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UT Administrative Paradigm
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A MUST READ FOR ALL ACADEMICS! Now on Amazon Kindle. Click on Professor Goat above to be directed to the book.
DON'T BE A SHEEP
UT's Officially Disapproved Information Source and HISTORICAL ARCHIVE. The only source of truth, where Paradox Manifests: Hundreds of thousands of visits. Yet No One Admits to Reading It. Welcome to the "Grey Area" where "Unethical Utterances," i.e., criticisms of administrators, are commonplace. Make U.U. here where genuine civility still reigns, a.k.a., freedom......................... UNIVERSITY OF TOLEDO'S EQUIVALENT TO RADIO FREE EUROPE
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NEW!!! Hard Eight by Professor Extreme
HARD EIGHT
Hard Eight: Auto-Ethnographic Essays on Academic Culture Featuring the End of the Arts & Sciences College, University of Toledo, 2010
Daily Koan
Should the newly discovered black hole be named in honor of UT BOT?
Swamp Bubble
Do you agree or disagree that University of Toledo suffers from administrative bloat?
How do you feel about the proposed UT Degree Guarantee program? (Reposted to allow more people to vote.)
How do you feel about the proposed UT Guarantee program?
How would you grade the overall performance of the Jacobs' administration on running the University of Toledo?
COMMENT OF THE WEEK
Bloggie applauds this perspicacious observer:
"The administration is in a panic mode to implement controversial and irreversible structural and curricular changes campus-wide by early February fiscal plan deadlines with only the vaguest notions of their impacts. The plan is, according to an interview with a top administrator published in the most recent Independent Collegian, to cast out many seeds and "see what grows." This experimental garden, as most senators articulated in many different ways, seems a costly recipe for disaster. Utter madness. Stay tuned."
Print Version of Dictionary of Academia Available on Amazon.com
The profound ruminations of the goaty Sage are now available in this 119 page satirical masterpiece. See: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1480292494/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_2?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=B009RC0SJA&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1JV8N5BYAYY9WC9SJWD2
"Dictionary of Academia" Read it While it's Hot
A MUST READ FOR ALL ACADEMICS! Now on Amazon Kindle. Click on Professor Goat above to be directed to the book.
Comment of the Week
"This is that old tension between the corporate way of doing things and the academic way of doing things. In the corporate world, you sweep everything under the rug to make your b.s. as shiny, pleasing to the nose, and profitable as possible. In the academic world, you operate with a higher moral standard. Veritas and all that."
Comment of the Week of August 13
Re UT academic posers and hypocrites:
Have their checks calculated in units of postmodern theoretical currency and issued in photocopied legal tender notes signed by Walter Benjamin with a photo of Karl Marx and a seal stamped “In Derrida We Trust”.
Comment of the Era
Wow! Ain't that something.
-Anonymous
Comment of the Week
Mention goes to the the anonymous commentator of Feb 7, who, regarding UT President Llloyd Jacob's "Investing in Faculty" letter, stated: "If we could use the same criteria for 'investing in administrators' we could cut most of those positions."
Comments to HLC
Make sure you address your comments to HLC to the email address listed below in the "Higher Learning Commission Wants to Know" post. This may be the only chance you have to be heard. Bloggie hears that UT administration has discussed giving faculty "training" so that faculty members know how to "properly" talk to the HLC folks. How's that for stacking the deck? Does everyone get a little script to read? Make sure you practice before a mirror at being bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.
Comment of the Week!
Definitely, the Comment of the Week award goes to Anonymous 12:14 pm, Dec 3, under the "Higher Learning Commission Needs to Know" posting by Diogenes. Pithy and pointed!
--Love,
Bloggie
MESSAGE OF THE DAY:
DON'T BE A SHEEP
Independent Collegian Article on Dicey Administrative Spending
IC reporter Casey Cheap looks at bow ties, apartments and movie tickets purchased by UT administrators at university/public expense. See
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Letter and Petition from Foreign Languages Faculty Member
A couple weeks ago, at the beginning of summer break, we in the Department of Foreign Languages were informed that our secretary's position was being eliminated and that while she will not lose her job (she'll be transferred), that position is not to be filled. We apparently will be expected to do our own jobs plus what we can of the secretary's. That is clearly not acceptable, and so one of the steps we in FL are taking against it is an online petition now available for any who want to (including those who for whatever reason--not a registered Ohio voter, not a US citizen, etc.--cannot sign the petition against SB5), to read and sign.
