“College presidents and school deans have two jobs: 1) raise money; and 2) find ways to appease students, faculty, administrators, alumni, donors, and the state.⁹ The one trait all these interest groups share is a powerful sense of entitlement in telling university presidents and college deans exactly how to do their jobs.”
Eerily similar to the museum world -- just different interest groups.
What about the upper administrators themselves? What have you learned about what they are all about? Doesn't it seem like they don't actually care about the intellectual mission of the university? And just want to build new buildings?
No. I taught them to write like snife commenters. That was in between publishing three books in English you would approve of. What a dumb comment Mr Anonymous.
Some of the dynamics described here can be applied to nearly every situation in life. When I used to manage a restaurant, customers *loved* to tell me how the place should have been run. Now, don't get me wrong, I never took issue with when a customer told me we did a bad job...that happens, and that's their experience, but I can think of multiple times when customers went above and beyond to explain exactly how we should be doing things differently.
The worse is when the owners randomly come in and change all this stuff when they don't even know how things work. Many times because a friend came in and told them what to change.
"Students possess a volatile mix of knowledge and ignorance. Quite often they are the ones who can tell when a particular intellectual emperor is wearing no clothes. At the same time, they have zero idea of how large organizations are run."
Ay ay ay. I've seen this phenomenon play out in entities ranging from small non-profits to arts organizations to school districts - try running an inner-city school district! - to cities themselves. You have recently noted that students can't be expected to avoid being idiotic, at least sometimes. It gets more annoying/infuriating when actual adults ridicule people who are frequently performing much better than the self-appointed critics have any notion of. Like you, I would be a pretty bad manager. Thank god there are still people willing to try.
There are a large number of people in higher education, including many students, faculty, and staff, who seem to have no idea that budgets exist and cannot simply be wished away with a wand.
Many years ago, as an undergraduate, I worked with a group of students and faculty to rework our student government structure.The old (from some 25 years before) looked good on paper, but didn't work because it didn't align with how things actually worked in the institution.
We had to put up with a bunch of students (and some faculty) who argued against it because they thought that things -should- work differently, and were happy to endorse dysfunction instead of recognizing how the institution actually did function.
Some of the nonprofit admins are soooo bad. They love meetings where they talk about stuff and try to get someone else to do their work and when they aren't making enough they pay consultants to tell them how and still won't do the work. Universities do this too.
“What worries me about the fallout from Magill’s resignation is that, the longer it continues, the number of folks willing and able to do these jobs will shrink into nothingness.“
Similar to what will happen in the future in this country in civil service jobs or when running for political office. Already in countries like India and Russia, the pool of qualified people putting themselves out there for certain leadership and administrative positions is shrinking to non-existent. Only the craziest or the bravest, or both, even grow up with such career or service interests and opportunities.
As youngsters in the U.S. end up seeing more and more dysfunction caused by the likes of DT and MTG and GS, the ones we would eventually like to see in the applicant pool or on ballots will try to find alternate ways to contribute to society while also having to earn a decent living. The middle class in some countries already lead parallel lives, never getting on the road to leadership at the state level. I worry this will be the future in the US too.
Also, going to higher education admin or any education at all even is considered super unsexy by millennials, Gen Z and even many Gen X. They want to do something creative (good luck) or big business and especially big tech. Is there even a major for Educational Administration? We have Bus Admin and Arts Admin. They are getting the worst of the worst so they are forced to pay up to even keep anyone. OR they get people from the private sector or politics to come over, because their name from wherever they worked before will look good to applicants and donors and they have to way overpay them to get them to agree and then they suck at their job because they never did admin or fundraising (except policitians). So much of a lose lose scenario.
The really good admins that work hard and can get stuff done get overworked and often aren't compensated enough. Nepotism creates a lot of bloat with unqualified people taking up salary money and doing crap jobs. You can tell immediately how good an admin is by reading their emails and how they talk on the phone. The bad ones go on and on and on and they never do simple things timely. It's infuriating.
30 odd years ago, as I was finishing my Physics undergrad, my advisor professor was urging me to consider academia. I was tired of college and since I graduated in the post Reagan recession, I struggled with that decision. I could get a stipend, and pursue a PhD. Or I could go do catering until I could find a career starting point.
