| What role does the administration
play at a university? One would assume that the administration serves
the purpose of ensuring the satisfaction of both the students and
the faculty, providing adequate resources to the departments so
that professors and lecturers are happy and students receive an
excellent education. However, is this really the case? Is the administration
really concerned with the well being of the faculty and students?
Or do they only care about prestige, cost-efficiency, and dealing
with budget cuts? In the following analysis, I mean to examine the
intentions of the university administration both at UCLA and in
general, in hopes of discovering what their main concerns are and
how this affects the faculty and students of the campus.
One of the main issues that the administration
has to deal with is the university budget.
Once the budget has been handed down from the state government,
the task of the administrators is to decide how to disperse the
money to the different departments in order to make the most of
the amount they are allotted. Recently, this has become a very difficult
task, especially for universities in California, because of the
very significant economic crisis, resulting in major cutbacks in
university funding. This substantial
budget cut is forcing the University of California Board of Regents
to make some major decisions on what to do with their decreasing
amount of resources. The Regents claim that they are doing the best
that they can with what they are given, but is that enough? How
are these budget cuts affecting the university as a whole? What
are the administrators going to do with the crisis they are faced
with? The forecast for the future of the UC system is not good.
Early this year, in a
UCLA Daily Bruin article, UC budget vice president Larry Hershman
reported, “We will be fighting very hard against more cuts.
The choices are all bad choices… none of the options are popular.”
Specifically, what exactly are these choices that the administrators
are dealing with? According to another Daily Bruin newspaper article,
the solutions that they have come up with for handling the budget
cuts include decreasing financial aid, increasing student fees,
cutting programs, restricting enrollment, reducing employee salaries,
and laying off employees.
Certainly, none of these possible situations
are desirable for the students, faculty, or the administration.
In particular, the evident possibility of enrollment restrictions
may cause bigger problems than expected. By turning away so many
prospective students from the UC system, they are forcing them into
California State University schools and community colleges, neither
of which are prepared to handle such an increase in student population.
Therefore, we would be causing a ripple effect by allowing our budgetary
problems to carry over to other college systems and influence their
administration as well. Faced with this difficult situation, it
appears that Regent
Dolores Huerta is accurate in saying, “Most people don’t
know how drastically the university has been hurt.” Indeed,
the university is hurting, and it is not just the administrators
that are being affected.
Incidentally, the group that is probably hardest
hit by the administrative decisions about the budget cuts is the
faculty. I presume that the faculty plays the most important role
in the university system because they are the ones who are teaching
the students. However, despite the importance of their positions,
faculty members at universities are being faced with numerous problems
as a result of the budget crisis. For instance, one of the administrators’
major concerns in these times of decreased funding is increasing
cost-efficiency. In order to accomplish this, administrators are
relying on the efforts of part-time and non-tenured instructors.
According to the American
Association of University Professors, “44.5 percent of
all faculty are part-time, and non-tenure-track positions of all
types account for more than 60 percent of all faculty appointments
in American higher education.” The reason that universities
seem to be using excessive amounts of increasingly temporary faculty
is because it saves money. Employing part-time lecturers as opposed
to professors who have tenure allows the
university to save nearly 50 percent in salary payments. However,
how does this affect these employees? Apparently, the effect is
very negative. In Robert Townsend’s “Summary
of Data from Surveys by the Coalition on the Academic Workforce,”
he reports on the “second-class status” of these part-time
faculty members. Not only do the part-time faculty get paid less
than full-time professors, but they also receive fewer benefits.
So what is the result when you have a considerable percentage of
the faculty population being treated this poorly? Unfortunately,
the outcome very well could be unhappy instructors who might care
less about the quality of their teaching.
Another tactic that university administrators
are utilizing to deal with the impending budget cuts is hiring less
instructors altogether. As I mentioned earlier, the UC Regents discussed
having to possibly lay off employees in order to save money. With
a lack of lecturers and professors, the administration will have
to increasingly rely on graduate students in order to teach classes.
This replacement further proves the mistreatment of faculty that
is occurring and advances the argument that they have reason to
be unhappy. It seems as though the university officials are putting
themselves further into a difficult predicament. The university
needs more money, and in order to get more money, the administrators
need to increase the prestige of the university. In order to increase
the prestige, they must better the environment of the campus by
ensuring the happiness of the faculty, and consequently, the students.
However, this is not what is happening; instead, those in charge
are deskilling professors’ jobs, encouraging the faculty to
save money by using graduate student teaching assistants, as well
as utilizing technology and the Internet
as a means of communicating with students. Subsequently, the teachers
may be more cost-efficient, but the quality of learning is being
negatively affected, and so are the students.
In addition to the faculty, the administration
should be very concerned with the well being of the university’s
student population. However, as they become more and more concerned
with budget cuts and funding allotments, the university becomes
increasingly like a business, in which the main goal is profit,
and not education. The bureaucracy
of the administration system becomes evident when the proposed solutions
to budget crises include increasing student fees, cutting programs,
and decreasing the amount of courses offered to undergraduate students.
In discussing the role of university administration in higher education
in a speech at the Faculty Senate of Virginia meeting, Phyllis
Palmiero admits that “college administrators should ensure
that their institution is performing at the highest possible level
in terms of the quality of instruction and service to the students.”
However, it becomes evident that the quality of instruction is not
the main concern when students are forced to deal with fewer resources
and fewer options of required courses. It becomes very frustrating
when as a student, I am expected to pay significantly more for my
tuition, while at the same time, I have fewer classes to choose
from while pursuing my degree. I realize that the UC Regents are
having a very difficult time dealing with the massive budget cuts
the university is facing, but what I would like to know is how we
can afford a brand new Athletic Center, but I cannot even manage
to get a schedule that accommodates my requirements. It seems as
though the university presidents and deans, who are the ones that
wield all the authority in making decisions concerning allocation
of money, are too far removed from the student population to understand
how we are being unfairly affected by the budget cuts.
I understand that the administration has no
control over the fact that the state government is requiring budget
cuts for universities and that they are doing what they think is
best for the college while dealing with limited resources and funding.
However, the solutions that they have come up with, specifically
for the UC campuses, seem to be causing more problems than they
should be. It appears as though the administration is more concerned
with profit and prestige than with the satisfaction of the faculty
and students, which is something that I would hope is untrue. It
is unfortunate the these administrators are the ones who are making
the ultimate decisions and the ones who are being affected, namely
the students and faculty, have little or no say. I believe that
the administrators need to show more concern for those most influenced
by their decisions. They are hurting the faculty by cutting their
salaries and encouraging cost-efficiency, as well as through the
increasing use of part-time instructors and graduate students. At
the same time, the students are being hit with increasing fees,
cutbacks in programming, and decreased coursework options. The ultimate
result is dissatisfaction of nearly the entire campus population.
In looking at this outcome, it becomes evident that the administration
should be thinking carefully about how to deal with the budget crisis,
or else face the consequences of an unhappy campus.
Related Links:
Daily Bruin Online: http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu
The American Association for Higher Education: http://www.aahe.org
The American Association for University Professors: http://www.aaup.org
Tomorrow’s Professor Listserv: http://sll.stanford.edu/projects/
tomprof/ newtomprof/index.shtml
U.S. Department of Education: http://www.ed.gov/index.jhtml
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