They're ba-a-ack! I'm referring to the Total Quality Management folks, a hardy management sect last detected at Auburn in the administration of TQMer William Muse.
By the time Muse left, biology, music, sociology and anthropology, geography, and economics were struggling with various wounds and shocks largely arising from his madcap management methods; some of those wounds and shocks have never been fully recovered from.
And there were a number of small deaths, like that of the master's degree in political science, that were brought about for no good reason.
The latest eruption comes from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools in the form of a demand for quality enhancement plans from every one of the institutions of higher education trembling under its boot.
SACS has the power to withhold accreditation from, and thus to financially cripple, any one of those institutions that will not bend to its will, and its will has become steadily more capricious as the decades have rolled by.
This latest command from on high verges on the Stalinesque; another cockamamie, time-wasting project from educationists whose power has twisted their judgment.
In my opinion, the best thing we could do for higher education in the Southeast would be to launch an assessment and investigation of SACS and to reread carefully and consider renegotiating whatever the agreement was that delivered us into the clutches of our regional accreditation agency, with apparently no statutory check on its power within its domain.
But while we are waiting for justice to rain upon us, and just in case the rain doesn't come before the next assessment is completed, here is an idea for a quality enhancement plan for Auburn: let's plan to restrain and reverse the painful swelling of the administrative tissues of the University and to invest the funds that would be released thereby in graduate teaching assistantships, especially in those departments, like English, history, mathematics and statistics, which have many more excellent applicants for admission to graduate study than they can currently support with assistantships and which have a need for these GTAs to teach classes or problem sessions in lower level courses in those disciplines.
Part of the mission of a flagship research university is to prepare graduate students for academic positions they might hold after obtaining their degrees, and in a number of disciplines the employment of the graduate students as lab assistants, or recitation instructors, or even classroom teachers in lower level courses, is an important part of that preparation.
On the other hand, the quality of the educational experience for the undergraduates who have an actual human before them who can discuss and explain must surely exceed (OK, usually exceed) the quality of the experience in courses taught "online."
So, an investment in graduate teaching assistantships would improve the quality of Auburn undergraduate education (since "online" instruction is quite common now at Auburn, I hear) AND advance one of Auburn's grand purposes, the preparation of graduate students.
We are told that online instruction is a necessary evil because of lack of funds, yet every month, it seems, brings a call for applicants for "director of this" or "associate provost or dean in charge of that," new administrative positions, evidently.
The time has come for our administration to examine itself and weigh the importance of these positions, indeed of all positions, against the core needs and mission of the University.
--Peter Johnson
Department of
mathematics and statistics
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