I chose the latter, and all these years later Professor Drezner here confirms that I made the right choice for myself.
I blame human nature and our terrible blindspot of wanting to be led by the best-looking/person with the best hair/tallest/most charming/ad nauseum. I wonder if and/or fear that this is how other civilizations have died out - "He promised us that the daily sacrifices would end the drought!", rather than "She challenged me to find a solution to the problem on my own, and that actually worked really well..." (begrudging shrug).
On behalf of faculty affairs deans worldwide, thank you for this line: "Our [a faculty's] comparative advantage in the university system is that we complain longer and stronger than everyone else about the most picayune shit imaginable." I often laugh til I hurt about that particular dark art.
One additional party here that is always at the back of an administrator's mind is the media. Reporting on higher education, outside of a few competent journalists at CHE et al., is generally mediocre and/or drive-by sensationalism. So long as it fits their preferred narrative, journalists will happily portray colleges as evil or indifferent even if the colleges are following the law or basic principles of academic freedom. You can see that not only in the recent Harvard/Penn brouhaha, but more generally with coverage of almost anything on campus--some student felt "unsafe" or "stressed," so the college must be in the wrong.
Hence, the focus for campus leaders is retaining a vast belt of deanlings and administrators who can be blamed and/or take the fall, especially for anything that might be relevant for a lawsuit.
What worries me is that there are two identical women with identical statements and political views who committed the same exact (verbatim) "speech crime" as far as the University\donors go and one didn't get fired because of her skin tone. DEI indeed.
That’s unfair. They are two different Board of Trustees with individuals of varying tolerances to financial and political threats and interferences from the outside. Give the Harvard Board credit — you don’t know what went behind their closed doors and what dominated their discussion. Give Claudine Gay credit for not resigning immediately.
My argument is that one was "untouchable" because of her race. The circumstances are almost identical minus that one pesky thing. On a strictly objective level: They either both should have been held accountable, or both should still have their jobs.
Don't give me the line about different Boards of Trustees. If the two women were reversed, Magill would be out of a job at Harvard and I would wager Jon Huntsman wouldn't have pulled his funding over Gay's comments.
Unless you tell me you are a Harvard trustee (or tell me where to find a transcript to read), I will err on the side of thinking that you are just counting on your own perception of race as the factor.
It's plainly obvious. Whatever delusions you have to wrap yourself in to deny it are yours alone.
If we had any journalists left they would track down Huntsman and ask him if he would have pulled funding if Gay was the president of Penn and had said the same thing. I would love to know the answer.
This is not a serious take on any level, Poindexter. These are two separate institutions whose stakeholders bear similarities but who are separate and distinct, and who make separate and distinct decisions from one another about policy, leadership, and when to pull the plug on a no-confidence vote. Re-read DD's article and come back when you can accurately place yourself in the list. While you're at it, cross-reference this with some of the reporting on how billionaire donors steer the conversation at their alma maters.
"The fact of the matter is...and if you had any critical thinking left outside of critical race theory...the only thing different between these two women in this situation...is race." Except for how they work for two different employers in two different states with different networks, interests and considerations.
Clark Kerr once said: “I find that the three major administrative problems on a campus are sex for the students, athletics for the alumni and parking for the faculty.” Were it only still that simple.
Boy have times changed. Nowadays the students apparently aren't having any sex, the people who care most about athletics are the state-sanctioned bookies, and the faculty would happily give up their parking if it meant they could do everything via zoom.
“ He conveniently omitted the other stakeholders that college presidents and deans must appease: the alumni, the donors, and the state.”
You forgot: Football teams and their alumni fans. The highest-paid state employees in most states? University football coaches.
At some colleges. Not exactly at Penn, Harvard, or MIT (LOL). Or Tufts.
Yes, yes.
Great essay.
“College presidents and school deans have two jobs: 1) raise money; and 2) find ways to appease students, faculty, administrators, alumni, donors, and the state.⁹ The one trait all these interest groups share is a powerful sense of entitlement in telling university presidents and college deans exactly how to do their jobs.”
Eerily similar to the museum world -- just different interest groups.
seems like all nonrprofits are like this too. Follow the money and you'll find who's calling the shots.
