Just a few questions

While I hate to interrupt anything as intellectual as the art show Mr. Bloggie is running, I do have a few questions about the reorganization. We've just heard that a little over 7 million is going to disappear from this year's budget. Given that 2012 is supposed to resemble the great depression, I have a few questions. First, why reorganize and add bureaucrats who don't teach? It all sounds rather costly to me. Second, think of the expense for new stationary. There will be new stuff for the various colleges, schools, programs and departments. Third, how does any of this help our students? As you all know I hate to be the wet blanket at the party, but this is beginning to sound just a touch expensive at a time when we supposedly have a shrinking pool of cash. Finally, there is the law of unintended consequences. In any reorganization there will be unintended expenses. We have no real idea if this will increase the number of students, the quality of the faculty, and outside funding. Or, it might just confuse prospective students.

Worship of Mammon

Chronology of UT Reorganization

Before Reorganization

During Reorganization

Post Reorganization

Bloggie suspects this is why President Jacobs keeps speaking so ominously about the year 2012.

Love to all.

Saturn Reorganizes The College

RIP UT College of Arts & Sciences 1909-2010

Details on the death will be released as they become available.

Slides From Arts and Sciences College Death Announcement on 9/24

 

Sexual Harassment Policy

Please go the the UT web site and read the new proposed policy on harassment. There are places for comments.

Even Smaller Boxes

Research About UT That Did Not Make The UT News

The following item from USAToday was brought to Bloggie's attention by reader Jack Pumpkin. Thank you, Jack:

By Michael McCarthy, USA TODAY

When Katherine Ott completed her master's thesis on student fees at the University of Toledo during the 2008-09 school year, she discovered that her fellow students knew relatively little about how these mandatory charges were being used to help underwrite the school's athletics program.

She also discovered that the athletics program's share of the fee money was greater than the program's level of importance to the students.

Her findings are part of a growing body of academic research and writing about higher-education finances, including the use of student fees for athletics and other purposes. She says she believes that in today's tough economic environment, people throughout academia are seeking greater accountability from schools.

ANALYSIS: Percentage of tuition that goes to athletics

DATABASE: What NCAA schools spend on athletics

"Students are more interested in knowing where their money is going because costs are on the rise," she says. "It's difficult to find the money to go to college."

While she found that a little more than 90% of the 760 full-time undergraduate, graduate or professional students who agreed to participate in her survey were aware that they paid a "general fee" over and above their tuition payment, most were clueless that their fee money went toward the athletics department and cheerleading.

Through three separate fee allocations — athletics and cheerleading; the Glass Bowl stadium, and the football program's Larimer Athletic Complex — Toledo athletics received nearly half of the $19.9 million in general fee money the school distributed in 2007-08, Ott found.

Only one in four students in Ott's survey knew athletics and cheerleading received funding vs. nearly half who knew the recreation center and student union did. Fewer than one in three knew a portion of the fee money went toward the Glass Bowl, where Toledo plays home football games, and a little more than 1 in 10 knew it went toward the Larimer facility.

"Students didn't think their money went towards athletics and cheerleading — when actually that's where the majority of the general fee dollars went. So that was a really big surprise for me," said Ott, now associate director of the loan program at Christendom College in Front Royal, Va. The students "rated the rec center as the No. 1 (beneficiary) when actually it was athletics."

When asked to indicate the importance of 22 fee-funded organizations and activities, students put the recreation center at the top of the list and athletics near the bottom. Respondents rated each organization and activity as not important, neutral or important. The recreation center had the greatest percentage rating it as important (70%).

None of the three athletics-related fee recipients was rated as important by more than 21% of respondents; 16 other organizations or activities were rated as important by a greater percentage.

It is difficult to know whether Ott's findings can be extrapolated nationally. Her thesis adviser David Meabon, director of Toledo's Russel Center for Educational Leadership, has launched a four-part national survey that will include a study of the "collection, allocation and expenditure of student activity fees," he says. He says he has surveyed about 800 schools and hopes to publish his initial findings by November.

"We're in a major financial crisis in higher education. I call it the backdoor tuition increase," Meabon says. "For many people, this is a hidden tuition fee or cost — and a backdoor way to fund institutional activities."

The hidden cost of athletics in college education also was explored in a study published in April 2010 by Matthew Denhart and Richard Vedder of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, a Washington, D.C.-based research group. Among the findings: NCAA Bowl Subdivision schools with less-affluent student populations, as measured by the percentage of students receiving need-based federal money called Pell Grants, are providing athletics programs relatively large subsidies. That money comes through forms of institutional or government support — which Denhart and Vedder describe as a diversion of financial resources from "traditional academic purposes" — and/or student fees.

