In Loco Parentis
In loco parentis, “in the place of a parent,” suggests that an organization or institution should or can act toward the benefit of a child in the absence of his/her mother or father. This ancient contract was embedded in…
Category Faculty
What’s it Cost?
An old friend of mine asked me the other day, “What portion of the accumulated student debt was for educational endeavors?” He worked on a campus for a long time, not as a faculty or administrator but as a public…
Without Standards
A Christmas Eve review of a student petition for readmission to my program gave me pause. This student earned a freshman GPA below 1.0: an average of less than a “D”; and a high school GPA of 2.5: roughly a…
Our Universities: Performance Measures Redux
Given renewed interest in federal performance measures (ratings) for universities evidenced by last week’s announcements, this reflection of August 21, 2012 is worth a second look. So are the Department of Education’s pronouncements: No two universities are the same. No university…
Double Double-Dipping Again
This piece originally ran four years ago, November 12, 2010 under the title “The Appearance of Money”. I corrected a few mistakes — probably overlooked a few too. Given current events in Illinois I thought it might be worth a…
Minority Points of View
Seventh and final in the IMTE series A reflection on October 6, “I’m Mad, too, Eddie,” (IMTE) claimed that minority points of view are swept under the rug and labeled as intolerant. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, speaking at Harvard’s commencement, was…
Bastions of Entitlement
My reflection on October 6, “I’m Mad, too, Eddie,” (IMTE) criticized the notion of entitlement – not the common political understanding that refers to programs that look after people in old age, like Social Security, or assist with health care…
Original Sin
Of all the pitfalls of biblical illiteracy — and they have been increasing for decades in Western culture – is a tragic ignorance of the pervasiveness of the concept of original sin. I am not a theologian. I am not…
Distance Education Buyers Beware
Distance education programs can offer quality and academic intensity, but they also can be shams. As the Latin warning caveat emptor suggests, those contemplating distance education or satellite campus study – even on-campus programs – need to ask the right…
Our Universities: Sharp Focus
Universities serve many purposes each defined by varied constituents and always based on individual desires and perceptions. This complexity requires that students and families and institutional leaders all appreciate how critical a sharp focus is. Without it no one is…
Our Universities: Bureaucracy is not a Substitute for Excellence
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. No bureaucracy in public service or private enterprise ever starts out as anything but a step towards fairness and excellence. Yet, time and power jointly contrive to pollute legitimate ordering principles. …
Our Universities: A Trinity of Loyalty
Healthy loyalty is so rare it’s nearly unrecognizable. In many organizations primary loyalty is to the lower right-hand corner of a spreadsheet: a.k.a. the “bottom line,” and little else. In others, blind loyalty to a leader is expected. In yet…
Our Universities: Experienced Human Resources
Retirement systems that devalue the contribution of people, or constrain meaningful participation in post retirement work are dysfunctional, costly, and shortsighted. In universities, it is essential that valuable experience be put to best use for as long as possible to…
Our Universities: Merit and Value
Universities that deny the relationship between merit and value undermine quality. Without recognition of meritorious achievement results fall. So desperate are organizations to be perceived as having value they replace excellence with its appearance, real performance with placebos, and the…
Our Universities: Office Hours
The essence of training is the transfer of skills and abilities. The essence of education is human interaction between someone ignorant and someone expert in a field of knowledge yielding learner’s transformation. “Professors usually teach 12 hours, and are also…
Our Universities: Trust is a Two-Way Street
Organizations that rely on the public trust must build trust from within to earn the reputation of trustworthiness. Treatment of people creates an aura of trust or distrust. It’s not arbitrary. Human groups give and receive trust: It is a…
Our Universities: Creating a Powerful Corporate Culture
Sixth and final reflection on corporate culture… Nurturing a strong organizational culture is the only job that matters. Without the power of a positive shared experience, selfishness and happenstance rule not vision or purpose. “A company’s culture is often buried…
Our Universities: Yes-Men and Corporate Citizenship
This is the first in a series of reflections on corporate culture. By corporate I mean collective or community culture. I hope the reflections have application in settings where any group of individuals work together towards a common goal. ……………………………………………………………………………………………….. Loyal…
Our Universities: The Liberal Arts and China
