First Two Weeks of an Advanced Administrative Course.

 

Here's what I'm supposed to learn in the course:

Course Competencies

To successfully complete this course, you will be expected to:

1.     Evaluate the characteristics, purposes, benefits, strengths and weaknesses of research methods.

2.     Design specific, appropriate, and feasible research questions.

3.     Evaluate data collection strategies based on the characteristics of the research design.

Prerequisites

There are no prerequisites for this course.

 

--from the course syllabus. A graduate level course in a mathematics department typically requires 2 years or more of advanced mathematics courses. In Administration, there are no prerequisites for even the most advanced courses. Competencies 1 and 3 are addressed to some extent in many undergraduate statistics courses, and 2 is not much of a competency (essentially, “ask good questions”). With a whole semester to cover these competencies, one might think they’re covered in detail. We shall see.

 

 

     Despite the minimal restrictions for entry into this 8000 level graduate Administrative course intended for students about to write their Ph.D. dissertation, I’m given a warning that the course requires approximately 10 hours a week to complete—four such courses (a full time load in graduate school) would be equivalent to a full time job.  That sure seems fair to me, but administrators apparently need a warning if a course might take the amount of time it would in graduate school for any other discipline. Of course, the question is does it really take that kind of time? Let’s investigate further.

     While the course has no prerequisites, there are some pre-requirements. A student must have fairly good computer equipment at his disposal. The course relies on special statistical software (SPSS), and it is made very, very, clear that the instructor will in no way assist the student in learning how to use this software, or deal with any technical issues. This is a bit of a pity, since gaining some technical skill would make the $2000 price tag of the course more reasonable; it’s hard to justify paying this much just for a few graduate course credits. It’s a straight transfer of wealth with no chance at gaining any useful skill…but my research requires it.

     There are two course textbooks that a student must acquire. One of them is a guide to the software you can find at your local bookstore; it’s a very straightforward instruction manual, with solid examples of how to execute most statistical procedures, what buttons to press, what settings to use, and so forth. The other book lightly discusses research methods. There are no explanations of the underlying ideas of statistical procedures, however, which is somewhat odd for what should be an advanced course (the software manual, to its credit, states clearly it’s not about underlying ideas, just about what buttons to press). While advanced degree holders in legitimate academic disciplines know what they’re doing in detail, “know what you are doing and why you do it” is alien to an administrative degree, apparently.

      To use a restaurant allegory, the guy cooking burgers might well only need to know “turn the knob to 9 to cook a burger”, but the manager (or administrator) should know why the knob needs to go to 9---so that an improperly cooked burger doesn’t kill the customer, and doesn’t make the lethal mistake of “6 is close enough to 9.” With so many extensively bad applications of statistics by educationists and administrators, so bad that it’s causing the death of higher education, terminal degree holders probably should be required to know what they’re doing. That would be the point of having doctoral degree holders in administrative position, after all: they know more than just barely enough to get by.

     The course documentation warns me repeatedly that I’m on my own when it comes to figuring out SPSS, but the software guide is very helpful. I can’t help but guess the reason for this “on your own” mentality for the only skills that would be useful is that the professor for the course doesn’t actually know how to use the software.

 

First Two Weeks

 

1.      Read and post a reply to the Getting Started-Experience and Goals discussion question. Posting a response will release financial aid disbursements for learners using financial aid.

2. Access Faculty Expectations to read and acknowledge this course's faculty expectations. (You are here.)

3. Click 3 Confirmation accessed through the Required–Start Here on First Day icon on your course's home page to confirm your completion of these three steps. Your confirmation will grant access to all content in this course.
Please copy, paste, and post the following response to this Expectations Message on the discussion board below:
"I have read and understood the Faculty Expectations Message to include:
1. That the due time and day for initial posts is 4AM Eastern Time on Thursday.
(etc).

 

--From the first day instructions for the course. Note how step one is releasing those financial aid disbursements. Despite the fact that anyone could look in the forums and see how to correctly respond, 3 of the first 9 respondents failed to follow the instructions of “copy, paste, and post…”, simply responding with “I agree.” Reading other student (I refuse to use the word ‘learner’) posts, it’s clear that open graduate admissions does have some issues in terms of getting students with basic writing skills. At least the general course instructions advise such students to go to the writing center for help, although one would think that help would have been taken before the 4^th year of graduate school in a terminal degree. Keep that in mind: this, the most advanced administrative course, still allows for the possibility that the Ph.D. students can’t write at the high school level.

