Read Vanity Fair Yet, II
Posted on July 14th, 2009 in Uncategorized |
That post is having a lively discussion, so I thought I’d move it up before heading to JFK.
Here it is…..
That post is having a lively discussion, so I thought I’d move it up before heading to JFK.
Here it is…..
38 Responses
7/14/2009 9:51 am
I applied to grad school at Harvard some years ago. They declined to admit me. Everything has been downhill since.
7/14/2009 1:33 pm
Contrary to “What’s the solution?”, I think that fixing the culture/soul problem is a prerequisite for fixing the financial problem. The current leadership’s decision making has been based on misconceptions about what sort of entity a university is. Unless the leadership corrects its misconceptions, or is replaced, there’s little reason to hope that the behavior that got us into this mess will cease.
We do not yet know if Faust gets it. So far, it doesn’t seem so. The lack of transparency is one sign that Faust doesn’t get it. Faculty and staff are being treated like children who are told to wait outside while their superiors decide their fates. That may be acceptable in business and government, but not in academe where collegiality is supposed to have some sway.
How do we know that administrative bloat has been halted much less reversed? Who exactly has input into the decisions about cuts and layoffs? What is the administration’s plan and guiding priciples for dealing with the problem? Insofar as this topic is concerned, Richard’s blog could not be more aptly named.
7/14/2009 8:00 pm
Having acknowledged the good sense in what “What’s the Solution” wrote, I should also say that I agree with Feste about culture. That is part of my point about the example that the central administration sets. And Feste is also right about transparency, the single most serious deficiency in the current administration. At least we knew what Summers was doing (well not entirely in his private finances).
Feste is consistently sensible and analytic leading someone to suggest he or she is in the sciences. But “Feste” is a Shakespearean fool, one of those who is not really foolish. (Midsummers’ Night or maybe 12th night?)
7/14/2009 9:15 pm
Feste is pompous and smallminded. Call him Malvolio. Imagine someone lecturing Drew Faust about what a university is, asking if she “gets it.” As if Feste understands universities or their culture more than a lifelong scholar like her. I still think he’s a smalltime staff assistant in thrall to his charismatic superior.
7/14/2009 10:38 pm
Anonymous 9:15 pm: Ad hominem comments and appeal to authority count for little. It would be more useful if you would attack my argument.
Like Faust, I’m a lifelong scholar–although I’m a few years younger and certainly undistinguished.
7/14/2009 11:53 pm
The discussion might be more on track if we discussed a recent case. In http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=528562 we learn that, in the administration of Harvard College, the Office of Residential Life and the Office of Student Life and Activities are to merge, with five positions fewer in total.
According to the HC website from this past year, these two office total at least 14 FTE. (I suspect it’s at least one or two more, since staff assistants are not always listed.) These Offices were created, as far as I remember — but others here might correct me — under Dean Gross. The excuse was that Dick was both Dean of HC and Dean for Undergrad Education, and so needed more support in the former role than Harry had needed previously. But here we are back to having two different people occupying those positions; yet there is no undoing the previous construction of Offices. The best they can do is reduce to 9 FTE, where, as far as I can see, maybe 2 or 3 are needed.
It was a continuing surprise to me, in my various discontinuous stints on the Ad Board, how the numbers around the table kept growing and growing. I still have very little idea of what these Offices do, except trade memos with each other, and with the other arms of the Dean’s Office. (Why is there a Director of Residential Life Programs? Isn’t that what Masters and the Ad Board are supposed to be in charge of? Didn’t Student Activities all fall under Archie Epps’ one-dean one-staff-assistant office?)
This is in addition to at least 8 FTE in the Advising Office, 5 in International Programs, 7 in the Office of Administration and Finance, and 6 in the Dean’s Office proper. Add the Ad Board administration (which has not grown at all, thank goodness), the Resident Deans, the Dean of Freshman, and we have an administrator/student ratio that is approach 1/100, which, given the resources devoted also to DUS’s and assistant DUS’s, and advising structures in the Departments, and the Resident Tutors in the Houses, looks like extraordinary waste.