The fundamentals of a free thinking society, communication and ciphering ability, are not do-dads, or throw-aways but essentials for a university to meet its public responsibilities and have durable economic impact. “So what does business need from our educational system? …
Our Universities: Function and Finance
Clear communication regarding value and cost in higher education is more important than ever. College presidents and financial analysts agree — mission focus is essential. “In general, higher education does not know how to speak for its interests. It offers…
Our Universities: Bureaucracy and Morality
Bureaucracies create and sustain a moral perspective. “If you are going to sin, sin against God, not the bureaucracy. God will forgive you but the bureaucracy won’t.” Hyman Rickover ___________________________________________________ Effective bureaucracies — vision directed guidelines and processes — are…
Our Universities – Free Thinking
This column was originally published October 28, 2010. It’s easy to forget the purpose of universities and the essential — if at times testy — interplay of free thought in a free society. In an age that increasingly gives personal…
Our Universities: Degree Production
The number and value of college degrees produced in the U.S. will be a bone of contention for a long time and the marrow of that bone is that the cost of the degree is no longer borne solely by…
Our Universities: Hire Power
Courage is essential when hiring. Self-confidence is required to say, “We need people who are more knowledgeable than we are.” Impossible for a narcissist or a self-absorbed leader… and hiring in any other way dooms any organization to failure. “Never…
Our Universities: The Power of Two – Ideas and Ideology
Universities, especially public universities, have a responsibility to leave ideology behind and focus on ideas. This does not mean that ideology is not valuable to individuals, but it should take a back seat to ideas at universities. In too many…
Our Universities: Demographic Shift
The changing nature of students, their interests and abilities, requires that our universities change too. While they do, we must remember the attributes of learning and insight, and the abilities and skills that make the university valuable to all change…
Our Universities: Image, Reputation and Babble
A university earns a reputation through thousands of acts of diligence from faculty and staff of every kind at every level. Clean toilets to good governance. Image cannot be persuaded into existence with a single effort, but is the result…
Our Universities: The Great, Gray Fountain
Eighth in the series, Follow the money Retirements trim budgets. Retirements without assessment of individual contribution to attaining mission may reduce operating costs. Important as that is in an environment of scarcity, budget trimming alone represents a wanting accomplishment if…
Our Universities: Outsourcing
I have seen Enterprise Rent-A-Car establishments on university campuses. Chartwells and other food providers are common sights at our institutions of higher learning. And, it has finally happened. Teaching is also being outsourced now. Both Florida Atlantic University and Missouri…
Our Universities: Where is the Leadership?
Leonard Pitts, in an April Fool’s Day editorial – no pun, just the facts – suggested that educational institutions are focused on the wrong issues. In New York’s public schools, dinosaur, birthday, pepperoni, and dancing, all make the NYC Department…
Our Universities: Bread and Circuses
Universities have lost their mission. Education and academic performance take a back seat to reinforcing the inflated self-concept of students and their families. We have reduced admission standards, reduced standards to progress through courses, and reduced standards of performance required…
Our Universities: Campuses and Systems
University systems are political organizations. Universities are academic organizations. The two coexist symbiotically only with determined leadership. In a speech opening the legislative session, House Speaker Dean Cannon said Florida’s public university system is “racing toward the middle,” a hodgepodge…
Our Universities: Habit, Tradition, Culture
Traditions, good and bad, are difficult to dislodge once in place. Change in universities occurs at glacial velocity. The nature of a university, like the character of a community, is determined, in large part, by its traditions and habits. “All…
Our Universities: Collegiate Cronyism
The absence of transparency and forthrightness can destroy organizations built on trust – churches, universities and the like. Lacking these, educational institutions become like Wal-Mart. Now, I am a Wal-Mart fan, but I find myself on guard every time I…
Our Universities: Eighteen Inches
Each person’s head and heart, the twin seats or our identity, lie just eighteen inches apart, about a cubit. The connection between them is being stretched to the breaking point by universities and other institutions that have tried desperately to…
Our Universities: Me, Me, Me
Increasing costs, lavish loans, low performance standards, the absence of merit, and a lost sense of mission contribute to the diminishment of the effectiveness of public higher education. But most loathsome and detrimental is an organization hell-bent on deflecting every…
