Place and Culture
This series of six reflections on corporate culture was originally published in October and November 2013. I am on summer break but I think these still have some value. WVW. Fifth in a series on Corporate Culture… Where we work…
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People, Purpose, Principle
This series of six reflections on corporate culture was originally published in October and November 2013. I am on summer break but I think these still have some value. WVW. Fourth in a series on Corporate Culture… Rules without relationships guide…
Dear Graduating Senior:
I am begging your pardon for a somber reflection amidst the joy of accomplishment—not to be a wet rag on the festivities of high school graduation, but a bright light on the realities of post-secondary education. If your GPA is…
Universities and Citizenship
A Continued reflection on citizenship from last week. There are significant relationships between education and citizenship. I am, before anything else, a professor—a teacher. I work to provide students the opportunity to learn. For me, this relationship between opportunity as…
Veterans as Students
America’s universities are the best in the world. This is so for many reasons, but primary among them is that we live in a free and open society. Two and one-half centuries of freedom and individual independence have allowed and…
Focus
Organizations succeed or fail based on their willingness to focus and concentrate. Because of the explosion of data, and therefore the ability to compare, organizations and individuals spend an inordinate amount of time concentrating on “others.” Bobby Jones, probably the…
Sticker Price
If five people go into the same Ford dealership and buy an F150, each will pay a different price. The cost of the new vehicle will be determined by the buyer’s ability to negotiate, the salesperson, color, options, trade-in, interest…
OJT
That’s what they used to call it: on-the-job training. In the professional discipline of architecture, it was common for people to become architects by being an apprentice in an architectural office. After 12 years of apprenticeship, a candidate could…
Studying and Working
We create false dichotomies. “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop; idle lips are his mouthpiece,” from the Book of Proverbs. At 14 years old in 1964, I heard, “Idle hands…
A Personal Reflection for the Season
This reflection, first published on December 15, 2008, may be worth another look. Christmas memories are personal, deep and important. My family’s New York Christmases had the strong, first-generation influence of Western Europe. Cajun Christmases with their peculiarities of place…
The Core of Any College Curriculum
image from The Market of Ideas www.college.columbia.edu. The center of every university experience worth its salt is a grounding in the fundamentals of the human condition. For full and lasting impact on students, it should also be rigorous and challenging.…
Student Debt
image from o-MONEY-facebook.jpg-photos Universities endeavor to transfer the burden of blame to bankers and politicians. Sallie Mae holds almost $200 billion dollars of the debt. Like the housing bubble, much of the student debt problem involves politically driven, unsecured, unchecked…
Campus Life
Image from The Prairie News Every spring, countless families from across the nation make determinations about where students will live while attending college. Four-year institutions require one or two years of campus residency for new college students. Exceptions for…
Town-Gown Relationships
Downtown Canyon, Homecoming, From the WT Archives Communities and the universities they host are married to each other. When one partner grows and prospers, so does the other. This has been true for a long time. In European universities…
A Personal Reflection for the Season
This reflection was originally published on December 15, 2008. It is worth a second look. Christmas memories are personal, deep and important for me. My family’s New York Christmases with the strong, first generational, influence of Western Europe; Cajun Christmases…
Unprepared: Be Prepared!
Fourth in a series on university struggles Students should work hard, study, and accept responsibility for results. Too many are not prepared. While this is true regarding critical thinking skills, basic mathematical abilities, and reading comprehension, these deficiencies are not…
Our Universities: The Tyranny of Calendars and Clocks
Making university education available to more people through extended operating schedules would be a positive move towards meeting the needs of learners who are parents, single or married, working full time jobs, or otherwise committed in ways that make 8:00…
Our Universities: Rural Institutions and Economic Impact
In many rural areas, even those with a university, there is a pervasive sense that economic vitality is impossible, the challenges too great, rewards too limited and regional poverty too persistent. This is a costly misconception. “Nobody made a greater…
Our Universities: Culture and Energy
Third in a series on Corporate Culture… A culture is created and sustained by human energy expended to attain shared purpose. Leadership sets the tone and pace of the development and expenditure of every member’s contribution to corporate energy flow.…
Our Universities: Choosing A College
It’s the season when many soon-to-be high school graduates seek a place to study. Believe some of what you read, a great deal of what you see, and make sure the selection feels right. Be careful. “There is no such…
Our Universities: Adjunct Faculty
Adjunct or contingent faculty — the part-time year to year teachers, often on semester to semester or even course to course appointments — make up an ever increasing portion of the teaching force at public universities. They are, however, largely…
Our Universities: One Size Fits One
Standardized measures never capture the essence of anything, although they provide dimensions: length, width, and depth – descriptions — but not essence. Tests, grades, and performance measures devoid of dreams and desires are gibberish. Measures are frail rhetoric and detrimental…
Our Universities: Stewards — not Wards — of the State
State funding has its place but too much might create organizational laziness, leadership ineffectiveness, and unattainable expectations. Unbridled dependence morphs into a form of gluttony. “The more subsidized it is, the less free it is. What is known as `free…
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: A Fearful Future?
