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  • Ask the Administrator: Slowly...Slowly...

    By Dean Dad January 30, 2008 9:40 pm

    A new correspondent writes:

    I just started teaching part time for a local college and have applied for a full time position available this fall. Little birdies have told me I should be receiving an offer soon.great news! I am currently ABD, and will be finishing up my dissertation in the next 6 months or so. I have really enjoyed the department I am working in, and will be thrilled to be full time in the fall.

    This is my dilemma.... I come from a management background, and am already finding frustration in the red tape and slow progress that occurs in the millions of "committee meetings" in academia. I am ready for a change, so while I am looking forward to full time academia, how do I change my expectations to meet this entirely new pace of academic business? And why is it that it takes 6 months for a decision to be made in academia? And 2 years for someone who NEEDS to be fired to get fired? Frustration!!!

    -------

    Welcome to my world.

    This is one of those quirks of the industry that folks who have worked elsewhere notice immediately, and folks who've never worked elsewhere think is normal and natural.

    At Proprietary U, the decision-making style was essentially corporate. Decisions were made at the drop of a hat, with implementation usually assumed to be immediate. On the down side, the decisions were often either entirely stupid or merely half-formed, with operational consequences that probably could have been foreseen -- but weren't -- if someone had asked around first. On the up side, though, it was actually possible to get stuff done.

    When I moved to my cc, one of the first clues that the rules had changed came during my first week. I dropped by another manager's office to ask him a question. His secretary had me schedule an appointment about a week and a half later. At PU, that would have been simply unthinkable.

    As I learned quickly, in this setting it's not at all unusual to hear arguments like "oh, we settled that back in the early 1990s." Again, at PU that would have been self-evidently absurd. When stepping into an
    institution as reverse-ageist as higher education, where institutional memory is almost a fetish, it's easy to get disoriented, frustrated, and lost. After all, it's impossible to go back in time and ask long-deceased
    folks what they were thinking. And I've noticed that different people will remember the same event very differently, both with unshakable confidence.

    I suspect that some of that is an outgrowth of the tenure system. When people stay in the same place, in large groups, for decades on end, it's easy to hold grudges for a long, long time. And they do. So there's a premium on "consensus," which can take a great deal of time to generate (when it's possible at all). In practice, of course, "consensus" often devolves into something like horse-trading, with each party to the informal agreement construing it differently. Sometimes it goes farther and becomes a kind of junior-high cliqueishness. It's actually depressing to see adults behave this way, but they do.

    On an operational level, different parts of the college are on different calendars. The faculty, for the most part, are on a September-to-May calendar, with a gap in January and don't-even-try-it stretches around final exams. The rest of the college is on a 12 month calendar. This wouldn't matter if the faculty didn't hold two contradictory beliefs:

    1. Nothing should be done without their consultation and approval
    2. Meetings should be kept to an absolute minimum, and are banned during semester breaks

    Shared governance takes time. When the different groups are on conflicting calendars, it takes even more time, since entire months of the year are effectively ruled out.

    The decentralized, seniority-based confederation of fiefdoms isn't built for speed. Ideally, time for reflection can lead to more thoughtful decisions and a relative immunity to fads. Of course, it also rewards foot-dragging, indignant denial of change, and staggering inefficiency. The high-minded reasons -- respect for professional autonomy, academic freedom, and the like -- often dovetail with the personal convenience of locally powerful parties, leading to lots of silly ritualistic conflict.

    Wise and worldly readers -- what would you contribute to a General Theory of Academic Time Dilation?

    Have a question? Ask the Administrator at deandad (at) gmail (dot) com.

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Comments on Ask the Administrator: Slowly...Slowly...

  • Supervisors' Qualifications
  • Posted by Bob Schenck on January 31, 2008 at 8:40am EST

  • What wasted most of the time in committee meetings (and in dialogue) at my college was having to educate supervisors, division chairs, and deans who had little or no education, training, or experience in the programs and disciplines they were charged with supervising. Time and time again the persons appointed to such positions were not conversant in the areas they were supposed to manage. It took only a few months for the truth to emerge and, thus, only a few months for faculty to stop takiing them seriously. Smile, nod, check your watch.

  • ROFL
  • Posted by Administrator in Self Defense on January 31, 2008 at 9:40am EST

  • While I would quibble in part about the tenure issue, you have NAILED this. And as a faculty member who is doing administration only in self-defense I agree that we faculty do have these contradictory beliefs.

    I would add that some faculty (and I stress the some) also may believe that...
    1. Administrators are out to take advantage of faculty (as if administrators have time and desire to shift the burden of thier work on to faculty. I know it is believed by some here that administrators spend hours in meetings planning how to do just this. A few people have asked me about it rather directly.)
    2. Administrators do not care about teaching (sadly, for a few this does seem true, and for some it is a byproduct of their areas of work). For most administrators I have met this sort of belief is an absurdity, though.
    3. Colleges and Universities cannot function without them (as individuals). Actually, everyone can be replaced at any institution except the students, who must stream in and out in regular numbers. No students yields no faculty. No faculty yields no administrators. Of course, at land-grant institutions students might even be able to be replaced, depending upon how the actual charter works (might be to support business and technology, students are a byproduct of that). Now, if we could replace the trustees at my college, that WOULD be a good thing.
    4. And my favorite, that administrators do nothing at all! Oh, how I wish that were true! My book would be finished and I would happily be on to reading that closet full of articles I have always meant to get to!

    Keep plugging.

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