Monday, October 6, 2014

An Interpretation of the Narrative



So the spin continues. In the recent Chronicle article about the battle between the administration and the Faculty Senate a senior administration official is going to try to convince readers that the faculty/administration chasm is a result of Watson trying to save the university’s accreditation. That is another example of the tenuous relationship with the truth on the part of some university administrators. 
The university’s accreditation was never at risk! 
It is faculty who carry to bulk of the responsibility for success in accreditation. The administration is really a minor player and presidents who think they play anything but a tangential role overestimate their own importance. Every university has its own set of challenges and it is the rare institution that is so dysfunctional that it loses its accreditation. And that happens only after a lengthy examination of the institution’s deficits.  CSU has not been that dysfunctional. The purpose of the focus visit in 2010 was to clean up enrollment management, an area that has continued to be under-performing, even after the focus visit. On the academic side of the house, the faculty continues to do its best for its students in spite of the clear attacks on faculty by this administration. Having lost more than 2,000 students and not accepting any responsibility for any of it, this regime is trying to convince any who will listen that everyone who critiques the regime is wrong and or disgruntled and they are right. I would agree they are right about the transformation of the university by the administration. CSU is being transformed from a viable institution into one that will cease to be viable in a few short years.  Unfortunately, it is not the type of transformation that students, faculty, and alumni would want.  
So whose narrative is the most accurate? Is it the few disgruntled faculty with their own agenda for destroying the university or a proven, failed regime that has gotten it right? Listen for yourself and decide.

1 comment:

  1. You are quite right about the lack of administration participation in the last round of accreditation. In fact, administrative actions actually HINDERED that effort. For example, abruptly shutting down all faculty web pages (a month before the end of the semester based on "security issues", while I get spam emails that are not really from former students every day via their CSU accounts). The administration has created an idiotic bureaucracy to update web pages.

    Lest you think I don't know what I am talking about, I was LITERALLY the first faculty member to establish a web page at CSU (back when we didn't even have our own domain, and were hosted by Governor's State). For years, only the webmaster and myself had a web page.

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