We are undergoing a new round of budget woes since our ultra-rich new governor is dedicated to the idea of sucking out more wealth for himself from the state. While the sick creep is impoverishing the state to buy a new set of mansions for himself and a new set of charitable organizations where his wife will be able to bully even more Hispanic kids into submission, our university – a place which educates and helps actual real people – has to struggle to come up with money to feed this leech.
I have decided not to get involved with this series of budget cuts because I’m concentrating on my research. Stupid criminal governors come and go but scholarship is eternal.
But the university has come up with a funny way to process budget cuts: several departments will now share a single departmental chair. I have no idea who will agree to be chair in such conditions. But people are agreeing to teach extra courses for no pay, so I’m sure there will be eager volunteers.
In case anybody is wondering why academics are choosing to do all this extra teaching and service without pay: the alternative is to lie in front of the fireplace working on research projects. And that’s so much harder that people would do anything to avoid it. This is something that idiots outside of academia are too stupid to understand.
Clarissa's Blog 
The shared chair was what I was living with — someone running English and another subject at the same time. It was a nightmare. Under certain circumstances, where the two departments under one chair basically ignore each other and then have one person signing paperwork, it’s okay — not good, but livable. But then, you give some person power who you thought was okay, and it turns them into a psychopath. So yeah, in my (admittedly limited experience), it’s a bad thing. People here have been talking about it being a bad thing for a very long time, though. It started here in the early 2000s.
LikeLike
“Yes, in the spirit of cost cutting, we’re buying the department heads Herman Miller Aeron chairs — a mere snip at $1250 each. Of course, since these are rather pricey chairs in addition to being somewhat comfortable, you’ll need to learn how to share the same chair at the same time …”
🙂
LikeLike
BTW, this is also how I believe Totem Poles came into being. 🙂
LikeLike
In other news, Inside Higher Ed has now been acquired by a fund that massively invests in for-profit colleges and diploma mills.
http://fredrikdeboer.com/2015/01/16/the-inside-higher-ed-purchase-is-a-bellwether/
LikeLike
Wow. That is the most depressing news I’ve read in a while.
LikeLike
Inside Higher Ed has been going to the dogs for a while.
LikeLike
We’ve had the shared chair thing for a while now. My department has actually done well with the arrangement. Our chair is now from a different department and he is a much better chair than the one we had before. It also helps that he doesn’t really have a stake in any of the little feuds and rivalries in the department. But our situation probably isn’t typical, and I don’t think the chair or the other department are really getting anything out of the deal.
LikeLike
I have no idea who will agree to see their work double like this for no extra pay but people are weird. I’m sure there will be volunteers galore.
LikeLike
I’ve heard that our dean has employed threats in many of these situations. The Chair of Dept. A is called in and told that he/she will now also be the Chair of Dept. B. If that person balks at the extra work he/she is told that he/she will be removed as chair of Dept. A and one of the associate deans will step in and run both of the departments. Everyone is afraid of being run from the dean’s office and so the extra work is better than losing independence as a department. The departments could probably resist if EVERYONE got on board and refused to go along with these things, but getting everyone on board to resist administration never seems to happen.
LikeLike
“The departments could probably resist if EVERYONE got on board and refused to go along with these things, but getting everyone on board to resist administration never seems to happen.”
LikeLike