Although surveys show that Americans have less faith in a college education, a new survey finds that college students have confidence in their school. You know the surveys that show that people hate Congress but like their representatives? All politics are local? Well, I think this is also true at the university, where “local” means the department and “global” is the university. In a similar way, I have observed that most people judge their experience at a particular level at the “local” level.
What do I mean by that? It is not the university or the college/school. Those are administrative structures. The students and alumni rarely experience the institution through those “global” administrative structures. Their experience is at the department/classroom/lab level. So I believe their confidence in the university comes from their experience with the staff, faculty and fellow students in the department.
I was an associate dean for a few years. I kept trying to get the deans that I worked with to understand that within the College of Engineering, the students and alumni care about the department and the faculty and staff that teach them, advise them, mentor them and help them during their years as students. Also, that is where their degree is from — not the college, not the department.
It is time for administrators to understand that their job is to support the academic mission (Not making money. Money is not — or should not be — an academic metric). That means supporting the department. I believe most deans and provosts see the departments as supporting them. This is a mistake. They should see their job as supporting the departments. That is how I viewed my job as associate dean.
So I think they need to rethink their “reassurance.” If students still have confidence in the institution, it is because their view of the institution is local to the department level. And I believe it is time for the administrators to see the university as local at the faculty and department level. Serving the academic mission is supporting the advancing, preserving, exchanging (I know it is usually “disseminating” but we learn so much from our students when we teach and conduct research that I see it as exchange), and innovating new knowledge. Again, this is not at the level of the university — it is at the department/lab/faculty member level.
Without faculty and departments, colleges and universities would not exist. It is time for a change in the way the upper administration views itself. The longer I have been at the university, the more I feel penalized rather than supported by the administration. This has to change. Because once the faculty become unhappy (and this is happening — we see evidence of it), the department will not be able to support the academic mission, and the students will lose confidence and leave.
If they want to keep or increase their ~60%, it is time for the upper administration to think and act locally. Now. Before we lose more faculty members. We have lost three women in my department since the pandemic — and we didn’t have that many to start with. And eventually, we will lose the students these faculty members teach, mentor and collaborate with.
Opinions expressed by SmartBrief contributors are their own.
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