lots of people upset https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/02/09/the-controversy-at-mount-st-marys-goes-national-after-professors-are-fired/
Yeah, this has been all over the higher education media. An example is this opinion piece from Matt Reed, which is notable for its tone because he's usually very even tempered.
This is not a bad idea. This is a bad idea. There are consequences to actions, specially that violate rules set forth, and contractually agreed on. Professors, students, or administrators. Enforcement should be the same. This whole thing is a giant mess, but I do agree the president does sound like someone with some serious issues.
Here's an update article that indicates the university President may not be employed much longer. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/02/15/mount-st-marys-alum-we-need-to-stop-our-university-from-destroying-itself/
The stresses between faculties and administrations have been building for years. This ain't over by a long shot.
Ugh. How do I up vote, gold star, thumbs up, positive karma this? It is a non-stop battle. It should not be, but it is.:stooges:
Faculty members will resist changes to the status quo in most situations. At my current position, a small liberal arts college, we instituted a similar program to find at risk students the first week of each semester. These are students who skipped class, had not even logged in to the online portal to obtain their syllabus etc and we paired them with someone to help them through the semester. The first semester saw retention go up by over 50%. When I worked full time for a for profit institution, they would fire full time faculty and adjunct faculty with any warning also. I think its the tone of how this particular administrator is using in order to try and turn the university around. I had my work cut out for me when I was hired and instituted changes.
That's probably one of the reasons why for-profit schools don't give professors tenure. This administrator didn't just take a harsh tone. He fired a tenured professor without notice or hearing. That's kind of the opposite of how tenure is supposed to work and it really suggests that professors have very little academic freedom.
It's true that people in general tend to resist change, especially if there's no overall consensus that change is necessary. I spent over a decade in corporate America, and now over a decade in academia and haven't noticed any real difference between academics and corporate employees in this, at least that couldn't be explained as a function of faculty having more power vis-a-vis a president that their corporate counterparts. It appears the problem in this case is this corporate raider-type who appears to want to cultivate a rockstar academic reputation blew in treating this institution with over two centuries of tradition like a hedge fund, an experiment in calculated risk, a vehicle for his own career advancement. To use language as callous as he used regarding struggling teen students betrays a tone deafness that marks him as utterly out of his element. He might be a hottie with a great accent like a character out of Harry Potter, he obviously has enough competence to use these assets to curry the favor of young students, but he appears a perfect storm of malignant narcissism and incompetence at understanding the academic environment.
That was the nicest and most educated way of saying "He's being a douche" I've ever heard. People in many positions have to make unpopular decisions. If, however, you delight in the suffering those decisions bring about that's a big problem.
That's funny, nice analysis! There's the $64K question, is this A). a guy trying to make needed changes and just ham-handed about it? or B). a scumbag who takes vindictive pleasure in firing any peon who stands in his way? My guess is option B, but I don't know.
I'm sure he was utterly convinced he was going to shake things up. He did, but in a bad way. I think this will end with his resignation, but we'll see.
