The challenges of inheriting disenchanted employees (h/t @christinenowik.bsky.social ) www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...
Inheriting the Disenchanted
Persistence matters.
insidehighered.com
Christine M. Nowik, Ph.D.
@christinenowik.bsky.social
Life in the Interregnum: Researcher, org change specialist, English faculty, supernerd, follow-back girl, zero patience for organizational dysfunction and poor leadership. Personal account, obv. https://christinenowik.substack.com/
You already see it in how people have clocked out. Universities used to be run on an inordinate amount of goodwill. Yes, the unhealthy kind that meant people bent over backwards in things they should be properly remunerated for, but also more broadly in collegiality and turning up. Eroded now.
Peter Mandler@petermandler.bsky.social · last mo.Economists talk about 'scarring' - long-term effects on a cohort of some short-term phenomenon like a bout of unemployment: even if we pull out of this UK HE crisis soon (doubtful), the whole sector will be scarred for life. (1/2)
The speeches grads received were not the speeches they deserved. open.substack.com/pub/christin...
The AI Tech Bros Need the Humanists
Graduates didn’t fail to understand AI. AI evangelists failed to understand graduates.
open.substack.com
To your point: Our latest org Zoom background says that our "customer" is also our "product."
Abstract Tesseract@abstracttesseract.bsky.social · 4mo agoYeah this is literally the purpose of these products. I don't mean this in a "kids these days" kind of way. EdTech companies, and the feckless education bosses who team up with them, want education to be a credential-generating machine in which learners act like customers and teachers act like cops
"The Vermont Labor Relations Board has overturned a controversial return-to-office requirement that Gov. Phil Scott’s administration implemented late last year." www.vermontpublic.org/local-news/2...
Vermont labor board overturns Gov. Scott's return-to-office mandate for state employees
Gov. Phil Scott slammed the ruling, which affects thousands of state workers who were mandated to return to office work at least three days a week. He said his administration will appeal to the Vermon...
vermontpublic.org
not sure if university presidents are getting stupider or just believing their own lies about budget
Non-tenure-track contract faculty at NYU went on strike this morning after over a year of bargaining (capped by a 24-hour+ marathon session). Big crowd of @uaw.org members and supporters, incl lots of students. They’re picketing over pay, workload, AI, a voice in faculty governance, & more.
let me put it in a way schools will understand: if you're (afraid of) running in the red, and instead of leaning into your core strengths, you spend more money to chase *potential* new revenue from *potential* new "customers" (they're called "students," btw), you're bad at business.
While we're doing our "the problem with university teaching" takes, mine is that it should be more shocking that in basically every UK university, the crucial decisions about teaching and assessment are made centrally, by fiat, and are almost never guided by active teaching staff or subject experts.
christinenowik.substack.com/p/partnershi... Orgs that treat faculty as a cost center will continue to manage decline and decay. Period. Orgs seeing faculty as a central strategic resource can build coherent responses to enrollment volatility, retention challenges, & public skepticism about value.
Partnership IS the Strategy
How Evergreen State saw its biggest Enrollment Gains in 40 Years
christinenowik.substack.com
When you are involved in a labor union one of the most surprising things you learn is that management is often more interested in control of and power over workers than narrow financial concerns.
Oscar-winner Ryan Coogler recalling how a college writing professor pushed him to become a screenwriter & the possibility of #Sinners being taught in film curriculums someday: “I have so much respect for professors…for dedicating their life to future generations & making sure their minds are solid.”
Years ago our admin did a red and black report. It took salaries & how much $ each instructor made in tuition $ for classes we taught-you were in the red or black. They released numbers once & shut it down bc humanities were producing huge $ for uni & engineers, business and scientists were losing $
Victor Ray@victorerikray.bsky.social · 5mo agoThese are “low enrollment” majors but the classes are regularly at capacity. They changed the funding structure a few years ago here, switching the allocation from course enrollments to majors then blamed these departments for a structural, top-down change. This is entirely a political choice.
The president of St. John's University's announcement that the school will no longer recognize its two faculty unions is a shameful union-busting move. SJU faculty have been working for 236 days without a contract. Please sign the petition below to demand a return to the bargaining table.