I know not everyone on the blog will be interested in this; I'm not asking anyone who doesn't want to, to sign or even read the petition. I do think that there are many who would be interested and would want to sign it--if they knew about it.
It's scary to post this under my own name; I'm as afraid as anyone of repercussions. But this is simply too important to keep quiet on, and we have to do something! FL is not the first department that this has happened to, and it's almost certain not to be the last if we don't speak up in a way that the administration will hear us and in a way that makes clear that other people are seeing that it's going on.
Here's the link to the online petition:For those who can make it, there will also be an informational meeting--including lunch and petition-signing--next Friday, May 27 in FH 2420, 12:00 - 2:00 p.m.
I know not everyone on the blog will be interested in this; I'm not asking anyone who doesn't want to, to sign or even read the petition. I do think that there are many who would be interested and would want to sign it--if they knew about it.
It's scary to post this under my own name; I'm as afraid as anyone of repercussions. But this is simply too important to keep quiet on, and we have to do something! FL is not the first department that this has happened to, and it's almost certain not to be the last if we don't speak up in a way that the administration will hear us and in a way that makes clear that other people are seeing that it's going on.
Here's the link to the online petition:For those who can make it, there will also be an informational meeting--including lunch and petition-signing--next Friday, May 27 in FH 2420, 12:00 - 2:00 p.m.
Katherine Best
Wave of the Future or Merely Sometime Later This Week?
The Chronicle of Higher Education ran a deeply fascinating article called, "When to Dissolve a Faculty Senate." Apparently this is any time that it becomes "adversarial" to administration.
The online comments to the article are priceless.
Nemeth on Mammon in IC
David Nemeth's most recent tour-de-force
Professor Nemeth has another fabulous and timely article in the new and increasingly wonderful Independent Collegian. See http://www.independentcollegian.com/forum/the-kraken-attacks-1.2340091
Nemeth Does it Again
See the forum article in The Independent Collegian at:
Nemeth's New Article in Collegian
The Independent Collegian has run another of Professor Nemeth's fine and provocative articles in its latest edition. This one discusses the double-talk by mouthpieces for the current UT administration concerning the effects of and reasons behind so-called strategic reorganization. Make sure you get the latest version of Newspeak 5.1 if you want to decode what UT administrators are really saying.
UT Ranks 13th Nationally on Administrative Bloat
See Appendix B of the Administrative Bloat report posted on 8/28 for evidence, but UT now has a higher proportion of administrators to students than all but 12 public universities in America. President Jacobs has finally put University of Toledo in the top tier. With Strategic Organization he may be aiming for number one.
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Recent Letters from The Blade
Jacobs' arrogance is astonishing
Recently, President Lloyd Jacobs of the University of Toledo stated that bonuses were justified because his administrators "took all the risks."
As a professor at UT, I am outraged that President Jacobs claims that administrators take all of the risks. What risks do they take that the other faculty and staffs on campus do not?
Administrators are protected by state and federal employment laws and by their contracts.
When ex-President Vik Kapoor was terminated, he remained a professor with a salary near what he was paid as president.
As president emeritus, Dan Johnson retained a salary greater than his pay as president.
In the recent layoffs, exceptionally few administrators were terminated. It seems to me that low-level personnel at UT have far more risks because the greater proportion of the layoffs have come from their ranks. And they did not have continuing salaries.
President Jacobs' answer to questions on two occasions regarding relinquishing part of his bonus was to the effect that he earned his bonuses and what he did with them was his business.
Administrators do not risk their personal money in their duties: they use taxpayer money and funds collected through donations and grants to the university.
Administrators take home salaries in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and then add bonuses for longevity and whatever else the president decides is fitting for their contracts.
However, the lower-level personnel have much lower salaries and no such bonuses. Where is the risk?
It seems to me that these bonuses are convoluted: The lower-level personnel are taking the greater risks with no bonuses while the administrators with very rewarding jobs with little risk receive large bonuses.
Am I missing something here?
WALTER W. OLSON,
Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing
Engineering,
University of Toledo
It's the same old, same old at UT
I could hardly believe the arrogance of Dr. Lloyd Jacobs, president of the University of Toledo, when a reporter asked if he would be willing to forgo his bonus in light of the layoffs, raise in tuition, etc.
His comment was that he worked for it. Is that to say that the ones being laid off did not work for their pay?
All I can say is, business as usual at UT. Some things never change.
SANDY FLICK
Rose Acres Drive
UT also has checks, balances
In response to letter titled "Professors must focus on teaching," I would like to point out that the University of Toledo operates on the basis of shared governance.
This means that faculty members participate in the administration of the university.