The forces that appear to threaten universities provide the perfect opportunity for institutions to be able to do their job in a changing social milieu. What appears to contradict or undermine purpose is, in reality, a recovery of strength. “Evil…
Our Universities: Debt and Learning: Cause and Effect
Students make decisions about studying for careers with some facts, but far too few when the costs are so high. Ask anybody with a collection agency in tow and a degree and no job. When education was 80% state subsidized…
Our Universities: God, Rick Perry, and the Daily Egyptian – Three Degrees of Freedom
Universities must be free to deliver their greatest benefits. Even with the best intentions, the priorities and purposes of a university can become obscured. When they do, universities suffer, and the brunt of the burden is borne on students’ backs.…
Our Universities: Rules and Regulations
As organizations grow in size and complexity it is nearly impossible to muzzle the tendency to direct and/or control behavior by the promulgation of rules and regulations. Rules are often confused with rationality, objectivity, and fairness. “No tendency is quite…
Our Universities: Learned Helplessness
Leadership creates hope, or hopelessness, one or the other. You can’t lead by what is or what might be, but out of the alchemy of what is and what might be. That is the nature of the art. Without that…
Our Universities: The Presidency
University presidents carry a moral burden to act with integrity. When they don’t, universities suffer and communities, students, and alumni pay the price. “…for what is a share of a man worth? If he does not contain the quality of…
Our Universities: Solvency
Maintaining solvency – fiscal health – is always a matter of priorities. Attitudes toward solvency are evident in actions. This is especially so with long-term decision making about the direction an enterprise moves. Solvent universities and other organizations always have…
Our Universities: Leadership and Stock Value
Diplomas are like stock certificates. Stock certificates are possessed by people to prove partial ownership through corporate shares. A bearer’s stock certificate entitles the holder to exercise all legal rights associated with the stock. At GM, you buy it; at…
Our Universities: $10K–B. A.
Those who champion the $10,000 bachelor’s degree want the imitation to equal the real thing. It is not that the imitation is without value, and surely a real B.A. incorporates too much waste, but neither is justification for the equalization…
Our Universities: What or Who am I?
Universities help students answer the question, What am I? Accountant, architect, engineer, teacher, butcher, baker or candlestick maker. But the equally important question, Who am I? is abandoned for the perceived efficiency and cultural clarity of the “what.” A value-free,…
Our Universities: Human Touch
Opportunities to increase the potency of a university are numerous. No single effort is more valuable than a concerned teacher working directly with a motivated student. Human touch is required to respond to the distinctive needs of each student. There…
Our Universities: Undergraduate Research
Fifth in a Series on Research Good students, those academically inclined and motivated to learn, value opportunities for research as undergraduates. If you are an undergraduate who thinks that research is only for faculty and graduate students, you have no…
Our Universities: Roots
Third in a Series on Research J.E. Lawrence, in The Nebraska State Journal in 1949 regarding pioneer life and character, wrote: “New land is harsh, and vigorous, and sturdy. It scorns evidence of weakness. There is nothing of sham or…
Our Universities: Research Matters, Absolutely
First in a Series on Research Learning creates ideas grounded in the past but hopeful for the future. History is the basis for discovery, and it relentlessly repeats itself absent new ideas and insight: Forward focused investigation and research. When…
Our Universities: Community College Innovation
The work of higher education is fairly simple. Teachers teach, students learn and benefits accrue; individually, corporately, and socially. As student abilities, backgrounds, needs, and aspirations change, so too must our approaches to teaching. Or, there will be no learning.…
Our Universities: Institutional Pride
Pride in a community effort is well-placed. Misplaced pride focuses on self. Well placed pride focuses outwardly towards something larger than self. This is ultimately what produces excellence in a university. When you look at a city, it’s like reading…
Our Universities: Learning Not To Care
No matter how acute the acquired analytical ability, the craft in writing or the fluency in mathematics, if students leave universities with a sense that self is the only purpose of the university experience, the game is over. And it…
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: Creating Victims
Universities don’t set out to do it. They don’t try to accomplish it, but nonetheless are successful in creating far too many victims, and it is not a state of mind. “People think that a liar gains a victory over…
Our Universities: Liberal Education
Students benefit from an educational experience that requires rigorous analytical thought: the power of a sharp mind. The value of such a mind is real in the marketplace, with worth beyond measure for anyone who possesses one. The liberally educated…
Our Universities: Cost and Competition
