This year marks my 30th as a tenure-track faculty member at the University of Utah, a position that I have enjoyed immensely. I've been able to pursue my scientific and educational passions with zeal and I've been able to work with a lot of great students, faculty, and staff. I think it was the perfect place for me to land. Plus the skiing was great!
However, things have changed in recent years, perhaps reflecting an acceleration of long-term trends in higher education. The U has become increasingly top heavy, with more administrators being paid increasingly high salaries. There's less interest and respect for the knowledge and perspectives of the regular faculty and more top-down management. There's increasing digital bureaucracy, often obtuse in design, interfering with our ability to work "efficiently" (I put that in quotes because that word is being thrown around a lot these days as if it were the holy grail of higher education). More and more, my position is being treated as a commodity, broken down into discrete chunks to ensure that my workload is properly "managed" by formulas designed by beancounters who can quantify everything but value.
These trends are sucking the soul out of higher education. They will degrade educational quality and research innovation and they will limit our ability to recruit and retain high-quality faculty.
Today the Salt Lake Tribune reported that the U spent $6 million to hire a consultant (McKinsey & Company) to help "streamline processes and reduce wasteful redundancies across campus." The first $3.2 million involved "looking at the University's internal data, studying its systems, and developing an understanding of what's working and what's not". You know, the stuff that our administrators are supposed to be doing, potentially in consultation with our faculty, staff, and students. When I started at the U, I knew administrators who had deep knowledge of the internal workings at the University, who had won teaching awards, and who understood the challenges of pursuing teaching and research excellence as a faculty member. Today we talk about workload policies, key performance indicators, and how we can make more "data-driven" decisions.
Certainly the U needs to evolve, but the pendulum has swung too far, resulting in tyranny of the metrics and depreciation of the deep knowledge and experience of our faculty. I expect to see it increasingly challenging to recruit and retain the best faculty, a situation that may be exacerbated when programs are cut later this year, as being proposed by the legislature. During the 2008 recession, when we faced deep budget cuts, I remember the administration saying that they would never cut programs because it would be so damaging to the reputation of the U and make it difficult to recruit the best faculty.
One of my colleagues left the U last summer after almost 20 years and I am aware of others who are pursuing external opportunities. The latter is not unusual with high-performing faculty, but there are people who I believe would prefer to stay and who are now considering other options. The U is an economic driver for the state through research innovation, but the $691 million in external funding we received last year was down from $768 million the prior year, a decline of about 10%. I have served as the principal investigator for 22 externally funded grants during my career and co-investigator on several others, but am not pursuing as many opportunities now due to inadequate post-award support. Talk about penny wise and pound foolish.
I share these views because I love the University of Utah and its students, faculty, and staff. I don't know how widely my perspectives are shared by others and perhaps I am an outlier. My views are personal and the U is a big, diverse place and everyone has different experiences. I feel the need though to share them because I am concerned about the future of our institution, which I believe provides incredible value for its students and the State of Utah.
Any opinions or views expressed in this article and on this web site are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the University of Utah. They were prepared on a Sunday, during non-work hours, on my personal computer.
Think we’re seeing wildfire smoke aloft today?
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting this. I find that the University of Utah is following the trend seen in society today. When we think of what advances have been made, nobody looks back and says "thank goodness we had administrators" though high quality administration really can support significant achievement. I only hope we begin to value those that actually contribute to our society rather than those proving the merit of their position in an organization.
ReplyDeleteI very much appreciate this post, and I believe your perspective is shared widely. I am tenured at USU and it is the exact same dynamic. In the last few years, my department has had difficulty recruiting because of low salaries and insufficient research support. Morale is at rock bottom and nearly every tenure line faculty member in my department is now looking for another job because of the actions taken by our administration and the legislature.
