Yet one senses little joy as a new Chancellor will soon come on board. Why? Four reasons come to mind.
--No apology has been forthcoming for the actions causing "Firegate".
--Neither Dr. Brady nor those who chose or defended her have acknowledged what a huge
mistake her hiring was.
--There is no provision for rectifying the error when a bad choice is made.
--Dr. Brady embodied many larger problems in modern university conception and
management, none of which has been addressed.
Dr. Brady has continued to defend her lies and inept handling of the firings that brought her down, disrupted several lives, and brought decimated UNCG's reputation.
Her total lack of introspection is unsurprising. But the silence of the UNCG Trustee Board and Chapel Hill higher-ups creates the scary impression that they either agree with her or just don't get it. Either way, the continued input of these people and their future monitoring of the new Chancellor does not engender confidence.
Dr. Brady's unsuitability for the position was clear years ago. She was temperamentally wrong. She made no effort even to learn the names of faculty or even major financial contributors. She ignored input and tried to rule by fiat. She made poor personnel decisions. She gutted academics while substantially increasing administrative and, especially, athletic budgets.
Dr. Brady's style was already well-established. A reasonable investigation of her time at NC State or the University of Oregon would have uncovered it. (And perhaps it did. Perhaps those choosing and monitoring Dr. Brady actually liked her style.). Whatever reasons allowed her to continue are scary; these folks might do it again.
But people do make poor personnel decisions. The question is: How long do you go before you admit the mistake and correct it? There was a large and growing disenchantment with Dr. Brady almost immediately. Yet no one at the local or Chapel Hill level took action until her mishandling of "Firegate" forced Chapel Hill to force her retirement.
These matters are all serious. But they pale compared to the last item. UNCG is particularly poorly run (according to a study undertaken by the NC Legislature). But it is hardly unique. Indeed, it is typical of public universities and colleges. Several examples:
--Administrative budgets, already outrageously high, continue to expand dramatically, until
they are often equal to the educational budget, which meanwhile stagnates or is even
reduced.
--Athletic budgets proliferate, even as they lose more-and-more money, and at schools like
schools like UNCG have no chance of becoming profitable and provide few measurable
benefits.
--A race to build silly amenities increases student fees substantially, even for those students
who can scarcely afford it and who will seldom or never use the new facilities. Little attempt
is made to find out if the students even want them.
--State universities are vastly overbuilt, under-utilized, and poorly maintained. Most schools
have no idea what their building utilization even is. (Hint: at most it is below 25 per cent if
You count 8 AM-10PM Monday through Friday, plus summers.)
--Universities are being re-defined so only research or majors with short-term practical
payoffs really count. The very real benefits of other academic disciplines are ignored.
--Professors are asked to spend substantial amounts of time evaluating rather than teaching.
In other words, public universities are being poorly run and dumbed down (even while their
heads claim they are being run the way a private company would operate, which is very unfunny joke). But not a word from Chapel Hill or individual trustee boards suggests that these truly important questions are even being thought about, much less acted upon.
One reason that university buildings are under-utilized is because classes are not offered at non-traditional times. I think this is, in part, due to the fact that it is difficult to find faculty willing to teach at those times.
ReplyDeleteI would agree that administrative costs are too high. I also think that administrative costs could decrease if there were fewer "special" programs that require a lot of manual intervention and benefit a small number of students.
I look forward to the new Chancellor and wish him great success. I hope he's up to the challenge.