Denhart and Vetter found that of the 11 FBS conferences, the four with the highest percentages of students receiving Pell Grants were Conference USA, the Western Athletic, the Sun Belt and the Mid-American. Those four conferences also have the second- through fifth-highest athletics subsidy rates (the Mountain West has the highest subsidy rate and the No. 7 Pell Grant recipient rate).

"Those who can most afford to pay a subsidy tax actually pay the smallest amount," Denhart says. "Those who can least afford it pay the most."

Dean's Plan

Bloggie thought this might be of general interest and solicits comments.

Note that Dean McClelland is said to have presented this plan to President Jacobs this morning. Further note that Year One calls for the abolition of Arts and Sciences Council (the Vengance of Jake?); Year Two calls for the absorption of the Education College (where will poor Tom Brady lay his head?); and Year Three adds certain Engineering Departments.

Civilly yours,

Bloggie

From the Chronicle

Of interest:

September 16, 2010

Southwestern College Halts Publication of Student Newspaper

By Josh Keller

San Francisco

Southwestern College, a two-year institution near San Diego, has temporarily halted the student newspaper from issuing a print edition, and student journalists allege it did so to prevent them from publishing articles before a heated election for the college's governing board. But the college denies any attempt at censorship and says the holdup is an administrative issue unrelated to politics.

The paper, The Southwestern College Sun, won several national awards last year from the Society of Professional Journalists for stories that were critical of the college's president and board members. One board member, Jean Roesch, sharply criticized the paper last month and asked for more positive coverage.

Staff members said on Thursday that college officials had barred them from publishing a paper before three members of the board face re-election on November 2. "We've been told we can't publish before the election," said Max Branscomb, the paper's faculty adviser. "It's outrageous, it's inexcusable, and it's flimsy."

Southwestern has suffered from a revolving leadership and nasty battles between administrators, faculty members, and students. Last year, the college suspended four faculty members who participated in a campus protest against cuts to course offerings. In February, Southwestern's accreditor put the college on probation, citing a "culture of fear and intimidation," among other factors.

A spokesman for the college, Chris Bender, said the allegations of censorship were "flat inaccurate." The college stopped publication of the The Sun because officials discovered this summer that the paper is in violation of a campus purchasing policy requiring administrative approval for printing costs, he said.

Once the newspaper obtains proper approval for its printing costs, the paper can resume printed publication, he said. Until then, the newspaper is free to publish its stories online, he said.

"It's not an issue of free speech or freedom of the press," Mr. Bender said. "It's a purchasing problem."

Yeah, right....

Also of interest, see concerning news on free speech on campus "The Fire" at http://www.thefire.org/

Letter of Honest Concerns

This was forwarded to Bloggie in today's emails: 

-Original Message-----
From: Coleman, Douglas W.
Sent: Thu 9/16/2010 11:37 AM
To: Rouillard, Linda; Patrick, Brian; Black, David C.; Davis, David H.; Tucker, David E.; Haase, Dwight; Caruso, Michael J.
Subject: Re: Faculty Stakeholder meetings

  Dear A&S Executive Committee,

I would like to offer my two cents on the proposed reorganization.  I
simply do not see

   1. How, in a time of supposedly limited resources, the increase in
      /administrative/ costs that accompanies the proposed
      reorganization is supposed to improve UT's missions of /teaching/
      and /research/, and
   2. How /dividing/ colleagues into separate colleges is supposed to
      /facilitate/ cooperative ventures among them.

Take the extra cost of the new deans' salaries and imagine it /instead/
being made available to faculty for interdisciplinary course
development, interdepartmental faculty research initiatives,
interdisciplinary student research projects, and so on.

Consider now how the creation of a cross-listed interdisciplinary course
now needs to go only through two departments and A&S Council before
getting to Faculty Senate.  With the proposed reorganization, yet
another layer of approval would be needed.  The same goes for arranging
many other types of interdisciplinary projects -- there would be an
additional layer of approval needed.

Since simple facts suggest that the proposed reorganization would
actually take funding away from interdisciplinary activity to pay
additional administrators /and/ would add extra barriers to
interdisciplinary cooperation within what is now A&S, it is not a
stretch to look elsewhere for the motivations for the proposed change. 
The change would break up A&S influence on faculty governance into three
parts -- I suspect this is not irrelevant to President Jacobs' support
for this reorganization.  A&S would go from being the largest college to
being three separate smaller colleges of UT, each with far less
influence.  The reorganization would, both symbolically and in actual
effect on faculty governance and the college-by-college distribution of
enrollment, change UT from being most influenced by a broadly-based,
liberal arts and sciences tradition to an institution dominated by its
professional schools.

