The bureaucratic juggernaut that ate the world. See:
https://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2016/08/03/the-supposed-crisis-of-student-debt-is-actually-the-predictable-consequence-of-government-subsidies/
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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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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.
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." |
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27 comments:
"Bilas to speak at Rocket Roundball Social," The Blade, Aug. 2
I certainly hope that a heavy-hitter UT donor is picking up the tab for Jay Bilas' soiree in Savage Arena and that it's not being paid for with student activities fees that has partially subsidize UT's athletic operations for years.
"ProMedica announces partnership with Cleveland Clinic," The Blade, Aug. 11, 2016
What happens to the College of Medicine and Life Sciences when the Cleveland Clinic, which operates the Learner College of Medicine, buys ProMedica?
UT can kiss those ProMedica bucks good-bye.
This is just another example of inadequate community expectation for regional health-care systems and the continued significant out referral and out migration of clinical care that tremendously inconveniences families, weakens existing health-care providers in the Toledo area, and reinforces the triangle of referral patterns of Toledo patients to Cleveland, Columbus, and Ann Arbor.
Let hope that Sharon Gaber and Chris Cooper are not the latest in a long line of MCO and UT administrators who end up losing their reputations to ProMedica.
UT ousts fund-raising executive; reassigns 1,” The Blade, Aug. 12, 2016
How disappointing it is to see the Sharon Gaber enter her second year as UT president with her administration in such a state of flux.
The latest casualties are the vice president for advancement and the vice president for research who will be replaced by a person who currently serves as VP for governmental affairs and who previously held the top research post and did a commendable job.
Given the reasons for the dismissal of the vice president for advancement outlined in today’s Blade article, how in the hell did this guy hired in the first place?
Let’s hear a nice round of applause for the search committee that included him in its list of final candidates that was forwarded to President Gaber for her consideration.
And what does one make of the lengthy, cult-of-personality article that the UT alumni magazine ran on McCrimmon early this year? Well done.
Do administrators who make six-figure salaries really have to sign standard statements agreeing to “be dependable” by arriving at work on time and working his schedule and providing “a fair day’s work in return for a fair day’s pay?”
The never-ending leadership churn and third-floor University Hall palace intrigue are getting tiresome and embarrassing. They disrupt the flow and growth of productive work relationships that are so crucial to UT’s efforts to improve the quality of its educational offering and its national reputation.
A revolving door of vice presidents and deans leads to stagnation and a lack of progress. New initiatives stall, institutional memory is lost, and institutional morale is sapped. For the last decade, UT has seen so much infighting and bickering, and so many people with different strategies, one after another, come in and undo the work of their predecessors.
The turmoil in marketing and communication is particularly worrisome, given that unit’s responsibility in communicating UT’s message and cultivating UT’s—here comes my favorite weasel word— “brand,” whatever the hell it is.
President Gaber has a limited amount of time to get her agenda for the future in place, to get things done, and to tap UT’s potential to move to a more prominent level nationally. She can start by solidifying her own senior leadership team as soon as possible. The clock is ticking.
4:09 PM
Who said The Cleveland Clinic is buying ProMedica? This is a limited collaboration that will certainly benefit ProMedica and all the people of Northwestern Ohio.
The negativity around here is over the top.
Speaking of which. 6:58 AM, Gaber removed, what sounds like, a non-productive employee. Would you rather she keep him on and continue to pay him over a quarter a million dollars a year? UT's has made progress in the year since she has been here. She deserves the benefit of the doubt. She can't fix a decade of decline in a single year.
President Gaber came to UT and discovered a thick layer of overpaid and unnecessary VPs with lengthy, bloated contracts which have made her a prisoner of previous greedy administrations (Jacobs and Nagi)and an incompetent BOT that approved those contracts. She can't solidify her own senior leadership team until she can get rid of the leftovers.
Excuse me for being impertinent, but I thought an important goal of the latest ProMedica-UT clinical affiliation agreement was to make Toledo a stronger magnet for medical talent and research funding, to recruit top medical specialists and sub-specialists to join the College of Medicine and Life Sciences faculty who would be based at ProMedica Toledo Hospital, who could provide cutting-edge medical procedures and treatments so that northwest Ohioans would not have to travel long distances for care, and who would help elevate Toledo from something of a medical-care backwater to a medical-care destination.
The ProMedica cancer-care affiliation agreement with the behemoth known as the Cleveland Clinic, whose ever-expanding tentacles are woven deep through northern Ohio and other parts of the country, does nothing to advance that goal.
Cleveland Clinic has spent the last 20 years snapping up doctor practices and buying other hospitals, hoping for economies of scale and greater market clout. It purchased a minority share of Akron General Hospital for $100 million in 2014, and then recently completed the takeover, gaining a solid foothold in the Akron health-care market in the process.
Despite the contentious relationship ProMedica and the Medical College of Ohio had over many years, ProMedica and UT surely are logical partners for the creation of a full-service academic health system.
So it is fair to ask where ProMedica sees its future. With UT? Or with the Cleveland Clinic, which also operates a medical school?
A continued shakeout among health-care institutions in northwest Ohio is probably inevitable, and it’s just a matter of time before Cleveland Clinic expands its footprint in northwest Ohio.
ProMedica has just put out the welcome mat.
ProMedica deal is with College of Medicine and not UTMC, it is intended to help UTMC train medical professionals and ProMedica with a source of trained medical professionals who would eventually work for them. Deal is not intended to help UTMC hospital or address its issues.
For the love of...
It is an agreement to coordinate patient care and to ease access and reduce the paperwork and time needed to see a CC oncologist.
