In the Minnesota Daily, a very pissed professor says what needs to be said.
It would be nice if the newspaper received five or ten of these a day. But only a few professors have the guts to write them.
… Last June, [our department] received authorization from the College of Liberal Arts to search for a replacement in ancient religion. This position was meant to serve the newly-established undergraduate program in Religious Studies, which was identified as one of the University’s priorities in its latest strategic plan. We had almost carried the search to a successful conclusion; after the long process of reading applications and conducting preliminary interviews, we had identified three excellent candidates to invite to campus.
Then, on Dec. 9, the bulk of our work having been completed, CLA notified CNES that our search was cancelled. We could do nothing but inform our 50 applicants that their trouble was in vain. We shall be unable to offer the courses the successful candidate would have come to the University to teach. The time and effort put forth by faculty, students and staff to conduct the search had been wasted.
For what? To save the cost of hiring a starting assistant professor, whose salary would be in the range of $55,000 per year, plus benefits. Compare that to the salaries of top administrators and athletics coaches. It’s nice that the University’s top brass froze executive compensation upon imposing the hiring pause. But it doesn’t hurt to have your salary frozen at several hundred thousand dollars per year.
President Bob Bruininks said in a Dec. 4 e-mail message to employees that the administration’s objectives during the current economic crisis are to “maintain the core strength and quality of the University” and to “increase productivity … while improving service and efficiency.” How does cutting faculty positions serve to maintain quality? How does it improve service and efficiency to withdraw curriculum from students trying to complete degrees? How does it increase productivity to waste employees’ time by canceling searches that are underway? I could have taught an entire course in the time I spent chairing the search in ancient religion or used that time for research. Besides reducing productivity, when the University administration throws our time away, it throws away its putative commitment to excellence.
The administration’s communications addressing the University’s financial problems always refer to the state, the state’s budget deficit and the state’s appropriation to the University — as if the hiring pause, with all its consequences, simply results from Minnesota’s strained economic situation. I submit that the University’s financial position would be much better now if the administration had not chosen to spend large sums on things it wanted, regardless of whether those things have anything to do with the University’s core academic mission. This past year has seen the purchase of a new financial system — essentially a software package — for the price of $28 million. The old financial system worked fine; the new one does not.
Everyone can point to favorite examples of profligate spending, and most would point first at athletics (the costly new stadium and the high salaries of coaches) or at administration (the ever-increasing number of vice presidents), with its many “initiatives” of dubious purpose and effectiveness (notably the Strategic Propaganda Initiative, as it would rightly be called). Few would point to academics and claim we have too many faculty teaching too many courses, doing too much research and working with too many students….
The author is Eva von Dassow.
No ancient religion, of course, can hope to compete on her campus with the Glory of the Gridiron.
January 20th, 2009 at 9:45AM
Stategic Propaganda Initiative – I love it!
Along with MoreU Park and our "ambitious aspirations to become one of the top three public universities in the world [sic]."
To top it all off we were greeted with a videotaped spam message for the beginning of term from OurLeader that was pure propaganda. There the wisdom of investing in new football facilities was touted as well as claims made about how OurLeader had done so much to make public education affordable. This while we are last – at about 60% – in six year graduation rate among our peer aspirational group. [Ugh, adminspeak...] We also have the highest average debt at graduation.
The latest from Lake Wobegon.
January 20th, 2009 at 10:08AM
$28MM for a new financial system? This says it’s shaping up to be more like $50 million.
Wonder if they know about Hershey Halloween Hell.
January 20th, 2009 at 10:34AM
Amidst all the talk about running universities like businesses, it would sometimes be nice if people actually ran universities like businesses. Take, say, accounting for faculty hours. How much does an hour of faculty time cost the university, and how many hours did Professor von Dassow and her colleagues spend on a search that has now been cancelled? That’s a cost, and it would be nice if it were occasionally considered as such.
To take another example, if a university spends, say, $1,000,000 on a start-up package for a natural scientist, who then leaves because the university can’t pony up $45,000 a year for a spousal lectureship, then that seems like an unbusinesslike and inefficient use of resources.
January 20th, 2009 at 12:27PM
Not all of the folks at the U of M have been drinking the Koolaid. The comments on the U’s spamsite have been mostly critical, including one from another faculty member who comments on OurLeader’s Spring Greeting Propaganda Video:
Dear Mr. President,
You disgrace the University of Minnesota, each and every time you open your mouth. If you had a dime’s worth of integrity you would promptly resign.
Yours truly,
William Messing
Professor, School of Mathematics
University of Minnesota
January 21st, 2009 at 10:40AM
[...] found with additional comments over at University Diaries.) [...]
April 7th, 2009 at 9:14AM
[...] von Dassow has already made a starring appearance on this blog, complaining about the benighted University of Minnesota, where she teaches. This [...]