      -- Doug Coleman

PS: If the Board of Trustees, as many of us in A&S have long suspected,
wants the University of Toledo to become the Toledo Institute of
Technology, they should keep in mind that MIT, which they might perceive
as a model to emulate, has one of the most famous PhD. programs in
linguistics and philosophy in the world.

imitation

Word is out that the Dean of our School of Business does a great imitation of a two-year old. Book him now for your Homecoming Parties.

Reorg/Strategic Plan Meetings

As I may not make either of the two meetings allow me to make my beliefs known. First on the reorganization part of this: You can call people anything you want (Deans, Tribunes, Commissars, etc.), and you can put them in almost any order you want; but, if you want something specific accomplished that is not now being done (see integrative learning) then assign one of your minions to do this. This administration seems to want to kill flies with bombs (atomic ones). If something is not being done we must need seventeen more deans and other assorted hangers on. In another case, if you believe some faculty are not working hard enough then sit down and discuss that with them. Instead we have, for the last two years, run around like crazy people, sent thousands of e-mails and ended up with pretty much the same workload we had two years ago. That hardly seems like an efficient use of time. For the last two years I have been involved with the Round Table, then the extended Round Table (I see a career in wood working or at the very least furniture sales) and now yet more meetings that seem destined to increase the bureaucracy so much that everyone will have some kind of title. I suppose that's one way to get rid of the union. If I were the conspiracy type I might conclude that this is just a smoke screen to keep us occuppied while other things are being done.

As to the Strategic Plan I get the feeling that this university does not value what I do. I teach communication. That does not generally result in patents or new drug therapies. Since we do not raise money but merely "teach" the view seems to be that anyone can do this. When I finally retire, I imagine they will search the zoo for my replacement (see trained seals). Universities are more than just the search for patents and money. They can lead students in many exciting directions. (My pediatrician while growing up was a Harvard graduate in English Lit.) This administration seems to think it can picture the future; and, it's a picture without most of us in it.

ANNOUNCEMENT!!! The Journal of Administrative Antics: New Online Peer-Reviewed Journal

Bloggie is pleased to announce the founding of a new, and much-needed academic/professional interdisciplinary journal:

The Journal of Administrative Antics

Recognizing that the temper of our times is increasingly one of vapid self-serving excess by administrative "elites" that have adapted themselves to functioning at general social expense, this new academic and professional journal is now in the process of formation. The first issue is expected to be published in June of 2011, and thereafter will be published twice annually. Initial publication will be online with the expectation of adding a print edition sometime within the first two years.

JAA will be peer-reviewed.  An editorial board is in the process of formation and will be announced in due time.  The editor seeks nominations or self-nominations for the editorial board. 

JAA Editor: Brian Anse Patrick, BA, MA, PHD, GED, Associate Professor, Department of Communication, University of Toledo, 4630 University Hall, Toledo, OH  43606, brian.patrick@utoledo.edu.

JAA actively seeks submissions of high quality research articles, book reviews and essays.  Although there is no methodological preference, submitted articles should be empirically-based and conform generally to either MLA or APA publication standards and be no longer in length than is necessary. Book reviews and essays should be no more than 1,000 words in length.  Save for a title page, articles should contain no mention of the author's name for purposes of anonymous review.  

 

JAA seeks to grow by rhizomatic means--horizontally in the direction of the concerns of contributors and expressed social needs. Initially the journal will be focused on university and not-for-profit administration, but will also encompass antics of government, corporate/business elites that have been placed in the stewardship roles of publicly held corporations or other arrangements of trust. Counter intuitive approaches are welcome. 

JAA policy will lean toward flexibility concerning submissions. Article, book review and essay queries should be sent to the editor. 

 

Considering the temper of the times and the severity of the problems caused and perpetuated by administrative antics, research article topics could utilize any number of approaches:

• Analyses of administrative rhetoric, themes, equivocations, techniques, either by methods of textual analysis or quantitative content analysis or by other means.
• Econometric studies
• Political Economy 
• Comparative analyses
• Case studies 
• Ethnomethodological or participant-observer studies
• Literature reviews 
• Effects research
• Nomothetic or historical analyses 
• Ritual, religious studies or anthropological-based approaches 

JAA actively seeks article submissions and queries. Please send them by email to the editor.    

Organizational Communication at UT

Confusion

Okay, so I'm a little confused. It's probably because I'm not an associate administrator of some type or I would see the light. We've been told the new plan won't add administrators. So who are all those extra deans? We've been told it will not increase costs. So, they're going to work for free? Wow. I guess we really are working toward being number one in administrative bloat. What a goal.