Ouster of UVa's President and the Future of Public Higher Ed

Jobs cutting grass and shucking corn.

Depending on the field, one is better than the other.

 

A nonprofit institution should not be run like a business. Just as business owners would argue the reverse.

 

Pun intended?

 

No, but I will take credit for it.

From what I have seen, if you want to build things outdoors (engineering, environment) go to Tech. If you want to work in an office or indoors, go to UVa.

I know that is very broad, but each school has its strengths. Just like VCU is becoming a very strong school for arts.

 

What?

 

I'm trying to understand what you are posting.

UVA seems to have a very Repblican mindset of running a university like a business, and businesses hate tenure, which protects the worker, like a union.

Are you OK with what is happening at UVA?

 

Sheesh ... UVA is not remotely trying to operate like a business. That Sullivan wasn't trying to do so is NOT why she got the ax. I don't know exactly why she got the ax, but I know, from reading all the articles (including the slate.com piece) that it wasn't because she wouldn't run the university like a business. She got the ax because she couldn't safely navigate the minefield of conflicting interests. In management-guru speak, she failed to either: A) placate the dominant coalition; or B) see and respond to the fact that the makeup/mindset of the dominant coalition had changed.

That said, just because a university can't be run like a business doesn't mean that facets of good business can't be translated into a university setting. Indeed, the more one is talking about the uppermost levels of a university's administration, the more that profit/non-profit distinction becomes moot.

In my experience in higher education, when a faculty member starts lamenting about how a university can't be run like a business, often what he or she is bitching about is not bad university management but good university management that happens to work against his or her selfish interests. So if, for example, the $120K a year German professor finds that his department, which churns out all of 10 graduates a year, might be reviewed for economic viability, suddenly he starts bitching about how the university can't be run like a business. Or, alternatively, the $60K a year humanities professor constantly bitching about the fact that folks in the business school can, because of market forces, command salaries well into the six figures. "But this is an intellectual community and market forces shouldn't apply," they'll argue. "If market forces really influence whether you'll do this job or not, you're obviously not committed to the scholar's life."

Finally, your understanding of tenure and its value appears to be very limited. It's true that tenure "protects the worker," but tenure also protects the institution in ways both financial and non-financial. But I'd be less than honest if I didn't cop to the fact that, personally, I really love, love, love having tenure.

 

It sounds to me that people were putting a figure over each department and seeing if it was making a profit or not. Sullivan was not cutting programs or altering them enough if they were losing money, so she got the ax.

To me, that's business.

 

Faculty Senate officially requests Sullivan be reinstated and rector and vice rector resign.

http://www2.dailyprogress.com/news/2012/jun/18/faculty-senate-statement-meeting-rector-ar-1995965/

 

I suspect that Sullivan got pinched between two opposing forces that came together temporarily. On the one side at UVA are the schools/divisions that are, for lack of a better term, profit centers. On the other side are what I'll call the "non-profits," those that really don't generate positive cash flow and are, to varying degrees, subsidized by the former. Elite business schools mint money, for example. Hell, I will teach a class tonight that over the course of this summer will add roughly $55K (tuition minus my summer stipend) for my non-descript university's bottom line and will ultimately be used elswhere. I can assure you the margin at a Darden class is likely to be much, much larger. One of the things Sullivan was pursuing was allowing individual schools to keep a greater portion of such money. UVAs "profits" likely loved that idea and wanted to see it implemented. UVA's "non-profits" likely hated that idea. Maybe the former saw it getting watered down too much, maybe the latter saw it not getting watered down enough, but it wouldn't take much for enough from both sides to push her out and see if they could do better next time around.

And, having seen J_T's link, I would caution you against reading too much into the Faculty Senate's action. Such bodies and their actions are usually not taken seriously by anyone other than those people who are in them.

 

Some board members have asked her to say, too:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/former-u-va-president-john-casteen-urges-board-to-meet-in-public/2012/06/18/gJQAYO4BlV_story.html

 

Let it be said that yes, tenure defends the rights of individual and institutional expression against external pressures, and protects the development and promulgation of controversial and/or unpopular ideas. It also safeguards a fair amount of dead wood.

Also, just because poetry isn't an obvious profit center doesn't mean it's not important.