Of course paring this will not solve the financial problem by itself. But, as Harry posted recently, let’s at least start by looking at what’s been added since 2002, and get rid of all of that isn’t necessary.
To Anonymous 9:31, I can say only that those surveys did not confirm that students were “quite unhappy”, at least in any ways that they were not in generations previous or now. To my mind it was unclear what the various surveys showed; but there was an idiotic reaction to them that thought we had to make more “fun” for the students, and so we have a cafe in Lamont, a pub (accessible to only 1/4 of the undergrads) in Loker, a “fun czar” in the Dean’s Office, a day of amusement-park rides in Harvard Yard to welcome the students, etc. How much less “unhappy” are students now?
7/15/2009 8:06 am
Wanted: Dean of Administration and Finance, The FAS at Harvard University.
Excellent pay scale starting at $ 500,000 a year in cash and up (really; that’s what your predecessor probably made). Great benefits. Moving and housing allowance if necessary. Other perks.
Must be able to wield scalpel like a neurosurgeon and be able to handle greedy superstar professors on dream teams. Ability to say NO is critical.
Must have high moral and ethical values i.e. be able to look The Dean in the eye and say that you will stay at Harvard for at least five years so you don’t screw things up by leaving after less than one year.
No Harvard or Wharton MBAs need apply because both this position and the EVP for The University were previously held by HBS and Wharton graduates who didn’t keep their promise as to how long they would stay in their position i.e. no Sweet talkin’ people wanted.
7/15/2009 8:08 am
300K is more like it. Even Mike Smith wouldn’t be earning 500K.
7/15/2009 8:44 am
I think it was 500
7/15/2009 10:14 am
Go back to 2000 and you won’t find anyone in FAS getting either of those figures (except University Professors, who in that office are not in FAS).
So the bloat has been in numbers of administrators as well as compensation.
Aren’t Sweet and Forst pretty much like Meyer’s traders, El-Erian, et al., bred of the institution’s striving to be more corporate and vanilla in its administration? The more trouble such an institution gets itself into, the less capable it will be of holding on to such hired guns.
The oddity is that you have these departments, like mine, peopled by scholars and teachers, who have been writing and teaching, getting 3%-4% raises a year, served by the same number of administrators, working with students, and very happy about everything to do with their teaching and research.
What’s wrong with this picture and how do you fix it?
7/15/2009 3:19 pm
RT: Rather than reinvent the wheel (or worse yet, reinvent the square wheel) we might look to other cases of this sort in the history of higher education for a useable strategy. Granted there may be unique aspects to Harvard’s current dilemma, but there are likely to be cases similar enough to draw some inspiration. I wish someone from HUGSE would weigh in on this.
7/15/2009 9:55 pm
“The current leadership’s decision making has been based on misconceptions about what sort of entity a university is.”
What sort of entity is a university, then, and what is it for? Is the range of knowledge it is supposed to produce and disseminate meant to be universal? And if our goals are so grand and far-reaching (and vague), isn’t running into financial barriers inevitable?
7/16/2009 11:06 am
Discussions of Harvard bored me before DGF came along. Now I’m getting bored with discussions of DGF as related to Harvard. You people are killing this for me. I swear the tone of these posts making me think of the time Stewie got a job at The New Yorker.
7/16/2009 2:36 pm
To the DGF Fan Club: Sorry you’re bored. A suggestion: don’t waste your time reading that which bores you. Granted that some of the posts can go on a bit, and granted that occasionally a posting will make little sense — but overall many of us find the insights presented to be quite informative. Many of us who work at Harvard wonder how such a fiasco could have happened. The VF article left me feeling sad and angry — that Harvard could find itself in this position, that good people lost their jobs because the powers that be fell asleep on their watch, etc.. Reading these various posts helps to shed a little light on things and also reinforces the fact that there are people who care about the fate of the WGU.
