Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
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
Search This Blog
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
TO CONTACT BLOGGIE . . .
Bloggie is always glad to consider submissions to this blog. If you have something that you wish posted please send it to:
ascbloggie@gmail.com
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.
This Blog is a free and independent information source. Contributions and comments are welcome. Contact: ASCBloggie@gmail.com WARNING AND DISCLAIMER !!!! This blog is entirely non-official!! People may express opinion here, exercising freedom of speech and association.
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." |
How to Contribute
The Blog is now under new management, a consortium of ASC faculty who pooled their longevity bonuses to purchase it from its original owners. Your comments are still welcome but look for some changes. Contact: ASCBloggie@gmail.com. Your contributions might include new posts, images, comments to existing articles/posts, concerns about process and substance at UT's College of Arts & Sciences. This blog is entirely non-official, for which you can be thankful, unless you enjoy reading self-serving bureaucratic propaganda, and is intended as a discussion and commentary forum for UT A&S faculty and community.
Another Claim and Disclaimer
A blog is a blog is a blog. Information, comments and opinions found here don't represent official views, instead they represent truthful and sincere ones. If you want the official line on things go elsewhere. This is a discussion and comment page. You may even read things here that you disagree with, and then, maybe not.
ASCBloggie
Google News for "University of Toledo"
Google News for "Higher Education Ohio"
Blog Archive
Links
32 comments:
This $5000 for DL courses reminds me of the $5000 awards for Student Impact Awards, run just before the HLC visit. I believe the term for this is "bribery".
Why would anyone sell his or her materials for $5000? That's a pretty cheap price for one's intellectual property. It's a free country, but think before you sign.
Disrespect and disparage your own faculty for six years running and they will learn to disrespect themselves. Well done, Jacobs, Inc.
The elephant in the room is this: in a corporation, people give away their intellectual property as the result of being employed by the corporation.
To date most university professors have not been expected to turn over their intellectual property to the university in exchange for the compensation of employment. For better or for worse, this is changing. Universities are being expected by their fiscal supporters to become more like corporations in the way business is done.
I nor anyone else cay say where this is going, ultimately. Education is now being regarded as a service product that can be delivered as a product in the free market and should be expected to perform to the efficiencies of the free market. This is a basic change in philosophy where before education was regarded as a government service provided to its citizens free from market forces.
I do not see any trend to return to the government service philosophy. Therefore, I expect the university to become eventually an investor supported entity where the investor will expect dividends in return for their investments. This will drive yet more changes to remuneration for intellectual property, more changes to regard the faculty as salaried employees with a limited voice in management and more changes to insure that professors are turning a profit back to the university.
I will make a counter offer to them. I will lease them my intellectual property provided that I get per student royalties on the use of the intellectual property and I get an up front stipend. Further, my department will retain control over who teaches the class and when. I also get a right of first refusal to teach any class that uses this IP. I retain ownership of the intellectual property for purposes of publishing. Finally, the lease is severed and I retain full right to use the materials should I leave the university.
Sounds like the road to more sexual harassment and servility in public higher education to me:
“The elephant in the room is this: in a corporation, people risk giving away their bodies as the result of being employed by the corporation. To date most university professors have not been expected to turn over their bodies to the university in exchange for the compensation of employment. For better or for worse, this is changing. Universities are being expected by their fiscal supporters to become more like corporations in the way business is done" blah blah blah. Lawyerspeak. Let's keep the machine out of this garden.
There are several strategies to take:
1. Deny that the university is corporatizing
2. Ignore the corporatizing and hope it goes away
3. Fight the corporatizing
4. Accept the corporatizing as an inactive participant
5. Embrace the corporatizing as an active participant
#1 to my way of thinking is "sticking your head in the sand" and is no better than #2 in the outcomes.
#3 is a real choice but fraught with problems. In order to be effective, the proponents of this strategy need to build a consensus among the faculty. In addition they need to educate the voting population that the original philosophies supporting universities as a needed government service was correct and right.
#4 is not much better than #2 except that the proponents of this strategy are being realistic.
#5 at the current time is the safest strategy one could take and the one which will benefit the proponents of this strategy in the short term. In the long term? Maybe not... The corporation is a "dog eat dog" world where only the most efficient and the most capitalized survive.