What about the upper administrators themselves? What have you learned about what they are all about? Doesn't it seem like they don't actually care about the intellectual mission of the university? And just want to build new buildings?
As a retired university professor u have no idea how right u are. Good essay.
"As a retired university professor u have no idea how right u are. Good essay."
What did you teach? How to write in Gen Z English?
Make that snide. I have fat thumbs my friend.
No. I taught them to write like snife commenters. That was in between publishing three books in English you would approve of. What a dumb comment Mr Anonymous.
Isn't a snife a combination of a spoon and a knife?
My time is too valuable to play this childish game with u. :(.
Some of the dynamics described here can be applied to nearly every situation in life. When I used to manage a restaurant, customers *loved* to tell me how the place should have been run. Now, don't get me wrong, I never took issue with when a customer told me we did a bad job...that happens, and that's their experience, but I can think of multiple times when customers went above and beyond to explain exactly how we should be doing things differently.
The worse is when the owners randomly come in and change all this stuff when they don't even know how things work. Many times because a friend came in and told them what to change.
"Students possess a volatile mix of knowledge and ignorance. Quite often they are the ones who can tell when a particular intellectual emperor is wearing no clothes. At the same time, they have zero idea of how large organizations are run."
Ay ay ay. I've seen this phenomenon play out in entities ranging from small non-profits to arts organizations to school districts - try running an inner-city school district! - to cities themselves. You have recently noted that students can't be expected to avoid being idiotic, at least sometimes. It gets more annoying/infuriating when actual adults ridicule people who are frequently performing much better than the self-appointed critics have any notion of. Like you, I would be a pretty bad manager. Thank god there are still people willing to try.
There are a large number of people in higher education, including many students, faculty, and staff, who seem to have no idea that budgets exist and cannot simply be wished away with a wand.
I concur, also.
Many years ago, as an undergraduate, I worked with a group of students and faculty to rework our student government structure.The old (from some 25 years before) looked good on paper, but didn't work because it didn't align with how things actually worked in the institution.
We had to put up with a bunch of students (and some faculty) who argued against it because they thought that things -should- work differently, and were happy to endorse dysfunction instead of recognizing how the institution actually did function.
Some of the nonprofit admins are soooo bad. They love meetings where they talk about stuff and try to get someone else to do their work and when they aren't making enough they pay consultants to tell them how and still won't do the work. Universities do this too.
“What worries me about the fallout from Magill’s resignation is that, the longer it continues, the number of folks willing and able to do these jobs will shrink into nothingness.“
Similar to what will happen in the future in this country in civil service jobs or when running for political office. Already in countries like India and Russia, the pool of qualified people putting themselves out there for certain leadership and administrative positions is shrinking to non-existent. Only the craziest or the bravest, or both, even grow up with such career or service interests and opportunities.
As youngsters in the U.S. end up seeing more and more dysfunction caused by the likes of DT and MTG and GS, the ones we would eventually like to see in the applicant pool or on ballots will try to find alternate ways to contribute to society while also having to earn a decent living. The middle class in some countries already lead parallel lives, never getting on the road to leadership at the state level. I worry this will be the future in the US too.
Also, going to higher education admin or any education at all even is considered super unsexy by millennials, Gen Z and even many Gen X. They want to do something creative (good luck) or big business and especially big tech. Is there even a major for Educational Administration? We have Bus Admin and Arts Admin. They are getting the worst of the worst so they are forced to pay up to even keep anyone. OR they get people from the private sector or politics to come over, because their name from wherever they worked before will look good to applicants and donors and they have to way overpay them to get them to agree and then they suck at their job because they never did admin or fundraising (except policitians). So much of a lose lose scenario.
The really good admins that work hard and can get stuff done get overworked and often aren't compensated enough. Nepotism creates a lot of bloat with unqualified people taking up salary money and doing crap jobs. You can tell immediately how good an admin is by reading their emails and how they talk on the phone. The bad ones go on and on and on and they never do simple things timely. It's infuriating.
30 odd years ago, as I was finishing my Physics undergrad, my advisor professor was urging me to consider academia. I was tired of college and since I graduated in the post Reagan recession, I struggled with that decision. I could get a stipend, and pursue a PhD. Or I could go do catering until I could find a career starting point.