7/16/2009 2:47 pm
To Anonymous 2.36pm, it is true that many of the posts in this blog are informative, some even outrageous. But how do they make a difference? I wonder if this kind of blog is not detrimental to real progress in the WGU in that talk takes the place of action. I have yet to see any specific connection between the discussions taking place in SITD and any action anyone has taken to correct the many situations that need correction in the university.
Perhaps talk has become a substitute for action, when it is action that is needed.
In fact, the only people who appear to be acting to improve Harvard are the very people who are often criticized on this blog: the President, the Provost, the Dean. But, what have the critics done, other than vent, in any material sense to help Harvard become a greater institution?
7/16/2009 3:30 pm
Dear “What’s the point of blogs?”: perhaps you haven’t been reading this blog long enough.
7/16/2009 4:16 pm
Perhaps not Professor Ryan. Can you point to evidence that supports the point that there is some connection between deliberations in this blog and action?
In the words of good Ivan Vladimir Action must be directed by theory, and theory must become action, the rest is a form of mental onanism.
7/16/2009 5:10 pm
The actions Prof. Ryan and I, to speak for just two of us, do to help Harvard become a greater institution have to do with that for which we get paid, teaching and writing, advising, serving on committees.
I think you will find some of the questions that will be put to the task forces looking at what can be cut (but not doing so till the Fall) will have had and will continue to have a relationship to matters that have come up on this blog. Whether post hoc ergo propter hoc who knows. I think if you are in FAS you will hear faculty asking questions that will resonate. I plan to ask a few myself in fact.
But I don’t accept your premise. Who says the the primary function of a blog is to initiate action. A blog, like all writing should instruct or delight, as Quintilian said (of writing not of blogs). This blog does both for some of us, and as an idle distraction, and even a form of communication. One hopes action would follow from instruction, but it probably does so in indirect ways.
DGFFC, I occasionally stumble across a blog I find boring (not that I spend lot of time with blogs), but I would never go back to it a second time.
7/16/2009 7:58 pm
One of the valuable aspects of this blog is that it expands our individual sources of information and opinion. Those of us who were on Faculty Council and the Caucus of Chairs a few years ago had plenty of colleagues to talk to beyond those in our immediate instructional units. In addition, though, the many anonymous posts on the blog allowed us to hear the thoughts of those who might not have spoken up publicly or even come to speak with us privately. Before moving to action, it’s helpful to have a broader sense of how people are thinking and to get closer to an accurate picture of the facts.
This will doubtless be the case once again when this summer is over and fall semester begins. As RT says, material from this blog will presumably inform questions asked at FAS meetings and suggestions made in committees.
7/16/2009 8:01 pm
But of course RT is also right that there is no need for a blog to initiate action. In fact, that would be expecting too much, since the whole point of a blog is to generate wide discussion among people with a range of different opinions. That in itself is interesting to follow.
7/17/2009 3:50 am
Oh snap! RT opened up a can of QuinTILian on someone’s ass!
7/17/2009 6:36 am
I kind of think that many of those who vent in this blog would be talking a lot less if they had ever been invited to serve as Chair, Dean, Associate Dean, Vice Provost, Associate Vice-Provost or any other form of engagement in University governance. Perhaps the reason they vent so much is precisely because they were never invited to serve in this way, so they can only contemplate university governance from a distance. Maybe even with some envy of their colleagues who do actually work to make the University what it is today.
I doubt those who actually govern Harvard have as much time to blog as some professors seem to have.
7/17/2009 6:53 am
Message received. Off to sit in the shade, sipping g&t.
7/17/2009 8:13 am
Perhaps the reason Harvard has morphed into its current incarnation, which appears to displease some of the contributors to this blog, has less to do with whatever Management may have done to Harvard and a lot more to do with the fact that too many faculty understand their own power to consist of:
“inform questions asked at FAS meetings and suggestions made in committees.”
I wonder if that’s what they teach the students about how to make a difference in the world, ask questions and make suggestions in committees! Not bad for an education valued at a quarter million dollars!!!