Clearly, proponents of all five strategies exist within the faculty on campus. Furthermore, it does not seem to me that any proponents have been particularly effective within the faculty in executing their strategy. As a result, the non faculty administration has set the impetus for changing the university. This has not lead to more effective education and therefore, has not benefited either the public recipients of education or the university.
Perhaps concerned faculty bloggers in higher education institutions should hook up and associate to protect each others' backs? Meanwhile Friends of Bloggie can study this scenario playing out over at CSU and its contemplare and discuss its broader implications:
http://csufacultyvoice.blogspot.com/
What a novel concept. Universities hiring people who lack qualifications or experience for their job and instead give the position via "personal connections." I don't know where else this could apply.
There should be an audit of all faculty and staff c.v.'s, resumes, and personnel records at UT to ferret out any possible instances of cronyism or otherwise questionable hiring practices. Just leafing through faculty bio's, one finds more than a few individuals who were graduate students at UT (possible cronyism rather than competitive searches). Isn't hiring your own graduates incestuous and generally frowned upon by better universities? Maybe some of these are legacy hires from the old days of Bancroft High. Turning to staff and administrators, how many of those folks got their degrees at UT (more possible cronyism)? How many of them were hired without experience doing the job? How many current or former board members are directly or indirectly drawing from University funds or that of its "spinoffs"? How many administrators or staff have their jobs because of personal connections rather than qualifications? Further, how many faculty, staff, or administrators have spouses, partners, children or other kin on the university payroll? Inquiring minds want to know.
Of course, not all folks who were hired due to their connections or under-qualification are doing a bad job at UT. However, I think reforming hiring practices to require actual and open competitive searches rather than some of the more recent practices would be a useful reform. More openness to public scrutiny and greater public accountability for all university actors (faculty, staff, administrator and board) would be welcomed too.
Does anyone have details about the closing of the Apple Tree daycare? The Collegian article discussed some financial problems, but it was sketchy on the reason for the more-or-less immediate closure. I'm sure Scarborough's "reverse Midas touch" is a factor. Will Apple Tree be re-opening off campus?
Apple Tree will be gone, UT discussing with another child care provider to use that space, but with no financial support from UT (was $100,000 per year)
Are there any men in CLLSS?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qksWw7JT-Ew
Haven't seen "YOU College" discussed here. And this is completely hearsay, but what I've heard is it is a disaster. The admins in charge lumped all of the YOU College Freshmen into the same classes, and so they all reinforce each's negative behavior. Attendance is around 30% and less for all classes with the likely pass rate less than that. And in at least one class, the students were so unruly the lecturer teaching it had to go and tell whomever is in charge she could not teach the class effectively with so many disruptive students: the admin response? to send in a "monitor" who escorts unruly students out of the class for a time-out. Turns out the admin master plan is to turn UT into a bad High School.
So much for the "cohort" model. It's fine if you've got well-prepared students, but a group of under-prepared students just holds each other back. But, hey, by this time of the semester, the students' checks have cleared and that's all that Jacobs and company care about.
Novel idea: Follow the Georgia model of higher education reform- consolidation. Make the University of Toledo and Bowling Green branch campuses of Ohio State. Stop wasting taxpayer money on public universities trying to out compete each other for students.
your description of the current classes in YouCollege is very correct, plus I heard UT recruited the fall 2014 class for YouCollege from the same high school - all friends and the same lazy disruptive students that were together in high school
I watched the CLLSS video. The pictures of Toledo Hospital were "interesting"
http://www.forbes.com/sites/robasghar/2013/11/15/the-toughest-leadership-job-of-all-its-not-what-you-think/
It's a neat little article about how being president of a university is actually kind of hard. Some battlefield surgeon hired without a national search may turn out not to be very good at it.
http://business.time.com/2013/11/10/the-real-reason-new-college-grads-cant-get-hired/?xid=newsletter-weekly
After reading the latest article mentioned here, I wonder how DL students are going to manage the "show up on time" or even the "show up" part of their first job.I'm not referring to DL students who are working full-time and raising a family. I'm talking about the students who live on campus and take DL because they just can't be bothered to come to class.
Yesterday's headline from the IC:
SMOKING BAN RESURRECTED STUDENT GOVERNMENT PRESIDENT, VICE PRESIDENT TO PUSH FORWARD BAN WITHOUT SENATE APPROVAL.
