Anyone who has spent more than five minutes on a university campus has noticed the ballooning levels of administrative overhead: there is ceaseless and endless money for new administrators administrating stuff that you–say someone who studied at the school for six years and has taught there for the same length of time–have never heard of and have certainly never encountered other than through mysterious emails out of the ether letting you know that a new administrator has been hired or that an old administrator has been promoted to another university. Indeed, despite the proliferation of administrators, it seems that these administrators only administer one another and, fortunately, that means we don’t have to deal with them that often: we can get down to the real business of the university–teaching, researching, and complaining about administration and office space.
Notwithstanding the byzantine opaqueness of the administrators, I think they are on to something. At Carleton they’ve introduced academic sounding ranks at the Dean and Vice-President level (not that I really know what the difference is between a Dean and Vice-President and I’ve spent the past fourteen years of my life on campuses, but I’m pretty sure that an Assistant Vice-President outranks a full Dean). Thus, for those of us fortunate to get a permanent academic post, we know that we start as Assistant Professors, are promoted to Associate Professors upon tenure, and some time after that, we are promoted to Professors. Those Professors who distinguish themselves–usually through having marginally unimportant but easily digestible research that makes it onto daytime talk TV or draws the attention of professional idiots like Malcolm Gladwell–get to have other titles, like Distinguished Research Professor or University Professor and so on. Here, at Carleton, we’ve done the same with the Deans and the Vice-Presidents: we have Assistant Deans, Associate Deans, and Deans. We also have Assistant Vice-Presidents, Associate Vice-Presidents, and Vice-Presidents. Let’s grant that these titles mean something–to them, at least. Why not introduce this into other areas of university life? Let’s call it a “best practice.”
Front Office Administration: Assistant Receptionist, Associate Receptionist, Receptionist, Distinguished Receptionist. Really, there’s no difference between the ranks, but it is a way to bring perpetually alienated staff into the fold–a Distinguished Receptionist puts up with as many rude, self-important Full Students as an Assistant Receptionist; the only difference is that they haven’t had to take stress leave yet.
Non-Tenure Track, Non-Permanent Permanent Teaching Faculty (previously called Contract Instructor or Sessional): Assistant Contract Instructor, Associate Contract Instructor, Contract Instructor. What’s the difference between the ranks? Assistant Contract Instructors would be the latest hires–those naive PhD students and newly minted doctors who think this is an entry point into the academy because they will get one of those coveted, non-existent internal promotions. The Associate Contract Instructor teaches more courses than 85% of the full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty combined and has realized that teaching more just makes you sadder. Finally, the Full Contract Instructor is the person who has been in the department for the longest period of time, has the greatest institutional memory, has taught every single course currently on the books (and a bunch that were phased out a long time ago), and who is looking forward to bringing home less than $400 a month from CPP when they “retire after next semester.” The same could be done for those fortunates who get Non-Tenure Track, Permanent Teaching Faculty positions (previously called Instructor I, Instructor II, and Instructor III): Assistant Instructor, Associate Instructor, Instructor.
Why not extend it to students? We need to further monetize the client-base! Assistant Student, Associate Student, Student. How could be make these distinctions? Assistant Students just pay tuition and show up to class from time-to-time. They either walk or take transit to campus and they bring their own lunch, sometimes getting coffee before class. An Associate Student pays tuition, but parks on campus in one of the outer lots, and buys lunch a couple times a week. Finally, a Full Student pays tuition, wears university branded clothing, buys a parking pass to one of the garages, eats on campus everyday and accumulates library fines, but pays them off quickly. The possibilities are endless and it is a win-win situation: the university gets more money to hire administrators and students get prestige titles they can show off to their friends. Perhaps assignments could be marked in accordance with student rank–preferential treatment! Full students could get two free passes each semester on plagiarism!
(This post was inspired by the list of titles appended to the names of the people who are preparing the report of the Provincial Mandate Working Group which is to be distributed next week and which aims to identity “strengths and areas of growth.” I hope it isn’t too late to include this idea!)
