Achieving “direct honesty” in today’s university setting is an ambitious goal.
Any university needs to search long and hard to find special leadership.
I attended that other school in Ithaca, as did my parents and grandparents. I’m hoping they will find a special person to help correct Cornell’s current direction.
How honest is the grading system these days…for students and faculty?
Does the staffing of the university’s administration reflect the mission of the school?
More employees in the “Development” office than those teaching mathematics?
There is an axiom in systems theory (or whatnot) that goes something like the system is designed to give you the outcomes you are getting. Leadership in higher education, in my opinion, is bad because the systems are designed to produce what we get. To be a dean, provost, or president, you have to go through a guantlet of chiar, associate dean, and associate provost-type positions that are mostly about pushing paper and doing dull tasks. You also can't get through that system with direct honesty. You get through it by playing the game of elite ploliteness. Creative problem solvers generally don't want to go through this. Careerists that just want the money and power will.
These people also feel really important by having other people report to them, and you get the bloated bureaucracy.
Cornell is in an interesting place. In the past, they could charge ivy league prices but pay employees low wages because Ithaca, NY, was a small, inexpensive town. We are now a costly place to live, and so hiring the people you need to function (grounds crew, admins, etc.) is more of a challenge. Cornell has more money than Ithaca College, so they are better equipped to deal with it. The consequences for Ithaca College are more serious.
I’m wondering if we will ever see a university somewhere discard the feel-good “studies” curriculum and purposely shrink their enrollment while raising admissions standards?
There is an opportunity out there for bold leadership.
Worse is that so few colleges are trying to differentiate themselves at all. It makes no sense in a competitive market except that faculty are very conservative in their actions. Yours is one of many ideas a smart college might look to do.
“I would say we have to at least triple our analytics team, but I don’t think leadership even realizes this. In fact, I don’t think most of higher education leadership is data literate enough to recognize the need.” Totally agree. You could even do it low-budget and build a team of faculty who get a one-course release each semester to work on analytics. Then you have people already invested in the institution who are better positioned to interpret the data.
Agreed, hiring data support within would be a smart move. This is true of many functions on campus. We have a marketing and advertising program, but none of those people ever seem to be involved in our marketing campaigns, as one example.
Achieving “direct honesty” in today’s university setting is an ambitious goal.
Any university needs to search long and hard to find special leadership.
I attended that other school in Ithaca, as did my parents and grandparents. I’m hoping they will find a special person to help correct Cornell’s current direction.
How honest is the grading system these days…for students and faculty?
Does the staffing of the university’s administration reflect the mission of the school?
More employees in the “Development” office than those teaching mathematics?
There is an axiom in systems theory (or whatnot) that goes something like the system is designed to give you the outcomes you are getting. Leadership in higher education, in my opinion, is bad because the systems are designed to produce what we get. To be a dean, provost, or president, you have to go through a guantlet of chiar, associate dean, and associate provost-type positions that are mostly about pushing paper and doing dull tasks. You also can't get through that system with direct honesty. You get through it by playing the game of elite ploliteness. Creative problem solvers generally don't want to go through this. Careerists that just want the money and power will.
These people also feel really important by having other people report to them, and you get the bloated bureaucracy.
Cornell is in an interesting place. In the past, they could charge ivy league prices but pay employees low wages because Ithaca, NY, was a small, inexpensive town. We are now a costly place to live, and so hiring the people you need to function (grounds crew, admins, etc.) is more of a challenge. Cornell has more money than Ithaca College, so they are better equipped to deal with it. The consequences for Ithaca College are more serious.
I’m wondering if we will ever see a university somewhere discard the feel-good “studies” curriculum and purposely shrink their enrollment while raising admissions standards?
There is an opportunity out there for bold leadership.
Worse is that so few colleges are trying to differentiate themselves at all. It makes no sense in a competitive market except that faculty are very conservative in their actions. Yours is one of many ideas a smart college might look to do.
“I would say we have to at least triple our analytics team, but I don’t think leadership even realizes this. In fact, I don’t think most of higher education leadership is data literate enough to recognize the need.” Totally agree. You could even do it low-budget and build a team of faculty who get a one-course release each semester to work on analytics. Then you have people already invested in the institution who are better positioned to interpret the data.
Also, a good firing or two goes a long way.
Agreed, hiring data support within would be a smart move. This is true of many functions on campus. We have a marketing and advertising program, but none of those people ever seem to be involved in our marketing campaigns, as one example.