 

     So now it is time to do some actual work. The course requires weekly reading assignments, along with posting something about those assignments in the discussion forums. The reading assignment for the first two weeks is 35 pages from the main course textbook, and the first 26 pages from the SPSS manual.

     As one might expect, the manual is dull, and very basic. It’s just the first few pages, after all, and like any good textbook it starts by defining terms and notation that will be used throughout the book. Concepts such as “right click” and “taskbar” are defined on page 10, to give an example of how slow and thorough it is. Page 25 wraps up on how to print out and display documents. This is perhaps an hour of reading, though anyone with decent computer skills would find nothing new in these pages.

     The textbook assignment is similarly light, but I’m more motivated to read every word, timing myself. Unlike using software, this is material that should be well outside my experience and knowledge, so it’s best to pay attention. Fifty-seven minutes later, I’m done.

    The book is barely high school level material. For example, I’m told that according to the U.S. Department of Education, the key characteristics of reliable research are that it follows the scientific method, can be replicated and generalized, meets rigorous (but not defined) standards in design and methods, and produces findings that are consistent in various approaches. This description is hardly technical and very reasonable sounding. I’d probably study and memorize it, but there are no tests in the course. Presumably all this information is not important, and the student/administrator will just look it up when need be…why is there a degree for this level of “mastery,” or a charge of $2000 for a course that won’t legitimately certify that I have even this meager knowledge?

 

 

“According to my dictionary, an outlier is not in the usual place of business. I asked people that were out on the street, so all my data are outliers.”

 

--one student’s response when asked to identify outliers in a data set. At least it was only one. I might be working for this person someday.

 

 

     I emphasize again how light this material is. “A sample is a smaller version of the population,” says the book, boldfacing the new words (!) the student should learn in this advanced graduate level research course. Any statisticians reading this essay will be, I hope, aghast that this is about as far as the book goes for defining sample (“simple random sample,” a key concept of useful statistics, is not in the book). Correlation Coefficient is also boldfaced, and the book says it ranges from -1 to 1, with no further discussion of anything about it. Granted, these are just from the first 40ish pages, so perhaps the book is just taking a very long introduction.

 

Me, in 1998: “My computer doesn’t have a CD-ROM drive. Can I get that?”

Administrator: “What is a ‘drive’?”

 

-          It took a while, but I did eventually get a computer equipped with that space-age technology.

 

     In addition to reading, my assignments are also to pay for and install the SPSS software. This takes a few minutes, but I suppose someone not particularly computer literate could take an hour on this, calling the provided number for technical support.

     I also must pick a philosophical framework for how I believe knowledge is generated (as one might guess, I go with the quantitative approach), writing out a listing of pros and cons, and enter into discussion with my classmates about those pros and cons. Carefully following the information in the book, and the obligatory Bloom’s Taxonomized rubric, this brief essay takes about 45 minutes. Perhaps another 15 minutes could have been spent exchanging posts with classmates.

     About three hours of effort is all the work of the first two weeks. While I’m told it should take 20 hours, I’m hard pressed to see how anyone could spend any more than 5 hours doing this “work”; my completely ignorant self hardly needs that much time. This supposedly represents the first two weeks of a traditional graduate course in Education Administration, and less time is spent than would normally be spent sitting in a classroom…as an added bonus, I’ll never have to demonstrate I learned anything.

     Granted, the first class meeting in a traditional class is usually a waste of time on bureaucratic needs like syllabus and grading discussion, so perhaps the first two weeks of an online course should go the same way.

     To summarize, I’m effectively two weeks into the most advanced administrative course there is, and I’ve learned less than what is in one week of an undergraduate introductory course in a hard science. Much like in the course, I won’t even ask a question of the reader, as I normally do. Instead of thinking up a question, I’ll use the time to pick up my far-dropped jaw at just how ridiculous this course is so far.

      There’s more to come, I promise.

