It's fascinating to read this. I find that as time passes, I'm more and more likely to be the person who has that continuity and can answer questions quickly for students and colleagues, and knows where to reach out to find answers when I don't know them. And yet, the growth of administration is placing answers further away from the academic units and more and more into the hands of people who are rotating faster and faster through different roles.
There is a workplace that has some of the same characteristics that I can think of: civil service. Elon Musk did a lot to screw this up, and I don't know what the longer-term consequences will be, but pre-Musk, our federal government was filled with devoted people who were really good at their jobs and were happy to do them for a lifetime (with perhaps some upward mobility).
I've known this for a long time, but I have recently been pleasantly reminded of it by reading "Who is Government," by Michael Lewis, et al. Highly recommended.
There's a specific problem for universities here, as they are incredibly long-lived insitutions, where there is no meaningful measure of performance in the short run. Having them managed by people whose time in the job is less than the time taken by the average undergrad is deeply problematic. Australia has gone a lot further in this direction than the US, and the results have been dire.
I think what you're testifying to here is the inevitable process that, when any human system grows, it trends toward a leveling or lowest common denominator that accommodates everyone participating. For those raised on smaller systems that allowed excellence to shine the difference does seem stark. But as you point out, such systems also allowed co-opting by abusers. Fundamentally, it's another example of how we're victims of our own species success.
One consequence, it seems to me, is that our focus on short-term results, along with the movement between jobs, means long-term projects (like going to the stars) may be much harder to accomplish.
It's fascinating to read this. I find that as time passes, I'm more and more likely to be the person who has that continuity and can answer questions quickly for students and colleagues, and knows where to reach out to find answers when I don't know them. And yet, the growth of administration is placing answers further away from the academic units and more and more into the hands of people who are rotating faster and faster through different roles.
There is a workplace that has some of the same characteristics that I can think of: civil service. Elon Musk did a lot to screw this up, and I don't know what the longer-term consequences will be, but pre-Musk, our federal government was filled with devoted people who were really good at their jobs and were happy to do them for a lifetime (with perhaps some upward mobility).
I've known this for a long time, but I have recently been pleasantly reminded of it by reading "Who is Government," by Michael Lewis, et al. Highly recommended.
There's a specific problem for universities here, as they are incredibly long-lived insitutions, where there is no meaningful measure of performance in the short run. Having them managed by people whose time in the job is less than the time taken by the average undergrad is deeply problematic. Australia has gone a lot further in this direction than the US, and the results have been dire.
I think what you're testifying to here is the inevitable process that, when any human system grows, it trends toward a leveling or lowest common denominator that accommodates everyone participating. For those raised on smaller systems that allowed excellence to shine the difference does seem stark. But as you point out, such systems also allowed co-opting by abusers. Fundamentally, it's another example of how we're victims of our own species success.
One consequence, it seems to me, is that our focus on short-term results, along with the movement between jobs, means long-term projects (like going to the stars) may be much harder to accomplish.