Eli Friedman@elifriedman.bsky.social · 5mo agoPetition against union busting by St. John's @aaup.org
The VAST majority of union-busting goes unreported. That means workers are subjected to undisclosed levels of secret coercion. These concerted attacks of the freedoms of working people degrades our society and weakens our democracy.
The Morning from NYT today, where they're describing a process for moving through a certain set of files with AI: "In fact, it’s really bad at news judgment, Dylan said: “A.I. can be sloppy and make mistakes that are inexcusable in journalism. It’s super industrious but not super intelligent.” And
This is a genuinely huge, sweeping victory today for the University of California—or rather, for us, its faculty, acting through our faculty associations, while the UC itself maintained a strict policy of deer-in-headlights silence. The Trump admin has given up its appeal of a powerful injunction:
Trump administration drops appeal of court order blocking $1.2-billion UCLA settlement
The Trump administration dropped its appeal of a major higher education case in which a federal judge blocked its $1.2-billion settlement proposal to UCLA over alleged civil rights violations. It will...
latimes.com
thread. related, my impression is a lot of higher ed administrators are significantly oriented toward making a mark on an institution in the short term so they have a claimable on their CV to get their next admin job elsewhere. that incentivizes vandalizing institutions, whether by AI or otherwise
Tressie McMillan Cottom@tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 6mo agoYep. The market problem writ large is exceptionally true in highered. But it won’t matter — and doesn’t matter — to those in charge right now because the point is to strip the institution.
"One of the seldom-noted benefits of a high-trust environment is that it allows leaders to focus on structural issues, rather than trying to micromanage every little interaction. High trust is an enormous time saver, and it does wonders for performance..." www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...
Don’t Record What You Don’t Want to Have to Watch
Playing Big Brother would get tiring quickly. Any provost with enough time to review the videos of hundreds of classes isn’t doing their job.
insidehighered.com
“more and more colleges and universities are eagerly partnering with A.I. companies, despite decades of evidence demonstrating the need to test education technology, which often fails to deliver measurable improvements in student learning.”
Victor Ray@victorerikray.bsky.social · 6mo agoI've said it before, but the first school that promotes itself as "AI-free" is going to corner the market on folks committed to learning. (gift link)
See also: college and university presidents and the purpose of higher education.
This is a five-alarm fire not just for Texas A&M but for higher education and the country more generally. And it’s old news to say it, but this resides in a different universe of consequentiality than any of the perceived transgressions that triggered the Harper’s letter.
Texas A&M Ends Women’s Studies and Overhauls Classes Over Race and Gender
nytimes.com
Forth Worth teacher Chanea Bond says sticking with pen and paper keeps generative artificial intelligence out of her American literature classes. n.pr/4c3cdzs
To keep AI out of her classroom, this high school English teacher went analog
Forth Worth teacher Chanea Bond says sticking with pen and paper keeps generative artificial intelligence out of her American literature classes.
n.pr
Absolutely. I had to go on a little tear about this matter this weekend to discuss the internal effects on the orgs as well. Trying to stay in my lane but 👀 this bigger issues are CLEAR open.substack.com/pub/christin...
Capitulation as Policy
What Institutions Teach when they Fold First
open.substack.com
Chris Conzen@chrisconzen.bsky.social · 6mo ago“the price of allowing the preferences of any president to dictate the policies and practices of organizations…is to destroy the legitimacy of those organizations. The price of letting any president rule over the country with no limitations but his own mind is the destruction of our democracy.”
Blistering piece on ed tech in @economist.com. ‘Although ed-tech companies tout huge learning gains, independent research has made clear that technology rarely boosts learning in schools—and often impairs it.’ economist.com/united-state...
Ed tech is profitable. It is also mostly useless
Independent research identifies few learning gains
economist.com
Please know that if your institution did this, it's a racist institution. Sure, many good people still work there and do good work there. But the school as a whole functions as a white supremacist institution. Proceed accordingly.
Nathan K. Hensley@nathankhensley.bsky.social · 6mo agoThis must be weird news to see if you’re one of the literally hundreds or even thousands of university administrators who preemptively censored faculty, scrubbed websites, changed the names of centers, etc.