A focus on teaching requires faculty to address administrative issues such as policies, procedures, and yes, finances, because these all affect classroom outcomes. A university with solid and equitable finances benefits everyone, including and especially the students. Just as the U.S. government is constituted to have checks and balances, so is our university government.
The UT-AAUP is one of those checks against UT administrators who most recently have displayed more concern for their own profit rather than a concern for the common good.
LINDA M. ROUILLARD,
Associate Professor
of French,
University of Toledo
Quote of the Year (so far)
The following is excerpted from the recent UT AAUP newsletter concerning the official university response to news of the bonus scandal:
. . . . Either Jacobs is misleading the media or he has misled the Board of Trustees. President Jacobs objected to "the general tone" of the UT-AAUP Newsletter. Many persons on this campus object to the "general tone" of the Jacobs Administration. During his tenure as President, he has introduced an administrative culture of fear and intimidation. . . . A point of logic must be raised here, with all respect to UT AAUP, the conclusions that President Jacobs has (1) misled the media and (2) the Board of Trustees are not mutually exclusive. Both would seem likely given his considerable talent at spinning "visions." |
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28 comments:
I'm afraid I have to take issue with the UT Administrative Paradigm seen here. As depicted here, it's balanced and standing on a solid base. I think we all know that's not the case at UT.
Spin artists?
Pooh U.
It's all just a game to them--playing with UT people's lives as if they were a toy.
The Blade ran the following article on 7/7: "Napoleon to add solar panel plant
Spanish firm plans factory in Henry Co., up to 330 jobs." While Mr. Stansley is quoted as saying that "the university's solar program has offered support to Isofoton," it is interesting to note that UT was not able to get this plant in Toledo, nor in the large and mostly unrented spaces that UT designed for just these kinds of opportunities. I wonder why Mr. Stansley wasn't successful...
See the full article at http://www.toledoblade.com/Energy/2011/07/07/Area-to-add-solar-panel-plant.html
UT didn't even use solar panels in its own buildings--when I asked about it regarding the renovation of the Field House a couple years ago--why they weren't using solar panels for those huge ceiling panes--I was told they were too expensive. (Of course I can't say if this was true or not, it's just what I was told.) Too bad UT couldn't invest in its own future with the solar panels it likes to brag about.
Sounds like solar panels lose money almost as quickly as the football team. UT's publicity choices are unbelievable, but consistent.
wv: amess. That's UT alright.
A slightly edited comment follows....
Good Lord! [a new "excellence officer"] is now coming to main campus! The ultimate YES MAN to power. A real astronaut hole to those below. I have heard him called the "concierge" on the HSC but to make him a vice president? We are really in for it now. Nice lobbies will take priority over everything else. This reemphasizes everything we know about our leader here. If you say "yes sir" and never raise questions, then you get promoted (see: C. Lehnert). If you challenge the powers that be, you are an ex-employee. What a way to start the day!
End of Comment as submitted.
Bloggie asks, is it true, then, we have another vice president? Apparently one cannot have enough of them.
Unfortunately, the situation at UT is not just farce, is is also melodrama. The recent administrative realignments are directed at the future: a future with the UT-AAUP broken, tenure abolished, a reduction in faculty and UT as the Ohio flagship for the Kasich charter university fleet. Come election time we will see if there's any hope of slowing the process. If Senate Bill 5 is not defeated at the box office in November then what we are seeing now is nothing compared with what will follow.
Yes, Bloggie, it is true. Currently there is a Director of Customer Service (Susan Andrews) on the Main Campus. Will her position "disappear" when Ioan Duca from HSC is officially VP?
Embrace the Pooh
The PLAN: Phase One: reduce staffing of targeted ("irrelevant") departments. Phase Two: reduce classes and programs at targeted departments. Phase Three: reduce faculty at targeted departments. Phase Four: redirect funding. Phase Five: walk off into the sunset. Job well done. Every department that has seen staff reduction should be prepared for additional cuts in programs and faculty. UT is cutting staffing in targeted departments in anticipation of reduced staffing requirements in those departments, i.e. in preparation for the axe that's about to be dropped on them.
I'm currently reading about 20th-century Chinese history--Chairman Mao, the Cultural Revolution, etc. Do I see parallels, or do I see parallels?!
An article about this at Inside Higher Ed today: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/07/14/new_book_argues_bloated_administration_is_what_ails_higher_education
I think our administrators are worth at least a pair of dimes, don't you? I'd pay them 50 cents to go improve some other humans' conditions, maybe more.