 

Entering an Administration Ph.d. program and taking a course...

Let’s All Get Ph.D.s in Administration!

 

Coursework for administrative degree:

 

Progressions in Leadership Thought,

Governance and Structures in Higher Education,

Fiscal Management in Higher Education

Strategic Planning and Change,

Leading Across Cultures

     

     It’s easy to sit back and laugh at administrative incompetence, and sneer at strange degrees in what seem to be silly subjects that sound like titles of self-help books in the discount rack. It’s another to speak from direct observation. Having seen the curriculum, I resolved then to do what accrediting agencies would do if they were really interested in providing legitimacy: see in person that something legitimate is really going on. Curious to see what administration courses are, and not wishing to travel, I elected to restrict my endeavors only to online programs; there are woefully many online accredited graduate programs in Educational Administration, probably more than there are at traditional, “brick and mortar” institutions, so this was not much of a restriction.

     According to accreditation, they’re every bit as good.

     The mythology of graduate school might be less pervasive than for college, but it’s more prestigious. It was a big deal when I applied to mathematics graduate school, decades ago. My high GRE (Graduate Record Examinations, sort of the SAT for graduate school) score, published research, high GPA, and honors program degree from my alma mater wasn’t enough to guarantee admission to graduate school, and I was rejected as often as not.

 

      “Fill out this form. Next, we’ll need to talk about financial aid…”

      ---The basic requirements for being admitted to a graduate administration program.

 

     I worried my admittance to an Administration program could not be a sure thing, as my degrees were issued a long time ago, and I have no training or experience in the supposedly academic field of Administration. Were I refused, my research would be inadequate: I would have no way to see with my own eyes what these people learn.

     Thus, I was pleased at being admitted in the very first accredited program to which I applied…or would have been if they’d asked for more credentials than a credit card number. Thinking it was a fluke, I decided to shop around, only to be admitted repeatedly. Being admitted to an Administration graduate school, even a doctoral program, was a snap at the four institutions, all accredited, I applied to. I stopped at four, much like I did for my mathematics programs, years ago. Nobody asked for my GRE, or even cared about anything I did anywhere. I applied as a “freelance writer”, not as faculty, as empty a qualification as could be, and it still made no difference. The only question they wanted to know was if I could get the loan money for it. It was no different than when I applied to Education graduate programs, earlier.

 

Getting in Was Easy. The Courses Must Be Tough, Right?

 

“Ellen Elgen Clothes Wringer”

 

--a lollipop was handed to me by students in some sort of social sciences course, performing some sort of assignment. Taped to the candy were those words. A year later, I found the candy shoved in a corner of my desk, and decided to find out what they meant. Probably, the student wanted me to know about Ellen Elgin, inventor of the clothes wringer. I got hungry, and I tried to get the wrapper off the lollipop,  but couldn’t, so I still have a lollipop with an incorrectly spelled name of an inventor on it. According to accreditation, passing out lollipops is college level work.

 

     With so many graduate programs, I had my pick of courses to take; almost nothing has prerequisites. Again, this is so different than other graduate schools. I would simply be destroyed if I took “Advanced Calculus II” before taking “Advanced Calculus I.” But in Administration, there is no material that you need to know before taking any course. As long as I was willing to blow nearly $2000 (plus a “technology fee” that could run another $400), I could take any course I wished. Ultimately, I decided on an 8000 level Educational Research Methods course as the best course to illustrate what this degree entails. This course, over all others, was determined as the best choice for several reasons:

     Foremost, this is a very advanced course; doctoral candidates are intended to take this course immediately before writing a dissertation. A doctoral program is, in theory, four years. For undergraduate work, freshman courses are 1000 level, sophomore are 2000 level, and the trend continues to graduate school. Thus, first year graduate courses are 5000 level, second are 6000, and so on. If I chose a lower level course, I run the risk of not seeing the most challenging material in the program. I know that if I walked into a fourth year mathematics graduate course without the previous three years’ preparation, I would simply be blown away (and often was outclassed even with such preparation), so I fully expected to be overmatched here. My friends in medical school, accounting, engineering, and other disciplines assure me mathematics is not the only discipline like this. Thus, an 8000 level course would answer many questions for me.

