RST: I’m worried about you, friend. How is your back?
PARTICIPATION: That’s right. Getting old is hell, but for me it’s manageable because I still have all my marbles.
RST: You have a lot of marbles, so here’s something I’m struggling with and I want you to help me figure it out.
PARTICIPATION: I will try to help, but there are no dog grooming questions.
RST: No, smart man. It’s a problem of other minds. Although most of us are aware of all the challenges facing the elite now, the group that seems to be ignorant of the wider picture of the world is, I think, the majority of the intelligentsia. I know that the two main trade books in our industry are not widely read by educators, so I wonder how much attention they pay to what goes on outside their campus walls.
PARTICIPATION: I would like most intellectuals to have limited reading and viewing habits: The New York Times, The Washington Post, The AtlanticCNN and MSNBC.
RST: Have you been watching me on my coffee table? You forgot The New Yorker. And NPR.
PARTICIPATION: My colleagues even started studying with them The Wall Street Journal, The NY Post again Forbes and watching Fox News, they won’t get a glimpse of a world tired of being told what to read and how to think by cultural elites and seafarers—many of whom are housed within our universities.
RST: Yes. That’s what surprised us in 2016. They hear the “elite” calling them a sad basket case, which most of my educated friends are still waiting for. I am concerned that many teachers do not appreciate the real and pressing problems we face. Currently, premiums are lower than the insurance industry in terms of public trust.
PARTICIPATION: Now that’s a crime. If we fall under the Congress, which we approach, Katie, close the door.
RST: “Katie, close the door”? Gordon, your face card never fails!
PARTICIPATION: Remember, I grew up in rural America and still have great roots for the land grant!
RST: The presidents I talk to know that we live in a time of change or death, and yet when they explain to the faculty that there is no income, no one believes them. I mean, if Harvard and Amherst are cutting programs and staff, what kind of world do we all think we’re living in? Every day in the mainstream and national media, the messages are there for everyone to see.
However, whenever a president needs to respond to a financial threat, intelligence says, Oh there, bake! You cannot cut any educational programs. Now, it is reasonable for each of us to believe that what we teach and what we learn are the most important areas of any curriculum. And it makes sense that we defend that against the philistines in the administration structure. And none of us want to lose our jobs or see our colleagues fired.
PARTICIPATION: I always ask when you are going to stop working.
RST: Man, I hunt a lot (in Robert Kelchen’s terms). But here’s where I’m stuck: Is this a leadership issue? I mean, are presidents—and provosts, who have to do the dirty work of programming—failing to communicate to faculty what’s at stake?
PARTICIPATION: Of course, we philistines fail at that. The reason is that we almost always communicate in a dynamic and talk about education. Soft tones and wishy-washy phrases are no longer good megaphones.
RST: Arthur Levine, who is young compared to you, said that the way he gets people into Brandeis is “Scare the faculty by telling them the truth, and then ask them to help you plan for the future.” Doug wrote about that in his “Tough Love” column, where he says institutions would do well to have interim presidents who don’t need a job. It was like that for Arthur, before he came back to it.
PARTICIPATION: That to me is a sad statement about the state of higher education—we need to get the hired guns to come in, make changes and leave before they run out of town. That is the fault of both management and faculty, management who will not or cannot do their job and faculty so resistant to any change that they would rather blow up the institution than allow their comfort zone to be challenged. What’s going on!
RST: In retrospect, I have heard suggestions such as, We just need to demand that the government give us more money! Or: You have to spend more money on marketing to get more (and better) readers. Or: The reason registrations dropped is because the new website was difficult to navigate.
PARTICIPATION: Or reduce the number of administrators or lay off employees.
RST: Or quit athletics. Although, really, Gordon, athletics is wackadoodle these days.
PARTICIPATION: Athletics is a mess!
RST: So I always get stuck when I think creatively. These ideas are funny to anyone who has been paying attention. I mean, learning is our job; we are intelligent people.
PARTICIPATION: People who are not very bright, but often politically savvy. Many of our colleagues get their ideas from brainstorming sessions rather than from extensive and often uncomfortable conversations.
RST: I think that is true. But taking my knowledge, Gordon, I want to make a point that should not go without saying. And following your example, I’ll shout it in all caps:
TEACHING TODAY IS REALLY PAINFUL.
I come home after almost every class feeling like a failure. It is a small comfort to hear that everyone has the same experience. I don’t blame the students, they are confused. They are scared, stressed, lonely, tired, working jobs they hate, and now they have to choose between buying gas and food. I don’t know how to help them and prepare them for what comes next.
I used to think I had the best job in the world. And now, well, I don’t know how to do something that I felt (sort of) good at. These days, I’m confused: scared, depressed, lonely, tired, working a job I loved (and paying about $6 a liter of gas). So it’s no wonder that the faculty, almost all of them students, are sad and don’t want to waste time watching Fox News. I need you to have compassion here on the faculty who are doing hard, hard work and not a few that get under your skin.
PARTICIPATION: You just hit the target (and the F bomb). For both faculty and students, this educational project is a heavy burden. And I know and have seen that as I spend time and faculty with students, especially on our regional campuses and with students and families from the coal fields of West Virginia or rural Ohio. So you have to be compassionate. And that’s one of the reasons why there is such a disconnect between the public and the universities—the public doesn’t hear the pressure, it just hears the sound of elitist statements coming out of many of our universities.
RST: And the media loves controversy, so stories of “woke” professors saying stupid things and campus protests—which most of us don’t—get more attention than they deserve.
PARTICIPATION: Big words drown or torture many to comply with the catechism. Moderators know that we are at a peak in higher education unlike any other time. It’s easy for me to say get a backbone, take the heat and make the right decisions. They will build a statue of you in a hundred years.
RST: Gordon, there’s already a bobblehead for you. You also don’t need a template.
PARTICIPATION: But, as I have told you before, unfortunately, many of our presidents are chosen by these bad search committees, which often leads to people who are afraid to make difficult decisions.
RST: Hang in there, friend. That may be true, but it’s also true that boards say they want to hire “agents of change,” but when their golf buddies start whining about changes at their alma maters, they don’t support the presidents. That’s part of why we’re seeing so much commotion. Presidents are caught between crippled faculty and inexperienced boards. I place a lot of blame on the boards; You and I will have to talk about them.
The EGG: That is the subject we have to deal with. Good boards are good. Horrible bad boards. I have had both.
RST: Look, as a faculty member, I want leadership that is compassionate, forward-thinking, creative, collaborative and transparent. However, the newly minted (welcome) president who is all those things and more is getting his wits about him—or at least angry members from predictable departments—because they can’t see the world outside their campus walls and don’t want to change anything. If higher ed continues to lose great presidents, we will be in the soup.
PARTICIPATION: We need compassionate leaders, but we also need compassionate listeners. You will be surprised if I remind you that we need a shared responsibility in higher education if we are really going to be able to reach better solutions to our growing problems.
RST: And I must remind you that most of the students are full of responsibility, stressed, burned out and hunting. Because, if you didn’t get the message the first time, teaching today is really hard.
But I know on each campus there are those who find you and want to help. This is where Arthur’s design is very clever. It’s Ben Franklin’s corollary: The best way to get people on your side is to ask them for help. And this time, the request is true.
