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Friday, March 21, 2003
First, Kill All the Administrators
By STANLEY FISH
When budget woes hit the State of Illinois last year, among
the early suggestions made -- first by the Chicago Tribune and
later by the Democratic candidate for governor (since elected)
-- was to cut the "administrative bloat" at the University of
Illinois. What do we need administrators for anyway? They
don't do anything except get in the way of the business of
teaching by building ever more byzantine structures designed
chiefly to provide cushy jobs for still more administrators.
Although these and similar statements were obviously the
opening shots in a campaign whose aim was to erode state
support for higher education (in many states privatization has
just about occurred although blustery citizens and
hypocritical lawmakers continue to claim that everything we do
is made possible by tax dollars), many faculty members nodded
their tonsured heads sagely and said, Yes, what do we need
administrators for anyway?
No matter how bad things get and no matter how many villains
are available for blame, given the choice, professors will go
with administrators every time. Indeed, despised and scorned
though they may be, administrators play a crucial role in the
psychological economy of faculty members who wish to avoid
responsibility for their own failures.
Can't write? It must be because my department head or my dean
is making life unbearable for me. Get bad teaching
evaluations? It must be because I have been assigned to the
wrong course, or forced to teach it in an unsuitable room, or
required to teach at a time when my biorhythms are out of
whack. Trouble getting along with colleagues? It must be
because some administrator has turned them against me. Low
salary? It must be because my supervisor is not smart enough
to appreciate my true worth. Didn't get promoted? It must be
because my file was not carefully prepared and vigorously
presented.
But if administration is not make-work for mindless
bureaucrats and burnt-out scholars who make bad decisions
about their betters, what is it?
The answer is that administration is, at its heart, an
intellectual task. Right now, for example, my colleagues and I
are faced with the following situation. Last year the campus
budget took a hit of about 10 percent, or more than
$41-million; days ago it was reported that a similar or even
larger hit is expected in the near future. At the moment the
college's revenues (95 percent state dollars) total about
$53-million, of which $48-million are earmarked for salaries.
That leaves $5-million for everything else -- operating
expenses, new programs, new hires, additional instruction,
etc. Obviously, an additional cut of 10 or 12 percent would
leave us unable either to pay the salaries already on the
books or to provide the instruction mandated by the same folks
who would be mandating the cut. (Political officials keep
making statements about "fat" and scraping the "bottom of the
barrel," but they are either ignorant or dishonest or both;
there is no fat and the barrel was scraped clean some time
ago.)
Meanwhile -- that is, before these events unfolded -- we began
a modest number of searches based on budget projections that
will soon no longer apply. A few of them have succeeded; a few
have failed; the rest are in process. What do we do?
What makes this problem more complicated and intractable than
the problems we face as academics is the difficulty of getting
a handle on it. Since the budget figures constitute a moving
target, they cannot be used to determine what wiggle room, if
any, we have when thinking about the searches that have not
yet concluded. Should we cancel all of them and display fiscal
prudence in a climate that will applaud it but probably not
reward it? Should we let the searches play out and see what
happens, and risk being thought irresponsible by those with
the power to determine our fate? Should we let some continue
and cancel others and then look forward to many hours (and
days and months) of explaining the basis -- sure to be varied
and conceptually incoherent -- of selection?
What, in fact, should be the basis of selection? Should we use
what little we have to strengthen departments already strong?
Should we shore up weak departments on the reasoning that this
may be their last chance for a while to get any help? Should
we save drowning departments or, in a Darwinian mood, let them
go under? Should we put our money where our mouths are and
stand up for diversity or should we pass the diversity baton
upward in the hope that someone in the yet-higher
administration will feel the political pressure and do the
right thing?
By the time you read this, we shall have moved, crab-wise, to
something like a resolution, and then we will spend the next
three years watching the results that will tell us whether it
was the right one -- that is, whether we disappointed the
right people.
To be sure, not all situations that administrators face are
that momentous or dramatic, but almost all of them involve
problems of coordination that require calculations of
incredible delicacy made in relation to numerous (and
sometimes potentially conflicting) institutional goals and
obligations. To whom shall we assign space, that most precious
of academic commodities? How shall we adjudicate between the
need for more offices, more labs, more homes for
interdisciplinary work, more student and faculty lounges?
If space becomes available in a remote building, should we
provide relief to a space-poor department by sending some of
its members to that outpost, or would that relief be the cause
of even greater ills (loss of community, divided government,
etc.)? An alternative might be to relocate the entire
department, but if we did that would we risk losing the
benefits (casual but productive conversations, access to each
other's seminars and lectures, opportunities for team
teaching) proximity brings?
