Running On Fumes And Goodwill

'Dean Dad' at Inside Higher Ed is a community college dean, happy to have found his place in the world in a role he never expected to play. He has a sense of humor and humanity, as one commenter notes.  OS enjoys his posts, because they are as likely to be about the joys of marriage and parenthood as they are about his challenges on campus, which are many.  Dean Dad doesn't whine, and he doesn't participate in that arrogant elitism that infects so many campuses.

So, his account of a recent budget meeting deserves consideration.

He concludes here:

I try to stay positive in public, since part of my job involves setting a tone, and campus morale is a real, if fuzzy, issue. So I'll use pseudonymity here to tell the truth. We simply can't keep doing what we're doing. We're running on fumes and goodwill, and you can't do that forever. The funding increases necessary just to get to 'sustainable' -- let alone 'exemplary' -- are unimaginable. Several areas of the college are still functioning only because a dwindling number of staffers are doing heroic work, and you just can't keep doing that. When heroism becomes the budgetary baseline, even getting to 'sanity' takes substantial increases. In many of the 'support' areas of the college, that's the dilemma now.

As so many, especially Mish, have noted before, the various infusions of federal cash (borrowed from the Fed or the Chinese) have only delayed the inevitable day of reckoning, and Dean Dad acknowledges that fact. The tough days yet lie ahead for his world, as the taxpayer pot has run dry. A state legislature cannot spend what does not exist, and can't print money, although California has attempted to at times.


So, in these years of running on fumes, perhaps it is time to concentrate on building good will. Last week's angry marches by undergraduates demanding non-existent money are counterproductive, because they are viewed by people with high-school or vo-tech educations paddling as hard as they can to keep their own little micro-businesses above water and their families intact, while paying taxes on everything they earn or consume. Wimmen's Studies majors smashing store windows and blocking highways don't build good will with the public. College students tutoring young kids in reading and math in every county school do.

OS is an optimist, who thinks that real solutions will be worked out by good people like Dean Dad and his team, one corner of the culture at a time. The process will be accelerated if the Federal government allows it to happen, by turning off the spigot of funny money, and by the students who see free higher education as an entitlement spending their time in the library.

Or tutoring young kids in reading and math.

'These Cuts Affect Me'

 

Inside Higher Ed posted a breathless account of yesterday's student protests at UC Berkeley. 

Hmm...Stop the presses! 

Dog Bites Man!

Students Protest At Berkeley!

With the smell of burning sage and the occasional hint of weed in the air, an impassioned throng of students from the University of California’s Berkeley campus marched to Oakland (where the university system's headquarters are located) in opposition of budget cuts and tuition hikes they say are crippling one of the nation’s premier public institutions.

While the five-mile trek to Oakland proved largely peaceful, police arrested as many as 200 protesters once they reached freeways and tried to block them. The arrests mark the continuation of a what many describe as a troubling trend at the University of California, which has seen recent allegations of police brutality, racially motivated discord and an activist movement that at times appears intent on provoking law enforcement. 

Thsi demonstration was part of a larger effort across the country yesterday, with protests reported in other locations. Berkeley, however, seems to have been the most vocal.

OS does not think another 'Those spoiled college kids' rant is in order.  He has two of his own, neither of them spoiled, but both very cognizant that their opportunities have not come cheaply.  They use Pell Grants, one has taken on significant loans, both work their patooties off.  They don't talk of it often, but Dad hears the unease in their voices.

OS actually feels a bit of sympathy for the kids who went on their march in Berkeley yesterday. (The attempts to block the freeway, the windows smashed, etc., elicit no sympathy.)

They were raised in California, the land of milk and honey. Their folks likely went to UC, and prospered in their time. What could go wrong? Money grew on trees, and the state will always be there for the ed system. They were raised with that cultural assumption, which has proven to be fallacious.  That's painful and angering to kids in late adolescence, which is what college students are. Their ethical world is black and white, and their cause is inherently just and true, just because it's their cause.

Had they been born five years earlier, they would not have even been aware of the gathering storm, as they busily did what college students do.

The cultural assumption was fallacious. And erroneous assumptions, if embraced, bring terrible consequences, in both individual lives and the wider world.

There is good news here, though.  Some of these kids, in a more sober mood, will begin to read and think about what led to this day, and what it means.  These kids will have the opportunity to embrace some healthier assumptions, and transmit them to their children.

Maybe, in 2030, we won't be reading accounts of undergraduates trashing college campuses because their tuition bills spiked unexpectedly.

In the meantime, allow OS to recommend a college that has avoided so many of the traps that so many other institutions have encountered.

It's not the only one, by any means, but provides a great template as the educational system begins to reorganize.

Three Cheers Due Here

In the continuing quest for real 'green shoots'--the cultural kind that will finally lead out of the malaise--this article from Inside Higher Ed is heartening.

John Silvanus Wilson Jr., the Obama administration's director of the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities is very clear in an interview that he's looking for a new approach to talking about black colleges.

The standard "against great odds" narrative, he said, needs to be replaced. It suggests a focus on "survival and maybe victimization," said Wilson. "Black colleges will never be as strong as they can be unless that narrative changes.... We need to shift from how to survive to how to thrive."

The operative phrase that sticks out is 'unless that narrative changes'.

Words are powerful things. Repeat them to yourself long enough, and they take on a life of their own, for good or ill.

It's a good read. Have a bit of hope with the morning java--I just hope the Jacksons and Sharptons of this country don't discover what Dr. Wilson is up to. If he succeeds in 'changing the narrative', they're done for.