Sound familiar? Jacobs Inc. will have its way and to hell with democracy. Aping our top administrators at UT, student government leaders are easily manipulated by the prevailing new business model for higher education to trample venerable campus democratic institutions to implement their policies. BULLY bully.Stop Mini-me-ism!
I was excited to read that Gold is a finalist for a position at the University of Nebraska. Now that cuts to our academic offerings and other areas have been exhausted, it's time for UT to start looking at its administration. With the new economic reality, we can no longer afford to do business as usual. I think it's time to impose new workload rules on senior leadership. As Provost, Scarborough should be able to effectively butcher and demoralize two campuses for the price of one. This workload we are talking about is not out of line. The bottom line is you just don't have a lot of good options when the university doesn't have a lot of extra cash lying around.
Regarding the "YOU College" tread. The majority of UT students need smaller classes and more individualized instruction to succeed, not just the YOU College students. Demographically, most of UT's students come from less than ideal HS backgrounds, as far as preparation for academia is concerned. Under the current deteriorating conditions, the only way most can succeed is by lowering already low standards (which is exactly what is happening as the faculty adjusts to increase class size and workload). Once upon a time, a UT PR campaign proudly announced to the public its professor/student ratio and boasted of the individualized instruction students would receive. If anyone remembers the "throwing under the bus thread"? well, that's what the current UT admins and that's what the commercialization of 2nd and 3rd tier universities is doing: throwing middle and lower class students under the bus. The premise of Jacobs and his kind is that the students UT attracts don't need the best instruction or the best learning environments because as students they are not the best. At best, Jacobs and his ilk think UT's students will be no more than corporate drones. The movement afoot is to turn large numbers of US universities into educational factories for the masses, operated by an elite administrative caste.
If Gold doesn't get the job the mere fact that he was a finalist for the U Nebraska job will mean that all the upper level admins at UT will give themselves raises and faculty whiners will never hear the end of it: 'well prof whiner, if UT is so poorly run why, tell me why, was Gold a FINALIST????' And of course if he does get the job his portrait will be hung from the bell tower with the inscription: "The few, the proud: YOUR ADMINISTRATORS"
Gold is leaving, Provost is interviewing, and apparently Jacobs is getting (and making) calls, perhaps times are changing?
I thought llss video was kind of weird and spooky.
Re: calls elsewhere for Gold and Jacobs to move to:
calls for what? a decline in enrollment? a decline in morale? A decrease in revenue? A prioritization process which is misguided and top down?
of course the hiring officials are the equivalent of BOT members. and whoever asks tough questions on final interviews? Ans: No-One. The easiest administrator to sell to someone else is the value system that the buying agent reflects. Now UT faculty, staff and BOT need to answer for themselves: Have student interests been served by this administration? If not, fire them and hire folks who are smart and pragmatic - not smart and self-obsessed. Remember the phrase: Jacobs has never met an idea that he could not improve upon?....take it to heart.
Can someone explain why the UT Foundation's annual report (released today) shows a decline in donations of $1.8 million from 2012 and why this is the second straight decrease? This decline occurred as the economy has relatively strengthened (compared to where it was in 2009) and stocks are at a record high (making financially viable to gift securities).
One of the idiot administrators has left! Gold is moving to Nebraska!
Look here:
http://utnews.utoledo.edu/index.php/11_27_2013/ut-leader-accepts-job-at-university-of-nebraska?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=ut-leader-accepts-job-at-university-of-nebraska
I am sure Jacobs will place one of his other minions there... forget about Scary taking up both jobs (unless they are going to pay him 3 million $ a month obviously...).
one down, two more to go????
With his experience with UTMC very likely SS takes over both provost positions, chance for LJ to justify increasing SS pay to keep him from also leaving (is interviewing), but with G leaving LJ can still point to net $ savings. Very unlikely for any major search or UT appointment, only SS makes sense here.
Having Gold as chancellor and executive vice president for biosciences and health affairs, and dean of the College of Medicine and Life Sciences, was only to satisfy his ego and meet his huge salary demands, with him gone there is no need for such a position (Health Campus Provost) or a chancellor. They will give Scary both provost jobs and dig up a UTMC suck up to be Medical Dean
Post a Comment