It is better (as Bismarck said of laws) not to see them being made.
Certainly universities do all they can to conceal the details that go into the making of people like Richard Herman; but a zealous Chicago Tribune reporter has stridden (look it up) into the sausage factory. We, who would never dare, are in her debt. Hold it cheap / May who ne’er hung there!
Jodi Cohen has come back with a tale so exhaustively, precisely instructive as to the manufacture of moneyed academic malingerers that it is worth our while to attend.
Start with the fact that as then-chancellor of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Herman personally presided over arguably the largest scandal in the history of the University of Illinois – the now-notorious special admissions scandal.
Herman was “the ultimate decision-maker” for the applicants who were connected to trustees, lawmakers and other powerful people. Herman at times overruled admissions officials to enable the students to get into the school.
So this would seem to be a man who helped bring national disgrace to his institution. What to do with him?
Well, Herman is a math professor. He can teach math. A lot of students need help in math. So he goes back to the math department and teaches math, yes?
NO, because now that he’s dragged an entire university system into the mud he’s too eminent.
“I don’t think you should expect him to teach a freshman calculus section with a ton of students.” Quote unquote. From an emeritus professor there. And the university agrees. Not only should this man not have to teach freshmen, he should teach no math courses at all. Apparently the whole field is now beneath him.
But OTOH the university is paying him over two hundred thousand dollars, so he should do something, right?
Weeeeelllll… A man of his stature can’t be expected to live in Urbana-Champaign, which is where he … uh… something for $212,000… He can only be expected to commute in once a week from Chicago. This unfortunate mobility problem radically diminishes his ability to, you know, be there.
Now, after he resigned in disgrace, he did condescend to teach two courses a year at this inconvenient location. In the College of Education, because you wouldn’t want him sullying himself by teaching in his field of expertise. Unsettlingly, however, “His biography on the College of Education’s faculty website is blank.”
Not only is his website blank; so are his class lists. The man has an uncanny ability to get his classes cancelled. It keeps happening. They just effing don’t fill! Who knows why?
Oh wait.
I mean, wait, and wait. Before the second wait. The first: Because the eminent chancellor can’t, curiously enough, get anyone to sign up for his courses, he “has twice switched to teaching online classes to make up for on-campus courses that were canceled for low enrollment.”
OOH LA LA online! Well, online. Yes, online. Talk about a sausage factory… Goes without saying that this solves the mommy don’t make me go down there problem. Plus, well, let’s just say that UD would love to know who’s teaching Herman’s online courses…
So the second wait. Second wait is how does this genius manage to get one course cancelled after another?
“Richard acknowledges that he probably missed a deadline for getting his information submitted in time to get included in the (catalog).”
That’s from a university spokesman, explaining one of the cancellations. The other? It was a grad ed course. But… whoops!
[B]ecause the UIC graduate program doesn’t offer a higher education degree track, there was insufficient student interest and enrollment.
This is the moment to caution you: Don’t try this at home. For all of these elements to come together, for all of this sausage-making to make a sausage, you need high-level strategic skills plus extremely high-level connections.
Also, it probably doesn’t hurt to have inside information which, if released, could ruin the careers of the high-level connections.
May 7th, 2013 at 11:04AM
Jeez! The TAs and young Ph. D.s I’ll very occasionally meet seem as idealistic as can be. When do they chuck it to become academe’s bureaucratic gamesmen? I’m okay, too, with profs who want to stand down from teaching, charge up the batteries, get some distance from the day-to-day grind, etc. That’s not what this post is about, right?
Yes, UD, of course, you’re right that Prof. Herman appears to be a protected worker. How many people are compelled to cover for him in one way or another?
May 7th, 2013 at 4:33PM
It’s all very postmodern really, isn’t it? So now he’s teaching an online course – except he probably isn’t, really. And his students probably aren’t really who they say they are either. Maybe it’s all been outsourced to some darkened room in Mumbai; there’s a guy sitting in front of a computer screen pretending to be Herman, teaching the guy sitting in the booth next to him who’s pretending to be one of Herman’s students.
May 7th, 2013 at 5:14PM
3. Alan, Jack/OH: I’m always struck by how much WORK has to be done in order to make it possible for nothing to happen.
May 8th, 2013 at 12:09PM
Alan’s scenario is seeming increasingly plausible to me, at least at some institutions. Of course, it’s only a stopgap for the day when we have machines playing both roles (and presumably doing the program-level assessment, an increasingly-common third element, as well).
Mind you, I teach online, and believe it can be done well. But this sort of thing gives the practice a bad name.
May 8th, 2013 at 10:34PM
I was going to ask what AU did with Berendzen after he lost his presidency, but ratemyprofessors suggests that he did indeed go back to teaching.
August 6th, 2015 at 6:20PM
[…] UIUC certainly does know how to pick ’em. Let us not forgot Richard Herman. […]
August 14th, 2015 at 8:16AM
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