     Second, this course covers research methods. Time and again I’ve seen Educationists and administrators demonstrate ignorance of even the most basic concepts of statistics and experimental design. Granted, not all researchers are equal in skill, and perhaps I’d just had a 20 year run of bad luck with Educationist and administrative researchers. This course, “Educational Research Methods,” very clearly covers research methods, particularly those needed for a doctorate. It would establish if this critical topic to a social studies researcher is even addressed at the doctoral level.

     Third, this particular course is from a graduate school where at least one person on my campus has received a doctorate, and promotions due to that doctorate. Thus, not only is it an accredited institution, it’s an institution that is considered fully legitimate by administrators. Educationists and administrators are forever clapping each other on the back for each other’s accomplishments, and one suspects they are motivated not to scrutinize each other, lest they draw scrutiny upon themselves. I always took it on faith that they knew what they were doing…it was time for me to cut the cards, so to speak.

     Additionally, I took a Research Methods in Psychology course as an undergraduate, covering in detail many research methods concepts. I remember it being a difficult course that required effort on my part to narrowly get a B (as opposed to a C). Taking an 8000 level course would show clearly if graduate level courses were more difficult than undergraduate courses. I fully expected to be outclassed, but was determined to try my best.

     Finally, I was provided the entirety of the course within the first few days of classes, such as they are. Online courses are extremely easy to document, and I was provided with every page to be read, every assignment to be done, every grading rubric. In short, if I make a claim about what transpires in this course, I know that there is no chance of misremembering or hearsay.

      Even now, with decades of experience in studying mathematics, I would have difficulty in some graduate level mathematics courses. My question for today is, how well does the reader think I will do in the most advanced possible administrative course, when I have absolutely no training or experience in the subject matter?

 

Think about it.

 

Seriously, there is a ph.d. in administration

 

A Doctoral Degree To Administrate?

By Professor Doom

 

Administrator: “A student is appealing her grade, and I need you on the appeal committee. [The professor] gave an A for final grade scores ‘two standard deviations above the mean,’, and an F for grades ‘two standard deviations below the mean.’  Can you explain what the instructor is doing?”

 

Me: “Uh, sure.”

 

--an Education faculty member, for some bizarre reason, decided to give final grades based on the normal distribution. This was double-bizarre in a class with about a dozen students, since it was all but impossible for two students to get an A with such a grading system (likewise, it’s nigh impossible for more than one student to fail). The second-best student in the class complained, since her A grades weren’t averaging to an A, and the better she did on tests the higher the score she needed to get an A—always out of reach. The administrator has a Ph.D., used statistics in the dissertation, but was completely clueless on basic statistics, as was the Educationist, also with a Ph.D. that used statistics. This was my first clear hint that administrative Ph.D.s were very different than in other fields.

 

     In the modern world, a doctorate is considered the ultimate degree for teaching or research, the terminal degree. The version of the doctorate-holding professor is a relatively recent invention in academia—in the 19^th century, most academic staff or professors held no such degree (and the staff were often faculty). A Master’s was sufficient for teaching, indicative of a mastery of the knowledge sufficient to help others learn. The primary difference between the two is a doctorate represents research, generally successful research that contributes to the field of knowledge. A Master’s degree is obviously desirable in a teacher by a student wanting higher education. I certainly would want to be taught and trained by someone knowledgeable in the field, and I’d be willing to pay for have someone like that. A master in the field that has also extended the knowledge would be even more desirable for a student wanting to know everything. But what about for an administrator? Of what use is a research degree there?

 

“Your writing is just a hobby.”

--Administrator, as part of an explanation of why, since my many paid articles didn’t directly relate to my job as mathematics teacher, I should expect no particular assistance or credit from my institution. But the administrator sees nothing wrong with getting higher pay for a research degree in a job with no research…

 

     Although administrative positions command high pay for doctoral, research, degrees, it’s a little puzzling why this would be the case. The Dean’s job description I listed previously has nothing to do with research, or even with teaching. When I go into McDonald’s, I neither want, nor am willing to pay for, a manager with a doctorate in meat cooking to ring up my bill on the register, just for a burger and fries no different than at any other McDonald’s. If the manager pursues some arcane knowledge as a life goal, good for him. I just want my burger and fries.

