For several months, Chicago State administrators have bemoaned the fiscal woes of our school. However, as previous posts have noted, our fiscal exigency seems to disappear where administrative hires/promotions are concerned. So it should come as no surprise that just last month, we added a new administrative position to our pantheon of managers: the Assistant Dean of the College of Health Sciences.
With a sincere apology to the blameless incumbent in this position, I again wonder how the university finds the funds to continually increase its administrative ranks. The Assistant Dean’s position appears nowhere in the 2015 Internal Operating Budget, in fact a 2014 appropriation of $50,000 for an Associate Dean in Health Sciences disappeared in the 2015 budget. Thus, the university apparently had no money allocated for such a hire. Of course, we know from previous administrative budget shenanigans that this is no impediment to hiring more and more administrators. After all, recall that funding for Napoleon Moses’s position came out of the “Internal Improvements” appropriation.
Once again, we are confronted with the contradiction between the administration’s rhetoric and its behavior. I have no doubt that the fiscal crisis in Illinois is real. However, is it not reasonable to expect some kind of restraint from a public institution ostensibly suffering the pangs of financial hunger? To be sure, here at Chicago State, restraint is for the “little people,” the “rubes.” The Watson administration continues to increase its own ranks, heedless of either the public relations consequences (sorry, I know that no one cares) or the financial implications of what seem like an increasingly brazen disregard for fiscal responsibility and the public welfare. Finally, there has been no administrative announcement of this hire that I know of.
How many other administrative hirings are in the offing?
There was a mandatory meeting for the Junior and Senior nursing students this past summer. She was briefly introduced to us then, don't remember her name and haven't seen her since. Surely the mid-program fee increase of $175/credit hour for nursing students can pay her salary and benefits. These fees racked in approximately $70,000 this past spring for the juniors, alone. A rough estimate this semester is about $90,000. So while we are limited to printing 10 pages per day in the nursing computer lab (one course syllabus was over 50 pages), haven't received online access codes for course materials because the state budget hasn't passed so the purchase order hasn't been approved, the department is still scrambling to find clinical instructors and hospital sites by October 8th, while grants that helped nursing students went unrenewed and abandoned by the department, and students can no longer afford to enroll in classes because we now owe instead of getting a meager refund for books at least, and the merit scholarships once received were snatched away but somehow some were able to beg financial aid for Special Circumstances Scholarships, and the department chair is trying to do her titled job while still holding on to the wellness center, accreditation documents are due soon and unfinished...Did I mention there is no academic advisor and no department secretary? The 'secretary' is the personal assistant to the chair. I pray I make it to May 2017.
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