Did anybody notice the caps got raised in all the English classes? Just what we need -- more students in writing classes, and consequently less time per student per teacher.
Can you imagine what would happen if the class sizes were reduced, and teachers had the liberty to really pour into students, instead of this factory education nonsense they are pushing down our throats?
I am sad at what is happening to our university. Three cheers for all the teachers who are soldiering on, working even harder, despite the increasingly insane demands from the increasingly insane administration. And three cheers for the students we serve with all our hearts.
nside Higher Ed caught up with Ginsberg to ask him about his book and the impact he hopes it will have.
Q: Most of your scholarship has been about political science. What made you want to write about higher education?
A: I’ve been in the university for 40 years -- 20 years at Hopkins and 20 years at Cornell -- and I’ve observed the university changing quite dramatically. As a political scientist I was very sensitive to issues of politics and struggle. And I’ve increasingly seen the same tactics at work in universities that we see here in Washington.
Q: In your book, you refer frequently to "deanlets and deanlings." Can you please tell me a little more about what you mean?
A: I wanted to emphasize a major shift that’s been underway for several decades. Deans have an academic background. Years ago, they were part-time and always part of the faculty. This is extremely important because, like the faculty, they saw the university as an instrument of teaching and scholarship. Today, we have a cadre of professional administrators. I called them deanlets to give emphasis to the difference. They either have no faculty background or they decided early in their careers that their talents lay elsewhere. To them, what used to be the means is now the end. Instead of an institution serving teaching and scholarship, teaching and scholarship serve the institution.
Q: Many administrators do, in fact, come from an academic background, including some presidents who have been locked in bitter disputes with faculty. And if these academics-turned-administrators change, some might say it's because they are confronted with decisions that they didn't necessarily face as faculty members. In your view, what's the dynamic? Is it a case of the wrong people going into these positions, or is the system itself bad?
A: It’s both. Years ago, administrators tended to be a bit older. The typical administrator was someone who had been an academic for a number of years and saw administration as an honorable way to close out a career. The administrators today tend to go into administration at a much younger age -- often they are people in their 30s who either have not had an academic career or whose academic career was unsuccessful and they now see an alternative career path. The first set often accomplished a lot in their lives. The second set have often never done anything. It’s not their orientation; they’re bureaucrats. That’s not all of them; some of them are quite good. Even those who are good are often reshaped by the system. This would probably happen to me. We are all easily led astray. Even someone with the best of intentions, if they commanded a legion of deanlets, they would find themselves pursuing bad ideas.
Second part of the interview:
Q: You describe administration as, like many bureaucracies, a kind of self-perpetuating entity that seeks to expand as a way of justifying its own existence. What are the most egregious examples?
A: In the book, I provide a number of examples. I tell the story from my own experience of our summer program, which had one administrator and 400 students. It was given over to a professional deanlet. It soon had 400 professional staff members and one student. And no one seemed to care.
Q: What factors led to this state of affairs?
A: It’s like a rerun of "Law and Order": you have to look for motive, means and opportunity to solve the crime. The motive is that you have some ambitious university presidents and provosts who sought ways of enhancing their own power. We see that all the time in every bureaucracy. The opportunity was given to them by two factors: one is that faculty would prefer to work in labs and classrooms, so they’re easily circumvented; two is the rise of professional fund-raising. To my mind, professional fund-raising is the worst thing that ever happened to the university. If the university is dependent on revenues from federal grants and tuition -- revenues from doing things -- then it has to rely on faculty. The revenue base is under the control of the faculty. But professional fund-raisers allow them to circumvent that.
Third part of the interview:
Q: You are highly critical of strategic plans, administrative retreats and workshops and committees attended by administrators. You point mockingly at such examples as the Administrative and Professional Staff Advisory Committee or the Process Management Steering Committee. Of course, the same tactic is also deployed by faculty critics who list the names of courses that sound ridiculous to outside ears. What makes this critique valid when leveled against administrators?
A: If you look around the typical university, 1 to 2 percent of the courses are silly, but it’s a small number. In my 40 years in academics, the number of truly silly courses is very small. But when I look at administrators, I’d argue that the bulk of activities is quite silly, such as the war zones task force which met and concluded that students should be discouraged from entering war zones. More generally, I look at strategic planning that takes enormous energy for no reason. Many of these could just be copied; the end result would be the same. The process of putting these plans together is designed rather like elections in the Soviet Union: the process is designed to give people the impression that people care what they think. I also looked at the minutes and agendas of administrative meetings. When administrators and staff get together, they mostly talk about prior meetings and plans for future meetings.