     In a similar vein, I imagine if students had a choice of say, 40% lower tuition, or administrators with doctorates, they’d take the former in a heartbeat...probably why students don’t ever get that option.

     For all the talk about how business-style efficiency is necessary to make higher education better, it’s odd that administrative positions prefer a degree that implies knowledge and skills irrelevant to the position. In fact, almost all administrative positions require, or “prefer,” advanced degrees, even though advanced academic degrees are mostly desirable for teaching and research…the things most administrators don’t do. A bit of hypocrisy here in light of the talk about running institutions efficiently, but administrators decide what administrators need (and their pay), the hypocrisy is merely icing on the cake.

 

      Phone call: “Hello. I understand you’re interested in a Ph.D. in Higher Education Administration?”

--in my research, I naturally clicked a box indicating such an interest. For weeks, I received daily sales calls from institutions wishing to sell me a degree. They were all accredited, of course.

 

     There are a great number of institutions offering a wide variety of doctoral degrees in administrative fields. To be more clear, there are a ridiculous number of institutions, for an insane variety of degrees.

     Particularly disturbing is these administrative degrees are taught through education departments. This was an unexpected benefit of my research here. Time and again I was puzzled at administration’s bizarre fascination and unshakeable faith in Educationist beliefs. It’s no longer a wonder how Educationists acquired their nearly occult power over administrators: administrators are beholden to Educationists for their degrees.

     Administration and Education go hand in hand as “fields of knowledge.” Hand in hand may be too platonic a phrase, as the relationship is quite incestuous: educationists hand the advanced degrees to the administrators, who use those degrees to get jobs allowing them to hand positions to Educationists.

     A look at the course titles in the curriculum for Administration degrees only adds to the puzzlement: Progressions in Leadership Thought, Governance and Structures in Higher Education, Fiscal Management in Higher Education (sounds useful, but it’s more about fundraising; you’ll need actual accounting credentials to get a financial position), Strategic Planning and Change, Leading Across Cultures…again, it just goes on. There’s hardly any rhyme or reason to these titles, and almost nothing relies on anything else for understanding. Much as in many bogus undergraduate degrees, each course is composed of material that requires but a few months at best to master, with no applications elsewhere.

     Curiously, there are no courses on “Increasing Retention.” There’s also no instruction on “Acting with Integrity,” somewhat problematic seeing as this is key to accreditation. Nor is there anything on how to teach, how to deal with teachers, or how to deal with students—over-the-top omissions in training for an administrator at an institution with teachers and students. And yet, it’s assumed these managers know these, the most important things in their job, have been trained extensively, in fact, and they’re paid for it accordingly.

      Not only is a graduate degree excessive for administrative positions absent of teaching or research, their degrees don’t have anything that apply to the position. Now it becomes clear why administrators seldom know anything about what goes on in my, or any other, courses, or have much respect for education in general. All those degrees, and yet completely ignorant of what their underlings do…nothing like a business model, even as they’re paid as much as highest level managers. My image of an administrator able to discuss Shakespearean poetry, prove a theorem in differential equations, run a biology lab, and grade a test in French collapses like any childhood fantasy: administrative training gives them nothing that relates to the primary task of the campuses they rule over.

      The bulk of college money goes to pay for administrators, possessing (theoretically) advanced training in degrees and knowledge that have utterly no relationship to their job. Perhaps I’m making too big a judgment just from the titles of the courses. I’ll be looking at their coursework soon, but until then: how is it not fraud that most of the student debt goes to people that literally have nothing to do with education?

Think about it.

http://professorconfess.blogspot.com/

Administration in higher education, part 1.

Administration in Higher Education, Part 1

By Professor Doom

 

     Administrator: “There’s no such field as ‘mathematical game theory’, and frankly I’m a little bit angry that you would try to trick me.”

     Me: “…”

--- Key to my longevity has been keeping my mouth shut when dealing directly with administrators. There really is such a field, by the way.

 

     These essays started with what one would suppose was the bottom of the campus hierarchy: the students. At long last, it’s time to now look at the unarguable top, those with the power to hire and fire, the ultimate controllers of all things campus-related: the administration.

