Budget

We just got information about some new budget initiative stuff. We've been losing faculty positions, but I'm sure you'll be happy to know that we're planning to hire four (4) new full-time administrative positions! Because, really, we need more administrators!

One of these I can get behind, because it's a position that has some real potential for impact on education. (You remember, education is supposed to be what we do around here.) The others? Well, I'm sure they're very important.

It's not that I don't think we need administrators. Without admissions folks, I wouldn't have anyone to teach. Without the registrar folks, we wouldn't be able to record classes in ways that are meaningful to outsiders. And so forth.

But seriously, we're adding four full-time administrative positions with this big initiative.

Ah, but, you wonder, how many faculty positions are you adding? None. Evidently, we don't actually need faculty to teach students. We can just hire some administrators to talk to students at the beginning of the semester about how much critical thinking is an important skill they're learning in college, and then the students will magically learn critical thinking. And we'll have another administrator talk about how important quantitative skills are, and suddenly our students will have an infusion of calculus skills! If you just tell students what they're learning, you can convince them to fill out the assessment bubbles and say that they've actually learned whatever, right?

If you're thinking of going into academics, you need to go into residence life support or something, because that's where the jobs are.