Q: You recite a litany of administrators who lined their pockets or burnished their own images at the expense of their institutions. Why do you see these examples as reflective of a systemic problem rather than a case of a few bad actors?
A: There are very few controls in place to prevent it. Virtually no university has systems in place to monitor and check the behavior of senior administrators. If some poor student is accused of plagiarism, that’s a federal case. There are all sorts of systems in place. If a faculty or staff member is accused of sexual harassment, there are normal systems in place. If an administrator cheats and steals or presents phony credentials, there’s nothing in place to stop it.
Q: What impact do you hope this book will have?
A: I hope to wake up the faculty. We’re like the residents of a Japanese city living next to the ocean and thinking the tsunami won’t affect us. I also hope to alert university boards. When they read the administration's propaganda organs, I want them to understand that the institution they love needs their help. They didn’t come to Hopkins or Georgetown or Princeton to work with our deanlets. They came to work with our faculty.
As might be expected the petition in support of the Foreign Languages secretarial position fell on deaf ears. As of July 1, the Jacobs plan was this: a secretary from English, who had previously been in full a time position (for say the last 20 years or so), was going to have her position redefined. She would have 20 hours in Foreign Languages as a meet/greet secretary, and then have the remaining 20 hours for administrative work in both English and Foreign Languages. The secretary in question, however, has gone on an extended leave of absence. So now both Foreign Languages and English are left out in the cold. Let me say that if you dig around in this mess you would find all sorts of culpability to pass around. Certainly the bean counters at the very top were the catalyst, but then the Dean and the respective chairs played their part. In other words, Jacobs is being assisted in his makeover all the way down the line. No one is standing up to his team, apparently because they all fear losing their own higher salaries. Are chairs resigning? threatening to resign? deans? they are all protecting their positions and going along with the changes. In fact, it seems many of them, and many faculty, see Jacobs as a career opportunity. If you can come up with some half baked idea that looks to reduce staffing/faculty/expenses, chances are Jacobs with go for it and make you an instant minor dean with all the attendant benefits. Faculty and minor administrators at UT who used to think of themselves in dead end salaries are now salivating at the chance to "move up." This is the real tragedy at UT.
It is clear that the students, faculty, and staff are all here to serve an increasingly voracious and obscenely over-fed hierarchy of administrators. I feel as if we exist solely for their benefit.
Anon 940:You are so right! Another aspect of raising the caps: more students per class = "invisible" increase in workload for instructors, many of whom will be teaching the equivalent of an extra class without getting "credit" for it--so 4 classes that count as 3--then they get another "real" one added to it. Unbelievable, undefendable.
Many at UT regard what's happening as some kind of natural disaster - like the current heat or a flood or a tornado - against which they are powerless.
Several comments in one post:
Anon 7/19 5:00 pm: The new development with the "split secretary" is news to me--and I'm in one of those departments! How can news like that get to us, with no secretary to send it! First Jacobs breaks down interdepartmental communication by breaking A&S into 3 colleges--now he's breaking it down within departments. And he claims not to micromanage! No matter how much his pants burn, that nose keeps growing longer and longer.
Anon 7/19 656 pm: I think you'll agree, we did not come here "... to serve an increasingly voracious and obscenely over-fed hierarchy of administrators" or to "... exist solely for their benefit." This is the level to which the administration--the BOT as well as Jacobs and his more immediate underlings--has sunk UT.
Anon 7/20 915 am: Your point about an "invisible" increase in workload via larger classes is a good one that we shouldn't overlook--the administration will, if it suits their purposes.
Anon 7/20 947 am: Your comment about our feeling powerless is well justified. Whatever we try to do is simply ignored. And then we get punished somehow.
The AAUP sent out an email today notifying everyone that the govenor is expecting a proposal for charter universities by August 15. Everyone at UT can expect that UT will be offered up as one of the first sacrifices to this "vision," inasmuch as Jacabos has championed it for a year now. What this means is that even if Bill 5 is defeated in November, UT will still lose its bargining rights once it becomes a charter uni. It also means that the administration will assume complete control of academics, workplace (including workloads, class sizes), everything. You won't even be able to file freedom of information requests. The admin at UT will be in control of everything and even be responsible for policing itself.
Not everybody has received that AAUP e-mail; where can we see it?
http://ocaaup.org/charter_toolkit
scroll down to:
What is going on with Charter Universities in Ohio?
hey UT, thanks for firing my former boss, Tom Trimble...he worked at UT for 33 years and LJ didn't even know who he was!
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