Arguments that universities are being run according to the business model annoy me hugely. Our administrators are folks who failed in both business and scholarship and are now trying to impose their faulty practices on us. The result is a pseudo-business model described beautifully in the following brilliant post:
So what’s the problem? Why can’t this be solved in a business- like manner? BECAUSE THE FREAKIN’ PROVOST HAS ALL THE TUITION MONEY! Yes, in a real business model the academic unit that earns the credit hours should get the tuition money. Then we could decide which services the department needs and wants to pay for. Custodians? Sure. Grounds maintenance? Why not? Administrators could submit their reason for existing, and we academics could decide if we want an assistant to the vice provost. Provost? Let us think about that one awhile. So our university is being run on a phony baloney business model where the person with all the fiscal resources turns around and tells you everything is your responsibility but they withhold the resources you earned and need to take responsibility.
What can I say if our department functioned for 5 months without a departmental secretary? Students suffered, faculty members suffered, the Chair nearly collapsed with exhaustion. How difficult can it be to hire a secretary in a geographic area with one of the highest unemployment rates in the country? And do you think anybody punished the completely useless HR department for this mess-up? Ha ha. In our pseudo-business model, paper-pushers are not accountable to anybody.
Another HR person sends out a hysterical letter threatening to fire everybody including the Dean for no reason whatsoever and insults everybody in a very egregious manner. Then she claims she is being discriminated against by people who ask why she thinks she can fire faculty members and Deans, and we all have to apologize. Can you imagine a business where some dime-a-dozen clerk has a public meltdown insulting the CEO and then the CEO ends up apologizing?
So please, let’s not insult business by attributing these insane qualities to it.
Clarissa's Blog 
“What can I say if our department functioned for 5 months without a departmental secretary?”
It’s forbidden by all collective barganing agreements to do that in any university in Québec.
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Our secretaries are all unionized, too, and it’s a good union, so I don’t know why that happened. People were just lazy and distracted.
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They should have filled a grievance against that. The HR department could be illegal in this case.
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“So our university is being run on a phony baloney business model where the person with all the fiscal resources turns around and tells you everything is your responsibility but they withhold the resources you earned and need to take responsibility.”
It really is obstructive and manipulative.
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