The idea of colleges raising tuition based on the willingness of families to pay is poorly conceived. Cost and quality must fit together. Any other viewpoint is wrong academically. And equally important, it makes bad business: It may work, but…
Our Universities: Performance Measures
No two universities are the same. No university was the same last year as it will be next year. Ditto for students. “The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time…
Our Universities: Principles and Pragmatics
Student loan default rates are three times higher at for-profit institutions than at public universities. Those borrowing the most, default the most. Disturbingly, non-traditional college goers based on race, gender, or age, subsidize higher education through bogus loan programs in…
Our Universities – The Fourth of July and Tenure
Independence Day What follows is a piece that was originally published in July 2009. Given the issues at many U.S. colleges, such as Mr. Jefferson’s University in Virginia, or the funding challenges at all public universities in the land, fundamental…
Our Universities: The Flow of Dollars
College costs are escalating for a number of reasons, but first among them is that there are resources available to pay for increases. Even that great baby-boomer sage, The Beaver, got it – Theodore “Beaver” Cleaver: I could use my…
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: Tenure and the Marketplace
Stanley Fish, writing in the New York Times Opinionator online July 11, 2011, comments extensively on the relationship of tenure, academic freedom, and current university life in response to a book by Naomi Schaefer Riley entitled, “The Faculty Lounges: And…
Our University: High Achieving Students
Fifth in a series of who our students are and how they perform. The role of every professor, in every classroom, guiding every student, is to challenge that student to a level at which he or she has never before…
Our University: Nontraditional Students
Fourth in a series of who our students are and how they perform. The title of an anthology of stories by and about nontraditional students complied by Donna S. Talarico may say it best, and may say it all: Kids,…
Our University: The Creation of a Middle Class
This column, in a slightly modified form, originally ran in August 2008. Walter Wendler Universities provide a key ingredient for the foundation of a free society. They help create, through active faculty and engaged students, the fabric of informed economic…
Our University: International Students
Third in a series on who our students are and how they perform. International students are a reliable predictor of U.S. institutional success in a global market for higher education. I am not confident that American postsecondary institutions will retain…
Our University: Reserve Officers’ Training Corps
The season and current events cause me to offer this slightly modified piece originally published on July 11, 2008. The importance and value of voluntary military training in universities cannot be argued, nor can the interdependence in mission of a…
Our University: Faiths on Campus
Holiday challenges and faith consternation on university campuses are real and never ending. These challenges and the discourse promoted by them should always be vibrant and alive. Democracy is itself, a religious faith. For some it comes close to being…
Our University: Planning for Leadership Change
Universities are propositions for the long run. Short-term strategies lead to short-term successes. Little is more important to a university than succession planning and it is almost universally overlooked as institutions lurch from one foggy set of leadership goals to…
Our University: The Power of Community Colleges
Clark Kerr, the former chancellor of the University of California, had a good idea. He wanted to make college more affordable for more people, and simultaneously build excellence in higher education for California. He did both. He proposed a three-tiered…
Our University: A Home for Minds
This week you are reading a reflection from Jay Larson on the impact of the campus environment on the university experience. A Murphysboro native and veteran, Jay has a BA and MA from SIUC in history, specializing in China/Asia and taught…
Our University: Ideas and Giving
Geraldine Fabricant of The New York Times reports in a November 15th story, “As Donors Retrench, Challenges for Universities”, that university fundraising efforts may be in for tough times. In 2009, donations fell by almost 12% nationally. Most unfortunate in…
Our University – The Appearance of Money
The tone and content of messages promulgated by the university during stringent financial times are critical. Mila Kopumpilova reported in the St. Paul Pioneer Press that over $415,000 in bonuses were paid to executives at Minnesota state colleges and universities…
Our University – Fiduciaries and Excellence
Leadership is primarily a fiduciary action. A fiduciary is charged with giving priority to the interests of others over self in a way that engenders and protects trust. Frequently the idea is associated with fiscal affairs and legal perspectives. Surely…
Our University – Free Thinking
Halloween marks a number of occasions but none more important than the nailing of Luther’s 95 Theses on the Castle Church door at Wittenberg — the birth of a reformation that transformed the modern world on October 31, 1517. This…
Our University – What’s in a Name?