ReplyDeleteSpirit vs The Machine
ReplyDeleteWelcome to earth
Thank you for this post. I have been at the U for over 30 years in Biology. I have been active in research over my entire career with significant external funding and won a Distinguished Teaching Award. I am ready to retire within the next year due in large part to the same factors you mention: distrust/disgust with the University administration and greatly increased time-consuming bureaucracy with concomitant decrease in support for PIs grant activities. The nail in the coffin is this year's legislative push to further cut budgets and their demeaning views of our scholarly activities. One of my favorite things about my job is working with and helping students. I will miss that, but I will not miss the ever-tightening clamp-down by the University and Legislature and their disrespectful attitude toward our scholarship and service. I will, however, enjoy having more time to ski, hike, and be outside. See you out there! Lynn Bohs
ReplyDeleteFully agree - The corporate greed mentality has slowly been seeping into the higher ed / university landscape for years. Only a matter of time before the negative impacts limit innovation and progress
ReplyDeleteThis would be a good perspective to submit to the Trib as a letter to the editor. The McKinsey thing is absolutely outrageous, it's the kind of decision that should get people fired. Faculty morale at the U has taken a gigantic beating during the last couple of years and this is absolutely going to affect the quality of the research and teaching done here. Penny wise and pound foolish is right.
ReplyDeleteAs a student at the U it is pretty evident that the administration spends an exorbitant amount of money on extravagant projects and over inflated bureaucracy. I came here for an education (and skiing) but have a sneaking suspicion that far too much of my tuition is mismanaged. They want efficiency? How about getting rid of the two-factor authentication needed for logging on to anything university related, every single time.
ReplyDeleteThe only reason I graduated is because I knew I had to get out of there before things went south. I believe Donald J Trump is the man to fix it!
ReplyDeleteHahaha!
DeleteUnfortunately, when you allow delusion to superceded excellence you get unqualified, over paid, entitled individuals who deny the reality of what they created on everyone else but themselves. You run into this issue.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, It doesn't look good when a disproportionate amount of professors across the state don't believe in merritocricy because it's "racist" when meritocracy is what built these fine institutions of higher learning. Not identiy politics and bathroom equlity.
Hopefully soon, they will realize the extent of the damage they willfully created when they are looking for work in the private sector and nobody sees gender studies degrees as valuable.
Holding academia accountable by stripping them of their funding, and their hopefully tax status will quickly become a sink or swim situation. You sell a garbage product and you go out of business. You sell excellence and they will come.
Nobody to blame but the Marxists who pushed it to far.
lol typos
DeleteUtah Academia is full of professors who hate this country. They suggest things in classes that are marxist far left propaganda. Advocating for war but won't go themselves. Blaming white people for everything wrong with society. Teaching identity politics but claiming to be inclusive. They preach confirmation bias but they all are biased towards everyone who doesn't think like them. Marxism has infiltrated the highest levels if Utah college's and litterally brainwashes like clock work hopeless young adults. We are paying for our own destruction and implantation of a global utopia where everyone is poor. Shut it down.
ReplyDeleteOk, then why don't you get some of your far right propagandists in to these universities as professors? Oh right, they are only "educated" from youtube, twitter and 4chan
DeleteIf you ever actually spoke to a university professor you would see that far from hating this country, they love it and care deeply about what they do. They love the people of Utah, the students, and their community. It is so disheartening to constantly hear nothing but hate and contempt for what they do, and to have legislators and other elected officials demean and minimize the value of higher education.
DeleteJim, thank you for sharing your perspective.
ReplyDeleteAs evident in this comment section, some Utahns will not rest until academia is corporatized and completely beholden to the local theocracy. Paranoid anti-science rhetoric disguised as a strawman fallacy against Marxism echoes fascism seen in the McCarthy era.
Keep speaking your mind and rattling your cage for the Utahns who deserve high quality education and a better future.
I can't help but think the situation would be better if the U had hired Dr. Carrie Byington instead of Taylor Randall.....
ReplyDeleteYou may have touched a nerve with this much needed opinion piece. I'm glad you posted it.
ReplyDeleteIs it clear to anyone else that some late night anonymous posters have a love for concentrations of power plus an inability to proofread? A lack of "meritocracy" must be the issue.
Sorry to hear what is going on at the U. I moved here the the theocratic state of Utah over 9 years ago. Aside from the excellent opportunities for outdoor recreation (which brought me here), the research and pursuit of excellence at the U were bright spots of being here.
ReplyDeleteThis same mentality has leeched into the University Hospital. I have worked there 20 years. I used to be proud of where I worked and loved what I did. They have systematically taken EVERYTHING away from us, including Nurse's Week! The one and only thing we still had to look forward to. While we are lucky to get 3% raises, upper management gets 25%. I hate my job now. I can't wait to retire!
ReplyDeleteVery much appreciate your courage to post. We need more brave people like you to speak up. Those of us not imbedded in the academic world are not always in-tune with what’s going on. Is this particular to the UofU? Or is a nationwide trend?
