Having the Cake and Eating it Too: When College Presidents Ruin their Schools and go Unscathed
At an emergency town hall meeting called by the leaders of a US college, faculty and staff were told of the dismal financial situation the school was in. Declining enrolment and rising costs necessitated staff cuts and department closures, the college president announced. Belts have to be tightened, the president said. He finished by saying, “We’re all in this together.”
A faculty member rose and asked if the leadership (aka administration) has considered taking a pay cut, or even to reduce the number of administrative staff. “That will send the wrong message, and it will be painful day,” the president replied nonchalantly.
Painful? Tell that to those who were let go. Undeterred, the professor said, “So when management fails, it’s the rest of the college who suffer? Shouldn’t those at the top set an example by reducing its bloated bureaucracy, and share some of the burden?”
The president was getting annoyed. “We won’t be able to attract and keep good management people if we cut their pay,” he retorted. “The college needs good managers now more than ever!” He stared menacingly at the professor, his face now beet red.
The professor, a former industry executive turned academic, remained undaunted. “In ancient Carthage, generals who failed were crucified. In feudal Japan, they killed themselves. And General Horrocks in WW2 famously ate the same rations as his troops and slept in the same tents. That’s leadership,” he said. “I agree we need good managers now more than ever, but the evidence suggests that what we have are poor managers. They should go do the honourable thing.”
Fuming, the president turned to leave, after announcing the meeting was over. He stormed out of the assembly, his entourage in tow.
A 115-year old college goes down the tube.
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Stories like this repeat with regularity all over the US. After decades of baby boom and growing enrolment, suddenly the “market” dries up. There aren’t enough young people to fill all the seats, even if colleges accept everyone who applies. And speaking from experience, a lot of them do just that. If you can breathe and can pay the tuition, you’re in. Forget that you’re not academically prepared. Forget that you’ll be forever in debt due to student loans. The college industry wants your money, and they want it now!
There are more than 3,000 colleges (in the US, college is basically interchangeable with university) in America. Sure, the US has very prestigious and highly selective colleges like Stanford and Caltech that admit less than 3% of applicants. But the majority of schools are Joe Blow Colleges who accept 90%+ of those who apply. It’s all about the bottom line. It’s just business.
College leadership is a crap shoot. Senior management are rewarded handsomely, and enjoy the prestige of being a college head honcho. They build empires comprising layers of executives and staff. They borrow money to build sparkling new gyms and other edifices, all the better to show just great they are. When times look tough, build a new gym! And when things get really bad, cut staff and whole departments, and it’s time to move on anyway. Most of these senior people stay but a few years, before moving to bigger schools and bigger pay cheques. The devastation they leave behind does not concern them, for they are accountable to no one and not there to pick up the pieces in their wake.
Unlike other industry jobs, it’s hard for college faculty and staff to just look for a position across the street. Often, especially in smaller college towns, the current college is the only institution around. Lose that job, and you kiss your life goodbye. Unless you’re some hot shot academic, in which case you’re unlikely to be teaching at a small college in a one-horse town to begin with.
I don’t think the industry as it is can survive. There are just too many unremarkable schools around. In marketing terms, most of these schools have no differential advantage. They had never bothered to achieve one, for those running them wouldn’t know a differential advantage if it hits them in the head. These are the kind of people who would run Google or ExxonMobil to the ground.
But they’ve got a good thing going. For themselves. College administrators in most of these schools are a cabal of irresponsible, inadequate, and grossly incompetent space wasters. The problem is, no one does anything about it. Most colleges are not unionized. There is in the US this notion that unions means communism. That workers banding together is a bad thing. So faculty and staff are perpetually at the mercy of bad management. And lacking strength in numbers, workers allow management to simply divide and conquer.
I feel bad for many of my former colleagues who are in such a predicament. I saw the light and left years ago. But there are a great many faculty and staff, now in their 50s and 60s, who were never paid well to start with, and now find themselves in a hopelessly precarious situation. Meanwhile, college presidents live the high life, and will continue to exploit and ruin thousands of lives. Will they ever be called to account? I doubt it. Maybe one day when the whole industry is revamped, when only good schools run by good leaders remain, there’s hope. But in the meantime, the situation will get much worse.
