olwell
My recent service on a search committee for the dean of my university’s College of Education left me thinking about the future of these positions.
The dean’s position, in a college with a historical commitment to teacher education and thousands of graduates per year, would seem an attractive one. Unlike many colleges and universities, my institution is not in danger of cutting education programs to make way for new enterprises; if anything, it has probably become more focused on education as enrollments in other areas have shrunk.
However, when it came time to develop our advertisement, it became clear that the requirements for the job had mushroomed since the previous search. First, with tight times in higher education, development and grants had become high priorities, The provost told us that his greatest need for the position was in the area of development and fund raising, and that he expected the successful candidate to have experience in that realm. On our campus, raising money for projects and initiatives -- a job that at one time was performed by development offices -- is being shifted to administrators at all levels.
Other areas also cried out for attention. We expected the successful applicant to be experienced in grants and contracts -- if not in personally receiving them, then in encouraging faculty to do so. Faculty in the college expected the new dean to be an able researcher, teacher and administrator. Having a current research agenda was seen as important.
My own students, when I asked them about the position, wanted someone who was visible, approachable and would engage with students on campus. They also believed that the successful candidate should have recent classroom experience in public schools, as the federal No Child Left Behind law had so clearly changed education in the past five years.
Administrators and faculty in the college expressed concern that any candidates have a strong understanding of accreditation, and particularly a familiarity with the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education. The dean would be expected to coordinate our efforts to bring about a new assessment system in the college that would smooth the way for our next review, still several years hence.
Unlike other deans, those in education schools must help fulfill federal and state accreditation requirements that are mandatory, not voluntary. Title II of the Higher Education Act forces colleges of education to report state test scores for their students on an annual basis, and many states require voluminous documentation for approval of teacher preparation programs.
"Voluntary" organizations, such as NCATE and the Teacher Education Accreditation Council, add another layer of complexity to the job. Our state virtually requires membership in one organization or the other. Both organizations require data collection and analysis of candidates, and keeping up with changes in accreditation and assessment has become a full time job in itself.
Deans of education are also expected to spearhead relations with public schools, which are in crisis as a result of No Child Left Behind. In our state, years of cuts have left school systems with fewer resources, able to hire fewer of our graduates, and forced to restructure schools that do not meet federal requirements for progress on standardized tests. Deans are expected to show leadership in the field of public education, and to be a political voice for restoring trust in a system routinely beaten up on by politicians and the public.
When added up, the qualifications became 15 different items in the final advertisement.
Can any one person do the job above? My service on the search committee leads me to doubt that there are enough people able to do it to fill all the positions out there now or coming open. The real lives and careers of human beings do not fit well into a job advertisement, especially a lengthy and complex list of characteristics.
Many administrators trade in a scholarly agenda for the demands of running a department or college. Corporate fund raising, donor cultivation, foundation relations and development are not always a strong point of even highly capable administrators. Those who are good at getting grants themselves may be uninspiring when working with faculty on their own grants (and vice versa).
While we ended our search hiring an excellent candidate, the process did not leave me optimistic about the future of the position. I feel that we were lucky, and any system that depends on luck is bound to fail sometimes.
Unless the job of dean of education is redefined into a doable set of tasks, the type of people we want to apply -- people with integrity, a sense of balance, a sense of humor, a commitment to the well-being of students and children -- are going to pass and stick to a faculty role. This would be a real tragedy for our field, as those are precisely the people we need to lead us into an uncertain future.
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Comments on The Job No One Wants
With all due respect for the writer's right to free speech -- I'm reminded of walking by the education college dean's parking space at a major taxpayer-owned college not to far from his.
Late-model Mercedes. Nice ride. All that "work" for such a paltry return. Salary's probably only in the $150,000 range. Darn.
Given that, and tuition increasing at twice the rate of inflation for the last 10 years -- can it be any wonder, why TABOR initiatives are so popular?
For parents, who have face layoffs and cutbacks as a quarterly reality, hearing remarks such as "academics don't make as much as MDs, MBAs, and lawyers" do not result in many tears. Not if you've seen millions of peers laid-off, during the dot-com era.
Were more colleges and departments to open dean's positions for accomplished MDs or lawyers (as a few have), a reasonable expectation would be that the 50+ applicants for such positions would double or could triple.
For many, these comments may not seem like a perfect response. Perhaps that's because the world is not a perfect place. Sometimes, you have to live with what you have, not what you think someone else has.
Reading Professor Olwell's lament reminded me, once again, how far removed the education establishment is from the outside world. The dean's postion he describes demands a high level of expertise in many areas from the successful applicant, much as any comparable position in the private sector does. Everyone doesn't strive to be a CEO or a managing partner and most aren't equipped for the job. Ditto for heading a college or a school. The precise job requirements may differ but the ability to lead and possess skills and knowledge in many areas is the same. "When added up," the professor states, "the qualifications became 15 different items in the final advertisement." So what? Anyone running even a small family business needs to wear 15 hats. Is it really that hard to find "people with integrity, a sense of balance, a sense of humor, a commitment to the well-being of students and children" within the education ranks? It shouldn't be.
Christine, he is right. It is very hard to find people who can wear all those hats. Just because a small business owner has to do it (a business is nowhere as complex as leading an ed school) doesn't mean he or she does it well. And what is asked for in a political post (sandwiched between students and faculty on one side, and upper administration on the other), is someone who can deal with all these aspects. Many faculty do not want to give up what got them into higher ed in the first place, research and teaching, for such a squeeze play, especially if they are already adequately compensated. Where do you look for qualified applicants? To CEOs, MDs, and others? Just not possible.
An education dean's job was tough enough when I started doing it in 1983. Now Professor Orwell's description of it shows it to be nearly impossible: multiple constituencies, a variety of responsibilities requiring a variety of mind sets, etc. You can't be all things to all people but that seems to be the expectation.
I had 13 years as a dean and that was plenty and it was a lot easier then. I wouldn't want the job now. Retirement is all the more sweet when I read what has happened in academic administration.
Ed Wolpert
Dean Emeritus
Georgia College & State University
EMU is fortunate--they get to search for someone with these qualifications.
I'm stuck with a Dean that makes $100K/year and runs the College like an elementary school; taking attendance at college-wide faculty meetings, beginning faculty searches in June with the expectation to start in mid-August, and phoning faculty in their offices on Friday afternoons to see who's in.
Occasionally I hear comments from my undergraduate students about my pay versus hours of work as a professor. I think it is degrading to explain that I work beyond the hours spent in my office and I am grossly underpaid (Engineering professor of 23 years of experience). However, my response typically is: "It is a free country. You can also go through between six to eight years of high pressure education beyond undergraduate and tenure and promotion process and you can have this "good life" too.