Another set of issues lies at the intersection of the
professional and the personal. A complaint is made by a
faculty member against his or her chair. The matter is not so
grave as to constitute a grievance within the university
guidelines, but is serious enough to threaten the internal
health of the department. Do you speak to each of the parties
separately and set yourself up as a judge of conflicting
evidence, or do you call them both in and practice therapy
without a license?
Should you be attentive to the human dimension of the
situation and worry about who is feeling pain about what, or
should you be responsive only to the needs of the institution
and settle for a truce that leaves everyone's hostile emotions
in place? ("You guys may continue to hate each other, but you
must agree to act with professional courtesy, even if you do
so with gritted teeth.") Should you regard the present
situation as a closed system or should you inquire into the
prior behavior of the combatants with a view to determining
whether one of them is a "bad egg" or always looking for
trouble? Or should you decide that to do any of these things
would be to do too much, and simply inform the chair about the
disgruntled colleague and say, in effect, you deal with it,
it's your job. (Unfortunately, if you opt for this strategy
and let the cup pass, it will end up on your desk anyway.)
One of the responsibilities of the dean's office in my college
is setting admission standards. Should we raise them? If we
do, we will please those departments that complain about
remedial courses taking up too much of their resources, but we
will alarm those who believe that as an urban university we
are obligated to accept students disadvantaged by a
secondary-school system in disarray.
And there is the numbers question. Can we afford to raise
standards if the result might be an entering class smaller
than the number we need to justify the size of our current
operation, or alternatively, if we already have more students
than we can handle (which is, in fact, our situation), can we
afford not to raise standards? Whatever we do, what will be
the effect on other colleges depending on us to populate their
courses? How will whatever we do look in comparison with our
competitors, both local and natural? What will the legislators
think (perhaps a question with too generous a presupposition)?
What will the trustees think? What will the citizens and
parents of Chicago and Illinois think? What will the
chancellor and the provost and the Academic Senate think?
My point, I trust, is obvious: In the course of making a
decision, an administrator must perform a complex act of
taking into account any number of goals (short and long
range), constituencies, interests, opportunities, costs,
dangers. At every point in a somewhat abstract calculation he
or she must keep constantly in mind the forces and resources
that must be marshaled if the course of action decided upon is
to be implemented in a way that leaves intact one's ability to
deal flexibly with the next situation, and the next, and the
next.
This is what I meant when I said earlier that administration
is an intellectual task: It requires the capacity to sift
through mounds of data while at the same time continually
relating what the data reveal to the general principles and
aspirations of the enterprise. And this is so even in the
apparently simple case of fund raising. I say simple because
on the face of it, both the point and the strategy of fund
raising seem unproblematic: Go out and get the money and then
use it.
But suppose the money you're offered is intended for a use not
strongly tied to the core of your operation as you see it?
What if someone will give you big bucks to set up program X,
and program X is legitimately an academic one, but really
doesn't tie into the programs you've already got going? The
temptation will be to take the money and run with it. But
something that doesn't fit will leech energy away from what
you've been doing. Rather than enhancing the enterprise, it
might well deform it, even though on the surface it seems to
be an addition of the kind all administrators seek -- more
support, more faculty, more to brag about. Better perhaps to
just say no, a resolve especially difficult when someone is
giving you something for what appears to be nothing, making
you an offer it would seem you can't refuse.
So, once again, what do you need administrators for anyway?
You need administrators to develop and put in place and, yes,
administer the policies and procedures that enable those who
scorn them to do the work they consider so much more valuable
than the work of administration.
Most faculty members believe that their lives would be so
much easier if only administrators would get out of the way
and let them get on with the job; heaven, they think, would be
a university without any administrators at all, except, of
course, those in charge of payroll. The truth is that if it
weren't for administrators, there would be no class schedules
and therefore no classes to teach, no admissions office and
therefore no students to dazzle, no facilities management and
therefore no laboratories to work in, no tenure process and
therefore no security of employment, no budget officers and
therefore no money for equipment, travel, lectures, and
teaching awards.
James I of England once famously (and prophetically) said, "No
bishops, no king." I say, no administrators, no life of the
mind.
Stanley Fish, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
at the University of Illinois at Chicago, writes a monthly
column for the Career Network on campus politics and academic
careers. His most recent book is How Milton Works (Harvard
University Press, 2001).
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