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When I cover the madnesses affecting higher education, California comes up often, although I certainly cover schools in the rest of the country.<\/p>\n
Wisconsin has avoided the madness, with nothing in the way of riots or flamboyant frauds that seem commonplace elsewhere. You\u2019d\u00a0 think the state government there would leave well enough alone, but such is not the case. Are they jealous? It would seems so, because when I write of events in Wisconsin, it\u2019s always about the ways the government there is working diligently to undermine the success higher education has seen in Wisconsin.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve written of the methods to destroy higher education going on there<\/a>, but the latest move is even more grotesque:<\/p>\n Fighting to Keep Leaders Who Are Academics<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n One of the key factors in the destruction of higher ed, identified by everyone who works in it, has been the infestation of a greedy administrative class filled by people with no actual education experience.<\/p>\n Dean: \u201cWe need to have a meeting regarding a student complaint about you. She said the final exam she took didn\u2019t have the questions on it that it was supposed to have.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n –the gentle reader needs to understand the only way a student could make this complaint is if she had access to the final exam questions\u2014I was tipped off that the student had access to the final, so, yes, I changed some things around. The Dean, having no education experience, could only determine there was an unhappy student.<\/em><\/p>\n Every campus has legions of administrators, filling hives which eventually turn into palaces. The way how higher education is set up, especially community colleges, makes it particularly easy to stick a few dozen friends and family into 100k a year \u201cdo nothing\u201d administrative jobs with nobody the wiser. Yes, every once in a blue moon we find out about it<\/a>, but it won\u2019t surprise me to eventually learn that dozens of states have systems with such activity in them.<\/p>\n Admin: \u201cIt is now mandatory that on the first day of class, you are to assign all students into groups, for purposes of group projects and in-class work. You will maintain these groups for the entire semester.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n —I\u2019m serious, yet another utterly inexperienced Deanling tried to cram this down our throats, because \u201cgroup projects improve retention.\u201d Only after faculty explained to her repeatedly that attrition made this idea completely unworkable (because about half our students were fake students who were only there for the checks) did she relent\u2026.I can\u2019t recall if it was 3, or 4, weekly meetings until she acknowledged reality. I kid myself to think the faculty convinced her directly, but we were smart enough to tell the students stuck in 1-person groups to complain to the Dean about it.<\/em><\/p>\n While many of the deanling positions on campus are pure patronage, the top position is particularly precious: as I\u2019ve shown many times, the Poo Bah, the self-aggrandized leader of the campus, can rake in millions in plunder. Thus it is we quite commonly have campuses ruled by leaders with no understanding of a university\u2019s mission of education and research, and thus become more interested in flitting around the world and living the high life than serving as a steward (the gentle reader is encouraged to search my blog under \u201cadministrative corruption\u201d for a 6 part series relatively briefly covering the highlights, and I\u2019m not even talking about Napolitano\u2019s 100+ million dollar looting<\/a>).<\/p>\n Me: \u201cThe exponents?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Administrator: \u201cYeah, those. You told students that there\u2019s always a one up there, but you don\u2019t always write it. You should always just put a one up there.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Me: \u201cThank you.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n —When I do open my mouth to an administrator, it\u2019s usually to say \u2018thank you\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\n A clueless Poo Bah can do great harm to an institution (for example, Bernie Sander\u2019s wife<\/a>\u2019s school is doomed because of her leadership), although the higher ups, like chancellors and provost, can ameliorate some of the damage.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u2018\u2026Madison campus policy holds that its chancellor, provost and vice chancellor must hold a tenured faculty rank — effectively disqualifying nonacademics.\u201c<\/em><\/p>\n The institutions in Wisconsin can be led by political friends, but those other positions must, by Wisconsin rules, be academics, with a record of scholarship and all that entails. Could this be why Wisconsin has avoided so much scandal? Moot point, as the state government there seeks to remove one of the few remaining roadblocks to plunder. The change of rules was nearly stealthily accomplished:<\/p>\n \u201cThere was no advance notice, it was never given a public hearing, and no legislator publicly took credit for it,\u201d the group wrote. \u201cAlthough PROFS had been meeting with members of the committee as well as legislative leadership, this proposal was never mentioned. In addition to the lack of transparency or opportunity for constituent input, this is also inconsistent with the committee leadership\u2019s expressed desire that nonfiscal policy be removed from the budget.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n –PROFS is a group of the Faculty Senate.<\/em><\/p>\n Honest, allowing academics to have a role in academia is a good idea. Is there any other industry (and I hate that higher education is considered an industry) where there is such an active effort to assure the managers have no knowledge, experience, or understanding of the industry?<\/p>\n This requirement is among the reasons why Madison is consistently ranked one of the top universities in the world.\u201d Rebecca Blank, Madison’s current chancellor, is a professor of economics.<\/em><\/p>\n The power grab here is pretty obvious, and, again, everyone who works in higher ed knows exactly what\u2019s going to happen when they change these rules. The article I\u2019m quoting from naturally is unwilling to call the spade a spade, but one comment sums it up nicely:<\/p>\n The professors are opposing the converting of university presidencies into sweet plums for political hacks and termed-out partisans and giving political appointees power to take away livelihoods of scholars whose research or teaching counters the party line. With so many universities in WI, where real tenure no longer exists, a lot is at stake here.<\/em><\/p>\n I know, I\u2019m at the age where being opposed to change is hardwired into my nature but I just don\u2019t get it: Wisconsin has avoided the riots and huge scandals of other states. Why is there such a push to debase Wisconsin\u2019s system to the level of known failing systems?<\/p>\n Trying to answer that question gives me no choice but to consider the possibility of a conspiracy here\u2026but I still lean towards simple greed.<\/p>\n www.professorconfess.blogspot.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\nAdministrator: \u201cYou need to be more clear in your writing on the board. The little numbers, the ones up top?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n