I chose the latter, and all these years later Professor Drezner here confirms that I made the right choice for myself.
As a college sophomore many years ago, I once attended an all-college faculty meeting. Prof. Drezner nailed it.
I really enjoyed this. Thank you.
I blame human nature and our terrible blindspot of wanting to be led by the best-looking/person with the best hair/tallest/most charming/ad nauseum. I wonder if and/or fear that this is how other civilizations have died out - "He promised us that the daily sacrifices would end the drought!", rather than "She challenged me to find a solution to the problem on my own, and that actually worked really well..." (begrudging shrug).
Or to hire people you feel comfortable with and not people who challenge you and others to be better.
On behalf of faculty affairs deans worldwide, thank you for this line: "Our [a faculty's] comparative advantage in the university system is that we complain longer and stronger than everyone else about the most picayune shit imaginable." I often laugh til I hurt about that particular dark art.
One additional party here that is always at the back of an administrator's mind is the media. Reporting on higher education, outside of a few competent journalists at CHE et al., is generally mediocre and/or drive-by sensationalism. So long as it fits their preferred narrative, journalists will happily portray colleges as evil or indifferent even if the colleges are following the law or basic principles of academic freedom. You can see that not only in the recent Harvard/Penn brouhaha, but more generally with coverage of almost anything on campus--some student felt "unsafe" or "stressed," so the college must be in the wrong.
Hence, the focus for campus leaders is retaining a vast belt of deanlings and administrators who can be blamed and/or take the fall, especially for anything that might be relevant for a lawsuit.
What worries me is that there are two identical women with identical statements and political views who committed the same exact (verbatim) "speech crime" as far as the University\donors go and one didn't get fired because of her skin tone. DEI indeed.
That’s unfair. They are two different Board of Trustees with individuals of varying tolerances to financial and political threats and interferences from the outside. Give the Harvard Board credit — you don’t know what went behind their closed doors and what dominated their discussion. Give Claudine Gay credit for not resigning immediately.
You are right - it is "unfair."
My argument is that one was "untouchable" because of her race. The circumstances are almost identical minus that one pesky thing. On a strictly objective level: They either both should have been held accountable, or both should still have their jobs.
Don't give me the line about different Boards of Trustees. If the two women were reversed, Magill would be out of a job at Harvard and I would wager Jon Huntsman wouldn't have pulled his funding over Gay's comments.
Unless you tell me you are a Harvard trustee (or tell me where to find a transcript to read), I will err on the side of thinking that you are just counting on your own perception of race as the factor.
It's plainly obvious. Whatever delusions you have to wrap yourself in to deny it are yours alone.
If we had any journalists left they would track down Huntsman and ask him if he would have pulled funding if Gay was the president of Penn and had said the same thing. I would love to know the answer.
My delusions aside, you don’t know the answer. Thank you for clarifying.
Stop transferring and projecting your views on race on others who aren’t here to tell you to take a nice walk.
You don't know my views on race. I know how liberals view race however. Liberals say it out loud.
This is not a serious take on any level, Poindexter. These are two separate institutions whose stakeholders bear similarities but who are separate and distinct, and who make separate and distinct decisions from one another about policy, leadership, and when to pull the plug on a no-confidence vote. Re-read DD's article and come back when you can accurately place yourself in the list. While you're at it, cross-reference this with some of the reporting on how billionaire donors steer the conversation at their alma maters.
"The fact of the matter is...and if you had any critical thinking left outside of critical race theory...the only thing different between these two women in this situation...is race." Except for how they work for two different employers in two different states with different networks, interests and considerations.
Hahah you called me Poindexter. That was hilarious and I appreciate it. Old person jokes are the best.
Old crank felt like your demographic. Glad you can still laugh about it while you can.
Clark Kerr once said: “I find that the three major administrative problems on a campus are sex for the students, athletics for the alumni and parking for the faculty.” Were it only still that simple.
Boy have times changed. Nowadays the students apparently aren't having any sex, the people who care most about athletics are the state-sanctioned bookies, and the faculty would happily give up their parking if it meant they could do everything via zoom.
USC's football coach gets 20 mill a year lol