Universities across the nation are rushing to “brand” themselves. There is the “D+” branding idea at Drake, the genius of a high priced expert no doubt. An unfortunate choice for a university identifier. I know. I received a D+ one…
Our University – Mission and Purpose
Some corporate mythology: A company that made its fortune selling drill bits was having difficulty with a sinking market. The president called together his leadership team from across the country. He brought in high priced consultants. He inquired of this…
Our University – Excellent Teaching and the Moral Fabric
Seventh in a series on teaching excellence Possibly the most important thing that excellent teachers pass on to students is the sense of a prevailing moral fabric resembling what someone gains from a healthy family situation, religious teaching, or association…
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 – Athletic Integrity
Sixth in a series on integrity Honesty in teaching and research, clarity in the statement of complex ideas and opinions, a desire to know, share, discuss and debate values, and an understanding of the world and how it works are…
Our University – Academic Integrity
Fifth in a series on Integrity Free inquiry is the basis for university excellence. When a faculty member produces research findings in contrast, at odds, or inconsistent with a position of the university, the board, or a donor, academic integrity…
Our University – Hiring Integrity
Fourth in a series on integrity In organizations where merit thrives, and in some universities this is still the case, few things are more important to long-term quality than hiring practices. Lax standards for finding and developing faculty, staff and…
Our University: Integrity at the Top
Third in a series on integrity. American Universities have been created in a uniquely American mold; a marketplace of institutions, some public and some private. Non-profit organizations have been the norm in both settings, though the last decade has seen…
Our University: Fiscal Integrity
Second in a series on integrity. This is not about double dipping as was reported last week in the Seattle Times; lavish trips to distant lands under the guise of recruiting additional students; fancy offices and luxury cars; incessantly increasing…
Our University: Student-Directed Integrity
Integrity presents itself in many forms in university life. In the coming weeks, I will address various aspects of integrity, for the chilling impact its absence has on the fundamental nature of the university, and how one works. Institutions owe…
Our University – Growth and Change
People don’t like the concept of downsizing. A few years ago management experts were talking about “right-sizing” as an alternative concept. Organizations always serve best when they serve most efficiently. One way to create efficiency is to make sure that…
Our University – Bologna
The Bologna Process is an ongoing effort of the European Higher Education Area to “tune” universities from 47 countries so that more predictable outcomes and consistency across national and institutional boundaries, leading to transparency in expectations, employment preparedness and certification,…
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 – Unfairness
The world is unfair. People without resources are denied access to higher education. No matter how low tuition is, it is still out of reach for some. Inside Higher Ed ran a story recently about a program at Tulsa Community…
Our University – The Suspension of Disbelief
The suspension of disbelief was a literary device first identified by Samuel Taylor Coleridge to refer to the challenges that readers faced in accepting the assertions of an author to make a story work. The same concept is now demanded…
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 – Lowering Costs and Quality
Community colleges and dual enrollment high school programs are seen as the ticket to reducing costs in higher education. Carefully used they are a means to reduce cost, but they are not round-trip tickets. Cost comparisons for credit hours attained…
Our University – Lying, Cheating, and Stealing
Students in classes at all universities are lied to, cheated and stolen from every day through grade inflation. Recently at Louisiana State University, a faculty member who refused to lie, cheat or steal was removed from her class of biology…
Our University – Privatization
University leaders decry the idea that universities are becoming more like private enterprises, seeking increased fees, grant support, philanthropic dollars, and auxiliary incomes to make up for the relentless loss of state funding over the past few decades. Even more…
Our University – Summertime
Not one stone will remain unturned in a nationwide effort to reduce operating costs, tuition and fees over the next few years for all public and private universities. American ingenuity coupled with a deep, abiding pragmatism suggests this crisis of…
Our University – The Blame Game
In any organization, when times are tough, there is a natural tendency for people to find someone, or something, to blame. I used to work with a fellow who taught juniors in the program. He always complained about the quality…
Our University – Budget Cuts
Universities across the nation are facing some of the toughest times imaginable. In Atlanta, Georgia Tech is talking about cutting research according to Jim Kirk, the budget director. Cut research at Georgia Tech? The place may be losing its way. …
Our University – Student Work
In a study from the early part of this century, Learning and Earning: Working in College by Orszag and others, it was found that students who work a reasonable number of hours per week while enrolled in college, say 8…
Our University – Completion Rates
A measure of university success in “rankings exercises” such as U.S. News and World Reports, Kiplinger’s, and others has appropriately been the rate at which a student completes college. If a student spends a few years at a university and…
Our University – Staff Excellence
Underestimating the value of excellent faculty and students is impossible. They are the substance of the university and what separates the good institutions from the average ones. Otherwise what is excellent is ordinary and that is impossible by definition. Likewise,…
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 – College of Education
There are hundreds of institutions in the United States recognized today as universities that were called “teachers colleges” a half century ago. As these institutions grew and developed diverse areas of study the title “university” was deemed more appropriate. No…
Our University – The Center
At our University, over a thousand times a day, a teacher walks into a lecture hall with 500 students or a classroom with 50 students, or a laboratory, studio or practice room with five students, or a research laboratory or…
Our University: Vision and Dollars
If you pay any attention to anything regarding higher education, things are getting tough. No news here. They have been since nearly the turn of this century when the state stopped increasing support of higher education. Oh, there are increases…
Our University: Toleration and Conviction
Third in a series of thoughts regarding the intersection of faith and reason in university life. Knife edges are the places where greatness lives in organizations. The sides of a knife don’t cut, but the well whetted edge of a…