Faculty members at my university will now have to complete time sheets for every day of work. It’s ludicrous because a professor’s work doesn’t happen within specific time limits. I answer emails and work on my research constantly. I read and think about my book at different, weird times.
Everybody knows this, but still, the policy is being introduced. Why? To turn everybody into a liar. Nobody can honestly keep track of all these different times of work. People will simply mark 9 am to 4 pm in the system, and be done with it. Everybody will potentially be open to persecution because they will effectively falsify records. And that’s the goal of this policy.
Clarissa's Blog 
I take it your faculty isn’t unionized.
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We are. But this is a state requirement.
The faculty union is amazing, though. Everybody needs to unionize ASAP.
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This seems like something the union would bring a grievance against (if it could).
Concur 100% about unionizing ASAP. I thank my lucky stars my faculty is unionized.
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Wow. That is outrageous. I sincerely hope this isn’t a new trend
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What’s the point of time sheets when you’re salaried?
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I have absolutely no idea whatsoever either than what I said: make everybody afraid of being caught.
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“What’s the point of time sheets”
I can think of two reasons….
Part of it is to make it easier to fire people. It’s basic organizational culture 101 – have stupid rules in place that everybody breaks. You mostly don’t enforce them but when you need to get rid of someone you can cite their egregious violation of rules. It’s like getting Al Capone for tax evasion…
Also, there’s the question of bureaucratic overeach…. bureaucracies are always intensely interested in records and keeping material records and trying to turn all sorts of intangible qualities into trackable quiddities.
Look at the horrific Bologna process for Europe. I recently had to input a few syllabi according to that format and it’s just hopelessly micro-managed… you have to list the main topics of the course and the knowledge, skills and social competences that students will receive from each with a complex numbered code along with listing how you will impart these (with a set of options, lectures, brainstorming exercise, workshop methodology etc) and how you will test them… it’s obvious that no one who’s ever taught anything was involved in the creation of it. To make matters worse the codes I had to use were from a different program entirely and made even less sense because they had no relation to the overall program… the person that was in charge of getting me to do this knew and said input it with the wrong codes for now (in other words no one will ever look at it as long as it’s there).
There are doubtless other reasons as well (so some politician can talk about ‘accountability’ or some foolishness like that….).
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At my last actual job, I resigned just about the time they were implementing stuff like this. Felt like serendipity (resigned for unrelated reasons, but it was the right time)– we had started being given “quarterly self-evaluations” where we had to rate, and extensively talk about, our job performance and what we were doing for the company. After agonizing over the first one… I grokked that this was the purpose of the evals: a handy papertrail to make it easier to fire you when/if the need arose. I resolved never to fill out another one, beyond “If you don’t like my job performance, just ask me to leave. I don’t want to work in a job where I’m not actually worth my pay.”
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Yes, we are doing this, too! Every week of class has to have objectives listed, using very specific language. Then you have to list all the activities and add codes to cross-reference the activities with the objectives. For now, we are getting paid extra money to do this utterly stupid work. This is in the midst of a budget crisis and severe cuts to everything. But there’s money for this extraordinary crap. Obviously.
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“Every week of class has to have objectives listed, using very specific language”
I remember when they were trotting out that crap here where we’re supposed to list what we do every week…..
“But” I foolishly volunteered “what if your students find X really hard and need more class time or they find Y very easy and you don’t need nearly as much class time for it? What happens when class is cancelled? What happens when you have two groups and class is cancelled* for one but not the other?”
*cancelling classes through “Dean’s hours” or “rector’s hours” is very much not rare here… Last May I didn’t meet with one group for a whole month due to various holidays or other university events…. the other group had no classes cancelled.. so let’s pretend they got the same things done!
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Everybody knows we are faking it. The administrator who told us about the timesheets practically said openly that we are to fake the numbers. Of course, he wouldn’t put it in writing because he’s not insane.
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