     As a wide-eyed young student in public school, I was in awe of administrators. In public school, the dean was respected, even a little feared as a disciplinarian, and the principal was all-powerful, able to do anything he wanted, or so it seemed to a child.

     In college there is still a dean, and in lieu of principal, there are people with awesome titles like vice-chancellor, or even chancellor. My respect of high school authority easily transferred to these titans of the campus.

 

Administrator: “We need to provide course outlines for Calculus I and Calculus II to another school. Are these ok?

 

Calculus I	Calculus II
The Derivative	The Derivative
Introduction to Limits	Introduction to Limits
Continuity	Continuity
The Derivative	The Derivative
Power Rule and Basic Differentiation Properties	Power Rule and Basic Differentiation Properties
Derivatives of Products and Quotients	Derivatives of Products and Quotients
Chain Rule	Chain Rule
Marginal Analyses in Business and Economics	Marginal Analyses in Business and Economics
Graphing and Optimization (rest of outline removed for brevity)	Graphing and Optimization (rest of outline removed for brevity)

 

--note similarities in course outlines between the two courses, prepared by an Educationist. Note that the administrator could not note similarities. I had to spend considerable time convincing the administrator that something was wrong here. As near as I can tell, sequential courses with identical/heavily overlapping curriculum are common in Education or Administration.

 

 

     Institutions of higher learning were adapting to more of a business model early in my career, and this only increased my respect for the administrators that were becoming more and more visible on campus. Administrators were managers, after all, and the managers I knew from the real world were generally impressive. A McDonald’s manager, for example, can do the job of every employee under him— operate the cash register, cook, maintain the equipment, the manager could literally do everything, so he could take over any employee position. It followed in my naïve mind that administrators were likewise masters of the institution, able to take over the job of any faculty member if need be. This sort of scholarly ability had my respect and awe.

 

     My first Business Calculus class at my current institution started poorly. Administration had ordered the book before I’d been hired, and had selected a graduate level mathematics textbook, suitable for an MBA program. I’d only been handed the book on my way to the classroom. I opened it, and knew there was no way freshmen community college students could handle that kind of material. The first class was brief, and I made a trip to the bookstore to correct the error as quickly as possible.

---In those days, the school was unaccredited, so no student loans…and yet the students had their books on the first day. Now, students don’t have their books weeks into the semester, depending on how long until the checks come in. Either way, administration doesn’t know enough about education in higher education to order books.

 

     I was slow to abandon my innocence. Yes, I saw instance after instance of administrative ignorance, but I just figured they were honest mistakes, of no consequence. Besides, administrators often had Ph.D.s, they were academics, of course I could cut them some slack.

 

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’.

 

     Eventually, over the course of years, the truth finally penetrated my awe-addled skull: these guys can’t do my job, mathematics was out of their ken. Still, they were administrators, with advanced degrees, they must know something, and there are plenty of academic fields that have little math in them.

 

Administrator: “I’m on this committee now.”

Faculty: “You’re on this committee? Considering this committee is specifically faculty-only, how are you on this committee?”

Administrator: “I put myself here ex officio.”

Faculty: “Ex officio? What does that mean?”

Administrator: “I’m non-voting.”

Faculty: “We’d be more comfortable if you weren’t here.”

Administrator: “That’s not going to happen.”

 

--The surreality of this exchange will not be reduced if the reader, unlike the administrator, knows what ‘ex officio’ means. I had to look it up, too. Of course, I’m not an administrator, and thus wouldn’t immediately know terms about rules of order and committees and such. Administrators don’t need to know, either, apparently.

 

     After, I don’t know, the thousandth time I was told to increase retention even when it was clear that doing so would not be in the best interests of an honest institution, one thing became clear: I did not understand the job of an administrator.

 

What Is An Administration Job?