Not all slopes are slippery. Not all agreements are secret conspiracies.
Far from being an evil empire, ProMedica is an exemplary corporate citizen. I for one am proud that *MY* university is partnering with them.
Promedica is "exemplary" of a third tier healthcare system. There is a lot of risk with this partnership, conjoining two struggling and less than mediocre systems/institutions (UT and Promedica). Hopefully it becomes a success, but let's not pretend that either group is high-quality.
prayers and best wishes for the forum founder and regular poster who is having major health issues
Speedy recovery! Lots of butt still left to kick around here.
Anonymous 10:09 raises an excellent point and indirectly a pertinent question.
Left out in all of the stories that have appeared in the Blade is what is going to happen to UT’s other historically excellent clinical education partners?
To meet the requirements of the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, the college’s accrediting agency, the college must show that it has sufficient curriculum, clinical partners and other resources for classroom and clinical training.
The College of Medicine and Life Sciences maintains highly valued academic affiliations that span more than 20 hospitals and health¬-care systems and more than 200 physician practices. It’s rare for a medical school to have just one clinical partner.
These include multiple, valued relationships in northwest Ohio and southeastern Michigan such as Mercy Health Partners in Ohio; St. Joseph Mercy Health System in southeastern Michigan; Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit; Riverside Methodist Hospital in Columbus; northwest Ohio hospitals, clinics and physician offices that participate in the College of Medicine’s Area Health Education Center (AHEC) program; the Veterans Administration and many others.
Will those affiliation agreements continue?
Again, what proof—other than gobs of money—is there that ProMedica Toledo Hospital, on its own, can provide the academic environment needed to build a top-tier medical school?
That is also a compelling reason why a strong UT medical school, with its own state-of-the-art clinical facilities, is the best model, not a medical school that operates a specialty hospital or a multi-specialty outpatient clinic.
The Gaber administration needs to move very cautiously in considering a radical repurposing of the UT Medical Center.
10:09, ProMedica Toledo Hospital is a top 100 hospital. No, it isn't a Cleveland Clinic, or Henry Ford, but it is certainly one of the top hospitals in the region. It is not a mediocre hospital system.
UT and ProMedica are two of our regions largest economic engines. Working together they can benefit each other, our students, and the entire region.
Why does the some of the faculty choose to be so damn critical of *ANYTHING* the University does. This blog is to the UT community as Fox News is the country as a whole.
Never mind, I know your reply. I'm shill for the Administration. Oh why do I bother to read this blog? The same reason I read I watch (a little) of Fox News. I want to know what the other side is "thinking".
UT has done a good job of purging Jacobs and Company. We won that battle. It is time to move on. Embrace our new leadership. We should all pull together toward the common goals of meeting the education, health, and economic well being of our students and neighbors.
I am worried that the negativity expressed on this blog and elsewhere will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Toledo Hospital is #14 in Ohio, not exactly stellar.
http://health.usnews.com/best-hospitals/area/oh
#14 out of 215 or in top 7%
Welcome to the internet, 9:07. Message and comment board negativity comes with the territory. Listen, most people here want what is best for the University (and healthcare in Toledo), but you or any one else is not doing favors by pretending that Promedica or UT is anything more (or less) than they really are. It is absolutely ridiculous, to state that Promedica is a "top 100 hospital." Add a couple of zeros to that number and only then you might not sound out of your mind.
Propagating the delusion that Promedica and/or UT are exemplary leaders in their respective industries actually holds us back from self-improving. It will maintain old failed policies and a mindset of complacency that is toxic. Be realistic, honest, and humble, and thirsty for change.
147 hospitals in Ohio. Do the math.
That's #14 out of 215 hospitals in Ohio. Top 6 or 7%, and better than 201 others in the state. Thanks for the link.
Anon: 1:00 PM
ProMedica Toledo Hospital Named One of Healthgrades 2016 America’s 100 Best Hospitals.
https://www.promedica.org/news/promedica-toledo-hospital-named-one-of-healthgrades-2016-america-s-100-best-hospitals
So, no I don't sound like I'm out of my mind.
Would someone please do their job and post the minutes of the March 26, April 12 and April 26 meetings of the Faculty Senate? It's only been five months.
Unfortunately they cannot be posted until approved by Faculty Senate who just met last week for first time since April 26th, so yes they should now be posted but no mechanism to do so from April until now (is like this every year)
“UT’s ranking falls to lowest level in 15 years,” The Blade, Sept. 13, 2016
It is simply amazing that the 2006 merger with Medical University of Ohio has had absolutely no impact on UT’s mediocre academic reputation.
If you admit students with the lowest ACT scores of any state university in Ohio, you will get those results.
Anonymous 5:47. "The highest U.S. News & World Report has ranked UT in the last 15 years was in 2006, when it came in at No. 201." Gee, by coincidence that is the same year Jacobs Inc. arrived on the main campus and announced that UT was "broken" but that he could "fix it." I'm afraid we will pay for his business model shenanigans and mismanagement for many more years to come.
I'd like to see a subset of the rankings,public universities with open enrollment.
As long as we have open enrollment our 6 year graduation rates and our retention rate will be lower than more selective schools. This is not a knock against open enrollment, just a realistic assessment.
Other Ohio Universities (Akron, Cleveland St, Youngstown) have moved away from open enrollment, We still accept students with a 15 ACT, which is the bottom 16% of all test takers. Students with scores like this belong in a community college to better prepare themselves and have a better chance of graduation, at least with a two year degree.
plus we lack a large endowment and tradition of giving to UT, another measure on these types of rankings that hurts us
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