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More
academic problems for faculty and students are resolved by
doing away with an administrative office than by creating
a new one.
If
faculty do not know their professional status within the university
nor correctly identify their profession, how can they possibly
know their responsibilities?
If
you do not respect a person, you cannot effectively work with
them.
A
faculty divided will never achieve its full potential.
Bureaucracy
and education are contradictory; education is the catalyst
for change; bureaucracy thrives with status quo.
An
institution that has negated the traditional checks and balances
between administration and faculty is an institution that
is in trouble, but probably doesn't know it.
When
administration attacks faculty vested interests, loyalty,
trust and commitment are destroyed; and faculty morale and
educational quality are diminished.
There
is nothing wrong with a majority of teachers, but how they
are managed is often terribly wrong, and this leads to cynicism
and poor teaching.
Education
cannot flourish under administrative ignorance and tyranny.
Faculty
and administrative values/priorities tend to be opposites;
administrators value efficiency while faculty value effectiveness.
Rarely if ever is educational effectiveness operationally
efficient, nor does an academic operation that is efficient
often achieve true effectiveness.
There
is a curious perversity affecting American education which
can best be described as governing bodies attaching greater
importance to the institutional operation than to its mission.
The
Ph.D. in Graphic Design sounds more like a marketing ploy
than it does a credible program of study.
Students
are not asking for a Ph.D. in graphic design; the profession
is not asking for a Ph. D. in graphic design, only the administrators
are asking for a Ph. D. in graphic design.
At
one time, graduate programs required a separate graduate faculty.
Today, graduate programs taught entirely with undergraduate
faculty are an institutional short-cut at the expense of students
seeking an advanced degree.
Individual
evaluation of faculty merit serves the institution; group
evaluation of faculty merit by educational program improves
the quality of education and serves the student.
Administrators
and faculty seldom have the same priorities, and it is this
dichotomy that is so destructive to the faculty/administrative
relationship.
Every
educational institution has dual objectives—to survive
and to educate. To flourish, the two objectives must be in
balance.
The
quality of education is determined by administration, faculty
and students working in harmony which occurs only when all
three share powers and are in balance.
A
school must survive in order to educate, however, its only
true justification for survival lies in the quality of its
education.
Isn't
it ironic how some things change with time. The words “administrate,
administrative, administration and administrator” are
all derivatives of the Latin verb “administro” meaning
“to serve.” What was wrong with the original definition?
Administrators
today seem to forget that the institutional mission is to
educate students. Based on current university practices and
policies, it is easy to believe that grants and research are
primary with education being secondary.
I
wonder how students feel about teachers being evaluated by
administration more on what they do outside the classroom
rather than what they do in it.
The
cheapest ticket and shortest route to educational mediocrity
is relying on graduate Teaching Assistants for teachers rather
than assigning them to teachers as assistants.
Administrators
rarely understand the psychology of space and its relationship
to educational quality. The more scattered the faculty offices,
the less unified the faculty; the greater the reliance on
multi use classroom space; the more disjointed the program
and student body.
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