 

     I set out to learn what such a job is all about. The job descriptions of college administrators, for example, deans, are loaded with the corporate-speak. Consider this snippet from a position advertised on The Chronicle of Higher Education, for a “Campus Dean of Student Services” position some time ago:

 

The ideal candidate must demonstrate progressively responsible higher education work experience in student services, preferably within a community college. Proven leadership in a large, complex organizational setting, preferably within a community college. Demonstrated knowledge of contemporary theories and practices affecting student services and academic programming. Demonstrated understanding of and commitment to the community college philosophy and student development. Ability to coordinate the division's service programs with other college divisions and offices so as to be responsive to the needs of a diverse student population. Proven ability to work as a team player, appropriately exhibiting a positive attitude, a sense of humor, and the ability to tolerate and flourish in an environment characterized by multiple complex factors, competing priorities, ambiguous situations, and resource challenges. Ability to supervise and evaluate assigned staff while building a highly effective working team, Excellent written and verbal communication skills. Ability to interpret and apply college policies and procedures; ability to resolve issues, resulting in mutual respect and tolerance for varying points of view. Knowledge of and ability to utilize administrative applications of information technology. Demonstrated skill in managing budgets, equipment, and other institutional resources. Master's degree in higher education, student affairs or closely related field from a regionally accredited college or university. A Doctorate is preferred.

 

     This isn’t the whole description, by the way. Note how the advertisement begins: “progressively responsible…work experience.” A candidate for this position will, as a matter of course, have viewed all previous positions as stepping stones for this new position. While not explicit in the advertisement, this position, too, will be considered a stepping stone. This is common to the business world—every job is another step up the corporate ladder, not that there’s anything wrong with that.

 

      This point of view, of course, is alien to an educator, who seeks to help people gain knowledge; the concept of sucking students dry and moving on just doesn’t register to a person with integrity.

 

Sally Clausen, Louisiana's higher-education commissioner, announced on Tuesday that she was resigning, less than a month after revelations that she had quietly retired from her post and then been rehired in order to collect a lump-sum payment… it was revealed that Clausen retired in August from the $425,000-a-year job, then was rehired within a day — getting a $90,000 lump-sum payment in the process, for unused vacation time and sick leave. She also will begin receiving a $146,400-a-year pension in less than two months.

 

---Former president of a large institution in Louisiana. This is where all the tuition money goes, folks. The student base vastly expanded under her watch there, and all educational standards were annihilated; faculty that complained went elsewhere. Her “success” at that institution was parleyed into becoming higher education commissioner, leading to more opportunity for plunder. For comparison, the Governor of Louisiana has a 2013 salary of $130,000, not even matching the “bonus” pension of this education administrator. Should the guy running a whole state receive a tiny fraction of the pay of someone running some small aspect of education in that state? This is where the tuition goes…

 

 

     Of course, in business, one usually goes up the corporate ladder because of successful financial decisions. I’ve seen many administrators come through, establish destructive programs, sacrifice institutional prestige in the name of retention, self-declare the programs a success no matter how abominable they are, plunder the institution in any way possible…and move on and up the ladder, going to some position of even more power, influence, and especially pay. Meanwhile, those with loyalty to the institution, or standards, are left to deal with the consequences of these vagabond pirates.

 

Citizen: “I know your CFO. I hear she’s doing very well for herself.”

Me: “Yes, she sure is.”

--the Chief Financial Officer was allowed to redefine her job description, greatly increasing her pay for doing the same job she had always been doing. Since her job was now so important, she moved on up the ladder to elsewhere in the system, for more, more, more. Other administrators did the same. I wish I could re-define my position for higher pay.

 

     The rest of the advertisement for the position is a tsunami of corporate-speak: leadership-this, organizational-that, team-player hood, positive attitude possession, and the obligatory excellent verbal and written communications skills. It’s a painful read, but for such an important and extremely high paying position, all those words are necessary to describe the job, I suppose. Advertisements for positions like mine barely take a paragraph.

     Then comes the education requirements: a graduate degree is required, in fields I’ve never heard of. A doctorate is preferred.

     Wait, what?

      Scroll back up and read it again: a doctorate. These guys are managers, and years of dealing with them showed me that their knowledge and respect for knowledge was minimal. And yet they need the highest possible educational degree for their positions. Next will be my investigation of what these doctorates entail, but until then, should an advanced higher education research degree really be necessary or “preferred” for positions that require less knowledge and skill than what is necessary to manage a McDonald’s? Should tuition be paying ten to forty times as much as for a McDonald’s manager for such positions?