ReplyDeleteThank you for writing this. Your words eloquently summarize how I feel. As a faculty member at the U for the past 13 years, I have loved my job until very recently. I share your frustration with the administration's treatment of employees as commodities with little respect or knowledge for what they really do, the increasing administrative burdens in the name of efficiency, and the lack of support for the things (like research funding support) that they claim to want to improve. Over the past 1-1.5 years, I have found all these issues have seriously impacted my ability to do the research work and teaching that I came here to do.
ReplyDeleteI feel your pain. This is happening at all levels of education. "Administration" is out of control and eating all the funding. Basic education is really pretty simple. Hire good teachers and let them teach. Add research to higher education. I left academia a long time ago and never looked back but even if you leave, society still depends on quality education.
ReplyDeleteThis is much appreciated, thank you for writing. I think this echos my feelings as a student quite well too. I've jumped back and forth between Westminster and the U trying to find a good fit - neither feel great. It's tough that even faculty are feeling pressure, I didn't know it extended beyond the students. Thanks for posting, hopefully this starts some much needed discussion around changing the direction of education.
ReplyDeleteLooks like a record setting response to a way off topic post. Thanks for taking the time and thought to write it. I'm retired from academia now, but your points on administrative bloat and the massive overhead it requires, hit home. It's not just the U. The Dean's office of the Duke School of engineering has over 100 staff, all of whom have to be paid for by the tuition, research overhead, and intellectual property generated by 133 tenure track faculty. And when the money got tight, rather than trim the fat, they lean on the faculty to generate more through expanded masters programs. I could not see a solution - it just seems like the incentives for administrators reward expanding the administration. I love Duke, I love my colleagues, and I loved my time there, but the 30 year old me wouldn't recognize the place and probably would have taken that higher paying job at Lockheed Martin
ReplyDeleteNow about that high variance change in the weather pattern this weekend....feast or famine?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulweinstein/2023/08/28/administrative-bloat-at-us-colleges-is-skyrocketing/
DeleteThis article from 2023 mentions Duke as having more “non-faculty staff” on campus than students….
I'm unimpressed with the hiring of the likes of McKinsey. I've worked with them in the past and find their input wanting.
ReplyDeleteYes, universities have become too top heavy.
Inadequate post-award support? Can you be more specific?
ReplyDeleteSorry about that jargon. It's everything related to administering a grant including fiscal management, human resource management, procuring goods and services, budget planning, etc.
DeleteAnd co confirm, "anonymous" above was me. I forgot to login.
DeleteRunning a lab at a tier 1 research university like the U is like running a small business. Anywhere from 30 to 50% of the grants (awards) we get goes to the administration to pay for the infrastructure and for department staff to manage payroll, IT, HR, budgeting, conference travel, and purchasing. Without post award support, you have much less time to do research and write grants. This makes it gets hard to retain your faculty, and hard to recruit star researchers like Jim. And since the reputation of a university (for better or worse) is driven by the quality of it's research, things can spiral down quickly.
DeleteThe Atlantic had an article in May 24 about academe’s bureaucratic bloat called “No one knows what universities are for”. It’d be interesting to know whether McKinsey implicated this major source of inefficiency. Perhaps this take is too optimistic but the report could be a tool for admin to purge its own ranks.
ReplyDeleteBut since several university profs besides Jim read this, I’d like to point a finger at faculty too. I’ve always observed issue specialists— faculty who’ve spent their entire adulthood with an admirable but narrow focus on one area of study— are often moved into administrative ranks. The results are mixed at best. The creative thinking that might characterize their academic work fizzles in the face of personality conflicts, funding dilemmas, and the other everyday battles of middle management. And while this might be less of a problem for well paid science and applied tech professors, it’s prevalent for arts and humanities faculty who make much less money and for whom making more dough in admin is attractive.
The Peter Principle at play. High fiving the administrative bloat issue.
DeleteSeparately, is the head of the football program the highest paid state employee like I've heard about in some other states?
Thanks for posting this. It captures the mood on campus very well. There are deep contradictions between the stated objectives of raising rankings (whatever you think of the value of that) and increasing external funding, on the one hand, and swamping the faculty with bureaucratic work, corporate jargon, and persistent suspicion.
ReplyDelete