Anti-corporate University

People keep talking about the corporate university that is run like a business. But they are talking out of their ever-loving asses. It is a distant, impossible dream that my university would become corporate. We are the exact opposite, and that sucks.

The Dean no longer has a secretary or a receptionist. He’s paid the Dean’s salary to do extremely overpaid secretarial work. He’s sitting in his office preparing JCRs and answering the perennial question from a stream of students about where the room 3211 is located. He used to have a receptionist who’d answer the question but now it’s just him. While he’s spending his highly compensated time on explaining about room 3211, he’s not doing any of the actual Dean work. He has 22 departments in his college, most of which also don’t have a secretary. As a result, we are a bunch of mega overqualified and overpaid people doing low-skill work “to save money.” Which obviously saves no money.

It gets worse. A colleague’s class was cancelled because he was 2 students short of enrollment minimum. But he’s still paid the same. We just had to find a justification for the portion of the salary that was supposed to be paid for him teaching this class. He really wanted to teach it. But if he gets paid the same for doing nothing, then OK. He’s not going to say no. The class would still be very profitable with 2 students below minimum. But we threw out that tuition money to follow a very random rule.

I’m going to miss the meeting of the curriculum council next week because I’ll have to help students with the proficiency testing in the absence of a secretary. I’m fine with doing it. It’s extremely easy. But the curricular changes that only I can authorize won’t go through because I won’t be there. The Provost must be livid. But she can’t schedule a meeting to tell me about her annoyance because she doesn’t have a secretary either.

The Dean hasn’t done Chairs evaluation in a year. He hasn’t done the paperwork on my ASL minor, and we are losing tons of money because the program is in high demand and our students are getting poached by a neighboring college. But we saved money on the receptionist salary, so yay. Dude literally sits there alone, doing the JCRs which any office support person with a $48,000 salary could do. We have all turned into extremely overpaid secretaries and janitors. Because we also now have to empty our own trash cans. Which again, I don’t mind. It’s exercise. And it’s definitely a lot less demanding than poring over the curricular proposals. But is that great use of taxpayer money? Obviously, not.

This is not smart management. It’s not business-like. It’s wasteful and stupid, is what it is.