RST: Gordon, I know I said you can wait and see The Devil Wears Prada 2 until your grandchildren come in July, but I’m changing my mind. You must see it immediately so that we can discuss its relevance to the higher order.
PARTICIPATION: I can’t keep up with all this homework! But Rachel, now that we’ve become good friends, we’ve made a rhythm of working together and I understand that you’re the boss, we need to plan.
RST: Squirrel!
PARTICIPATION: I need you to explain something to me about your role as a faculty member. I agree that you have a wide set of experiences and therefore you were not integrated within the English Department. Anyway, you are a classic scholar too.
RST: You are the second person to call me that this month. The first was an old friend, who has a Ph.D. in physics who chose to leave academia for industry. I was complaining about my editor and crying, “He’s not my boss.” This, he said with a giggle, is not true. Um, of course.
PARTICIPATION: Well, obviously you are my boss. But the most important thing for me and our students is that he is an old academic but he has found a way to understand the complexities of universities and because of that he was able to look at them through a different telescope lens—a lens that most leaders should get to be able to make good decisions about the common good. So I ask you again: What intellectually makes it so difficult for many to get an opinion on the problem facing higher education?
RST: When you call me a “classical scholar,” I think you mean that I was hired on the tenure track and went through a promotion to full professor. If so, I would say that “we” are not used to the idea of having a boss. We operate like we own small shops on Main Street instead of the doors of a big box store.
PARTICIPATION: However, why do faculty colleagues often refuse to recognize the financial challenges facing universities? This insight was brought home to me in your Sandbox when you wrote about your interview with Dan Greenstein, who focused on the financial realities facing colleges and universities. His research shows that almost half of the educational institutions in the country are severely underfunded. In fact, it is amazing to me that all this information is available to our faculty, and the general closures and terminations of programs have been widely discussed in the higher education press, yet there is still a reluctance to believe it. Go ahead, boss.
RST: What Dan is doing is very interesting, actually, and the situation is very difficult, Grasshopper. He has built his own analytical tool and can use reports based on publicly available data to assess the institution’s financial risk. Dan does this work and writes about it on his blog, just like he did with the PASSHE revolution. It’s his research hobby (the guy never sleeps).
PARTICIPATION: Rachel, what I’m trying to grasp is why are so bright people ignorant of the reality of the times, and why don’t they meet with leadership to create solutions?
RST: Join hands? You mean instead of waving one finger? Have you met us? Go ahead.
PARTICIPATION: I suspect there is this idea that “we” are safe, so even if Amazon last week allowed 8,000 people to leave quickly and more to come, we are not exempt. There were cuts at Stanford, Harvard, Penn State, Wisconsin, USC and many others. If I were a faculty member learning about those areas, I would immediately ask questions about how to avoid that fate and what I should do to support the university’s mission.
RST: Yes, and all the other cuts to colleges and universities everywhere. At this point, I don’t know how it is possible for someone not to know the fact that the cliff of people we have known for a long time has arrived, that society he hates us he no longer trusts what we offer, that many students leave without a degree but with a lot of debt, and that many states and provinces say, “Sorry, I can’t pay you anymore.” I think the problem with the faculty, as I told you last time, is that / we are overwhelmed with a lot of work to do, and we have not been taught / trained to understand much of this. We can look at the budget and see an endowment of X zillion dollars, or a bunch of money in “reserves” and think we’re OK. Because, Gordon, we were always right.
PARTICIPATION: Let me quickly admit that many of my presidential colleagues and I have to bear a good portion of the initial blame, because we tend to tell our internal audience that things are going well when they are not. Because of the generosity of the spirit and great fear, we did not want to wake up the beehives. My/our bad! However, it still amazes me that such bright people cannot understand that the world is full of chaos and they need to pay attention and ask the questions that all people ask about the world around them.
RST: Um, yes. It’s confusing. Furthermore, another interesting finding from Dan’s work is that even Richie’s wealth of higher ed have been living above their (sustainable) means. They are like trust fund kids withdrawing their accounts.
PARTICIPATION: No one is safe from making difficult decisions. The only safety is the institution’s willingness to make good decisions and do them quickly. Most of the problem is the script that says “someone is going to save us” or “our system is very serious.” And that goes hand in hand with the belief that it’s always someone else’s fault. I really like Dan’s work because he paints a broad picture that is hard to ignore.
RST: Data is data. And the findings can be surprising. While applying his tool to the programs, Dan discovered that the financial health of a public system depends less on government funding than it does on governance and leadership.
PARTICIPATION: Tell me about it. But that shouldn’t come as a surprise, because leadership is a key factor for change and higher education does a terrible job of finding the right leaders at the right time. Search committees can intimidate candidates. They can be public beauty pageants where we parade candidates in front of hostile groups. This is in line with the concern of many who will be exposed to the public for fear of losing their current position. That is not the way to attract people who can lead in a difficult area.
RST: We need good and brave people to want to take these jobs. Here’s what I’m curious about: How many leaders are really willing to face the facts when Dan presents them? I mean, some are hungry for information. I just had him run his tool to find a new president, which surprised him. I asked because the president had ideas about where to cut; the analysis showed how those departments contributed to the overall financial health. That’s a great conversation starter for the leadership team. But I’ve talked to other presidents who do the clever trick of messing with data, missing the forest for the leaves. The IPEDS data is two years behind, sure, but Dan can include the latest enrollment and financial assessment information. We know that things do not go smoothly. Presidents who want to mess around are basically beyond help. But, even if they see the big picture, will they be able to convince faculty, staff and boards that changes need to be made?
PARTICIPATION: That is a leadership challenge. Managing a university is like a political campaign; university presidents have limited power because they are always busy or compromise. In fact, it’s worrying. Most presidents kick the ball down the road until they leave town for their next job or retire. Why are you going through hell? Leave it to your successor and eat popcorn on the side.
RST: Except that road is the end, as we’ve seen with all the closures. Gordon, I want to respond to your first comment. He called me an “old scholar.” When you say “intelligence,” what exactly do you mean? Your homework for our next discussion is to read a new novel called Adjunction by Maria Adelmann. It is about the caste system in the professoriate and it burns with class rage. It’s a little spicy, but I think you’ll be able to handle it. You are an adult, although you (and I) can shop in the children’s section.
PARTICIPATION: You know I hate homework. It disturbs the view Pitt!!
RST: Most of us have finished the second season. If you didn’t go too far, you would get caught.
