Brian Fristensky (frist at cc.umanitoba.ca) wrote:
[snip]
: Faced with a contract renewal last year, the administration,
: under pressure from the provincial government, proposed a
: new contract which effectively eliminated tenure by instituting
: a downsizing mechanism that would have given enormous
: latitude to the administration for eliminating individual
: academic positions, a practice referred to as 'cherry picking'.
: This point, along with other proposals that would have given
: the administration almost absolute power to micromanage
: the univeristy. Our Board of Governors is largely
: chosen by the provincial government, and the University administration
: has typically acted as if its purpose was to execute
: government policy, rather than to act as an advocate for the
: University and its mission. (Our president just retired, so
: I can't speak about the incomming president.)
Interesting that those who claim an interest in reducing govt. in-
fluence want further intrusion of that govt. into places such as the univ-
ersities. I have always said that the conservatives do not actually want
less govt., but rather a shift in where the govt. operates.
: After this experience I am convinced of the necessity of
: retaining tenure in academic positions.
Tenure is a good shield against micromanagement and coersion both
by govt. and others. It aint broke, so it shouldn't be fixed.
: You mention exploitation of non-tenured staff by tenured
: staff. It depends on how you want to define exploitation.
: Don't forget that all those tenured faculty got their
: positions by working for years themselves as graduate
: students and postdocs.
That doesn't make it right. I have been in both exploitive and
non-exploitive situations as a post-doc. The non-exploitive ones were
both more helpful to my career and more productive for me and my mentors.
Mentors who see GS/PD's as (underpaid) colleagues, and who view them as
collaborators, are free to learn from them as well as teach; whereas,
those who just use GS/PD's as cheap labor deny themselves access to the
independent observations of some pretty bright people.
: The Filmon government has said that it wants to remake the
: University into something that is more 'relevant' and
: 'accountable' to the people of Manitoba. These two words
: become license to take management of the University out
: of the hands of academics and into the hands of small-minded
: political appointees who want to run it 'like a business'.
Right; there's that "smaller govt." again :-^).
: Personally, the presence of a few 'dead wood' faculty members
: doesn't bother me nearly as much as the inflation of university
: administrations. Even 'dead wood' profs contribute something. At
: the same time, the endless series of management fads, accompanied
: by such terms as 'strategic planning', 'total qulaity management',
: 'accountability', 'relevance', and other warm fuzzies, is the
: real problem in universities. In this way, university administrations
: often make a NEGATIVE contribution to productivity.
In fairness, planning, TQM, etc. can either be positive or nega-
tive depending on how they are implemented. Strategic planning can be
helpful in allocating scarce resources in the long term and in devising
responses to possible changes. TQM gets all the workers involved in the
decision-making and promotes communication both top-down and bottom-up.
Accountability prevents unchecked power and wastage of resources. Rele-
vance promotes maintaining of an overall mission, and assures that deci-
sions are made with the long-term mission in mind.
All too often, however, planning means endless, useless meetings,
TQM means lip service, but even more hierarchy & micromanagement, account-
ability means more useless paperwork and relevance means dumping programs
someone doesn't like.
If the administration actually approaches the "management fads"
as a way to improve performance, then there is likely to be a positive
outcome, but if they are seen as fads which won't work, this view becomes
self-fullfilling. That is, it is not the new styles of management that
are at fault as much as the administrators themselves and their views of
their jobs.
Yours,
Bill Tivol