7/17/2009 8:16 am
You have got to be kidding. How much time does it take to read a few blog comments and post one of your own? Ten minutes? Fifteen? I don’t think it’s unreasonable for professors to take a few minutes out of their day to join a discussion on the problems, the priorities, and the future of the institution for which they work and for which they have some governance responsibility. I’m an administrator who has worked for a number of different chairs, associate deans, and deans, and I can say that all of those people had enough time to read and comment on a couple of blogs if they wanted to.
Every single one of the faculty who comments openly on this blog has served as a department chair, committee chair, or dean, generally more than one of those positions at the same time. I like to hear from faculty on this blog because their opinions should be an important part of decision-making and, since they have tenure, they don’t have to comment anonymously so we can immediately asses their credibility. It’s ridiculous and insulting to accuse these faculty of not working to improve the University when, if you pay any attention to what goes on in FAS, it’s obvious that they are among the people who do care about its future. They are actually engaged and involved in the governance of the FAS and the education of the students. FAS would be a much stronger school if there were more faculty like Professors Ryan, Thomas, Lewis, et al.
7/17/2009 9:37 am
Thank you, 8:16 am.
To “Mighty Faculty”: please read RT’s post of 7/16/09 5:10 pm again. Those members of the faculty who write under their own names on this blog are well known to be energetic and devoted teachers, as well as scholars in the forefront of their fields. I am not interested in power (the idea makes me uncomfortable), but as a member of FAS, I have a responsibility to contribute as best I can to its workings. There have, of course, been times when I have taken action.
7/17/2009 10:08 am
Re: Re: Too Much Time 8:16 am, yeah, what he said…exactly! It’s more interesting than watching a tennis match. Carry on…
7/17/2009 10:47 am
Right on, 8:16. I was Chair of my department for all five of Summers’ years, cofounded Caucus of Chairs with two other Chairs, and am starting up a stint as DUS, and same sort of thing goes for Harry and Judith. This took thirty seconds.
7/17/2009 10:57 am
And Warren has been DUS of Philosophy forever.
7/17/2009 11:45 am
My computer science colleague Michael Mitzenmacher, another one of those supposedly non-blogging Harvard professors RiB likes to complain about, has <a href=”http://mybiasedcoin.blogspot.com/2009/07/vanity-fairs-article-on-harvard.html” a good analysis of the VF piece over at My Biased Coin.
7/17/2009 11:46 am
My computer science colleague Michael Mitzenmacher, another one of those supposedly non-blogging Harvard professors RiB likes to complain about, has a good analysis of the VF piece over at My Biased Coin.
7/17/2009 11:56 am
I am an administrator in Central Admin, and these blogs are the only way I ever have a chance to hear what faculty think about these issues in a real time way (even if it’s only self selected faculty). Just reading is an invaluable view into other perspectives, long term thinking. Faculty — please keep blogging (and educating!). Thanks.
7/18/2009 9:34 am
Thanks, Harry, for pointing us toward Michael Mitzenmacher’s thoughts on the Vanity Fair article. It’s a very balanced and sensible piece.
7/18/2009 1:25 pm
And don’t miss the comments after Michael Mitzenmacher’s thoughts that point to this:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0709/25083.html
and further comments by HL.
7/18/2009 2:27 pm
so now we are relying on Google? guess we are in good hands and fine shape…get out of the recession sure …”just google it”
7/20/2009 10:18 am
Here’s a question for the posters who have said that this blog consists of all talk and no action: What kind of thing would you count as “action”? I see that at least one of you counts what the President, Dean, and Provost are doing. What else would you count?
7/20/2009 11:22 pm
get excellent reviews on your teaching evaluations and get a respectable publication schedule… and attend committee meetings and raise a few questions.
7/21/2009 3:54 pm
Thanks for these suggestions, “Action.” I hope you take a look at my teaching and publication record, as well as my committee work at Harvard.