This is the first in a series of reflections on corporate culture.Ā By corporateĀ I mean collective or community culture.Ā I hope the reflections have application in settings where any group of individuals work togetherĀ towards a common goal.Ā ……………………………………………………………………………………………….. Loyalā¦
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?Ā ā¦
Clear communication regarding value and cost in higher education is more important than ever.Ā College presidents and financial analysts agree — mission focus is essential. āIn general, higher education does not know how to speak for its interests. It offersā¦
Bureaucracies create and sustain a moral perspective. āIf you are going to sin, sin against God, not the bureaucracy. God will forgive you but the bureaucracy won’t.ā Hyman Rickover ___________________________________________________ Effective bureaucracies — vision directed guidelines and processes — areā¦
This column was originally published October 28, 2010. Itās 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 personalā¦
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 byā¦
Courage is essential when hiring.Ā Self-confidence is required to say, āWe need people who are more knowledgeable than we are.āĀ Impossible for a narcissist or a self-absorbed leaderā¦ and hiring in any other way dooms any organization to failure. āNeverā¦
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 manyā¦
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 changeā¦
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 resultā¦
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 ifā¦
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. Ā Both Florida Atlantic University and Missouriā¦
Leonard Pitts, in an April Foolās Day editorial – no pun, just the facts – suggested that educational institutions are focused on the wrong issues. In New Yorkās public schools, dinosaur, birthday, pepperoni, and dancing, all make the NYC Departmentā¦
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 requiredā¦
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 Floridaās public university system is āracing toward the middle,ā a hodgepodgeā¦
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. āAllā¦
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 Iā¦
Each personās 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 toā¦
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 everyā¦
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, evenā¦
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.ā¦
States universities should revisit the history of Performance-Based Funding of higher education.Ā A uniform approach will not work well.Ā Instead, there must be as many performance models as there are universities in a state.Ā While attainable, this is an especiallyā¦
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 theā¦
Unions have helped create positive working conditions in this country that would have been unimaginable 100 years ago.Ā One needs look no further than the history of the development of the Fair Labor Standards Act for proof.Ā Every major advanceā¦
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 jobā¦
Second in a series on teaching excellence Teaching is leadership.Ā There are many distinctive views of teaching but, in the end, teaching is about leadership.Ā I do not think it possible to find a great leader who is not aā¦
Merit is a concept that is uncomfortable to many on university campuses.Ā 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 recognitionā¦
Knowing the character of any organization requires multiple perspectives.Ā One powerful way to gauge the character of a university is to see it through the eyes of those who leave it.Ā As I participated in graduation exercises this week, Iā¦
Abraham Lincoln said, āCharacter is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thingā.Ā Ā Any university with strong character and commitment to academic excellence will haveā¦
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.Ā It is not that they actively lie, but that they never want to be bearersā¦
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 theā¦
In political organizations, the first allegiance for all employees is to the elected official for whom they work.Ā For better or worse the elected officialās allegiance may be to party, to country, to ideology, or unfortunately in many cases, toā¦
Ā Our university has an excellent architecture program. Ā Ā Architecture students have ACT scores that are over two points higher than the university average.Ā We are oversubscribed and turn away applicants.Ā Bringing in more students than can be properlyā¦
Ā 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 areā¦
Barbara Bush acknowledged a number of years ago, possibly when First Lady, what she believed was the most pressing problem in America. āGreed.ā We have heard a great deal about greed on Wall Street.Ā Bankers who want to makeā¦
When Mary and I go out to eat we always decide where we are going before we leave.Ā Sometimes we even talk about it on the phone before I get to the house.Ā In other words, this is not aā¦
My mother worked as a riveter sewing sheet metal to plane wings in a defense plant on Long Island during the big war.Ā Countless others did too.Ā My in-laws worked at Grumman on Long Island for a combined total ofā¦
Stock certificates are used to prove partial ownership of a corporation. A bearerās 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 therebyā¦
