My Big Ask: Are Deans an Expense We Can No Longer Afford?

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I realize that many might not take my title seriously, or think that I am simply being sarcastic. I am not. In the 1980s and 90s many U.S. corporations cut costs– and increased profits– simply by laying off much of their middle management. In Canada and Europe, health care costs are contained, at least in part, because a public health care system avoids the high administrative expenses necessary in a for-profit system.

I think the U.S. education system ought to consider trimming costs– and reversing the shift from full time tenured professors to adjuncts and the ongoing rise in tuition and fees– by considering radical changes in administrative structure. After reading, “For Deans, Off Campus is Now is the Place to Be for Deans,” I am think that the Dean– and all of its attendant administrative structure– might be one place to start.

What does a Dean do? According to the article, his or her main function now is “college ambassador, chief visionary, and major fund raiser.” Much of this work, it seems to be, could be done in departments, or in an adequately funded public relations department, or in some cases by interested faculty members. As the article points out, because the Dean is busy elsewhere he has to expand his staff, further increasing administrative costs. It’s bloat.

“[Dean] Peña-Mora …. created… a vice dean for research; a vice dean for academic affairs… an adviser for undergraduate education; a senior associate dean for industry, government, and global education; an associate dean for advancement; and a director of strategic communications. ” The cost of his successful cheerleading is a larger, more cumbersome, administration and an implicit cheapening of the institution. It’s not a good deal.

Posted in: Economics, Professional

Nixon’s Revenge

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When we were kids in Texas, and we went to Mexico and ate something that we should not have eaten, we called the resulting diarrhea Montezuma’s revenge (people still do, of course). It has that authentic American racist feel to it, and it’s more than a little unfair to complain so cavalierly about a problem like dysentery, which is one of the scourges of poverty everywhere. Yet is also has a pointed irony, as if we recognized a kind of karma in genocide and colonialism.

The ongoing budget battles in the U.S., summarized in “State Lawmakers Seek More Say Over Colleges,” aren’t genocide, of course, but they do represent a kind of unfortunate political karma. Let’s call it Nixon’s revenge. Somehow– that somehow suggests an as yet undecipherable history– a portion of the U.S. electorate has become convinced that the only way to balance budgets is to make cuts. Since we spend so much on education, that means we have to cut there.

Yet if by “we” we mean the American people as represented by polls, then “we” don’t want these cuts. Arguably, they are in fact unnecessary, even in the most practical sense. If the “we” is the “we” that voted for the far right, though, then that “we” has given our body politic a bad case of political dysentery. Literally, a long dialog about nothing; discursive excrement. It’s Nixon’s revenge against the now grown up college kids who hated him so much.

We are being sold a bill of goods about education, to use the cliche, and we are buying it, in the same way that we were sold a bill of goods in Nixon’s “moral majority.” Or, in fact, in the same way that we have been sold things like the “pet rock.” I also don’t think it is historically inaccurate to say that only the much too tenuous power of people organized in unions is going to prevent some sort of final right wing solution to the “problem” of education.

Posted in: Economics, Language, Professional, Writing

Euphemism

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In the last several weeks the demonetization of teachers has reached a fever pitch. In fact, the long-standing conservative attack on the government in general and on public schools and public school teachers in particular, seems to be broadening out to include firefighters, nurses, social workers, prison guards… If you work for the government, and you believe that you have the right to collectively bargain, your salary, pension, and working conditions are all up for grabs. The U.S. middle class has apparently agreed to its own destruction.

It’s a remarkable reversal. The people who exemplify the democratic ideals of public service have become the targets of a right-wing nihilism that believes that destroying the public commons will allow market forces to create utopia. One of the great tricks of this nihilism is the use of euphemism. It’s as if at some level conservatives realized that if they explained their real intentions they would be chased out of the room. You can’t tell people that you want to find a way to institutionalize low wages; instead, you push the “right to work” law.

You can’t tell people that you find the democratic process cumbersome and irritating; you have to say that you want “flexibility.” You don’t want to talk about the need to address poverty, so you talk about the “failure of public schools” and “bad teachers that cannot be fired.” And, most importantly, you can’t tell people that you want to create a more rigid, easily measurable education system, simply becuase that’s cheaper, and, again, becuase democracy and education is hard to measure or predict. You talk about accountability.

Posted in: Writing