Our University – Athletic Integrity
Current events related to intercollegiate athletics leads me to post a story this week that was originally published on July 27, 2010. The cost of low integrity programs and poor executive decision making is the highest cost to bear, even…
Our Universities: Public Leadership Private Morality
The separation of private beliefs and public expression of those may be acceptable in many settings (though I am not convinced that is the case) but it is absolutely unacceptable for university leadership. University leadership is private morality expressed publically.…
Our Universities: Charters and Performance
States universities should revisit the history of Performance-Based Funding of higher education. A uniform approach will not work well. Instead, there must be as many performance models as there are universities in a state. While attainable, this is an especially…
Our Universities: Whining versus Winning
The only result of whining is to push people with purpose from addressing real problems. The tendency to whining and complaining may be taken as the surest sign symptom of little souls and inferior intellects. Lord Jeffrey ___________________________________________________________________ Recently the…
Our University: Layers of Advocacy
Unions have helped create positive working conditions in this country that would have been unimaginable 100 years ago. One needs look no further than the history of the development of the Fair Labor Standards Act for proof. Every major advance…
Our University: Shared Governance and Collective Bargaining
The Congressional Record, August 1985, provides a revealing perspective held by Albert Shanker, former President of the United Federation of Teachers from 1964 to 1984 and President of the American Federation of Teachers from 1974 to 1997, regarding his job…
Our University – Casting a Vision: Teachers as Leaders
Second in a series on teaching excellence Teaching is leadership. There are many distinctive views of teaching but, in the end, teaching is about leadership. I do not think it possible to find a great leader who is not a…
Our University – Expectations and Merit
Merit is a concept that is uncomfortable to many on university campuses. Years of service are seen as the golden coin, but longevity and excellence are not always cousins. Confusion between meritorious performance and meeting performance expectations kills the recognition…
Our University: Parting
Knowing the character of any organization requires multiple perspectives. One powerful way to gauge the character of a university is to see it through the eyes of those who leave it. As I participated in graduation exercises this week, I…
Our University: Reputation
Abraham Lincoln said, “Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing”. Any university with strong character and commitment to academic excellence will have…
Our University – Truth Telling
One of the greatest challenges for leadership is to get people, in all parts of the organization, to tell the truth about how things are. It is not that they actively lie, but that they never want to be bearers…
Our University – The Three R’s
If B.F. Skinner was a university leader who wanted to foster excellence in teaching, research, and service, as do all intelligent university leaders, he would have come up with a dynamic suggestion, one that many inside and outside of the…
Our University – Allegiance
In political organizations, the first allegiance for all employees is to the elected official for whom they work. For better or worse the elected official’s allegiance may be to party, to country, to ideology, or unfortunately in many cases, to…
Faculty at Work
Our university has an excellent architecture program. Architecture students have ACT scores that are over two points higher than the university average. We are oversubscribed and turn away applicants. Bringing in more students than can be properly…
Our University – Entitlement
Entitlement is the state of being owed that which you have not earned. We see workers of all kinds, at every level, from classroom teachers to state and national political leaders who suffer from the notion that they are…
Greed – Our University
Barbara Bush acknowledged a number of years ago, possibly when First Lady, what she believed was the most pressing problem in America. “Greed.” We have heard a great deal about greed on Wall Street. Bankers who want to make…
Our University – Merit
When Mary and I go out to eat we always decide where we are going before we leave. Sometimes we even talk about it on the phone before I get to the house. In other words, this is not a…
Our University and Significant Debt
My mother worked as a riveter sewing sheet metal to plane wings in a defense plant on Long Island during the big war. Countless others did too. My in-laws worked at Grumman on Long Island for a combined total of…
Our University: Stock Certificates
Stock certificates are used to prove partial ownership of a corporation. A bearer’s stock certificate entitles the holder to exercise all legal rights associated with the stock. Holders of stock certificates want the value of the stock to increase thereby…
