Send ASU restructuring plan back to drawing board
By Roy Ockert Jr.
April 26, 2015
University administrators love to reorganize and restructure things. It helps them justify their positions, their support staff and their high salaries, which tend to be at least double that of the average professor’s salary on campus.
A New York Times article last month cited U.S. Department of Education data showing that the number of academic administrator positions grew by 60 percent between 1993 and 2009, which Bloomberg said was 10 times the rate of growth of tenured faculty.
Last year I used Arkansas Department of Education data to determine that the number of college administrators making at least $100,000 a year at state-supported institutions had grown by 44 percent in three years — to 683.
Arkansas State University administrators have been playing with organizational charts, and they have put forth a plan to restructure A-State’s nine colleges into six.
Two faculty committees — one picked by Dr. Lynita Cooksey, provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs, and the other made up of tenured faculty members selected by the Faculty Senate — have signed off somewhat reluctantly on a plan. I find little enthusiasm for it among the faculty, but they think it’s inevitable.
It’s true that nine colleges is quite a few for a university of ASU’s size or even larger. Not including specialized units such as a Graduate College, Honors College or University College, the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville has five; Memphis, five; Missouri, six; Missouri State, six; and Ole Miss, just one.
On the other hand, my second alma mater, the University of Oklahoma, has 10.
Whether ASU’s restructuring proposal will save a significant amount of money is not clear. Considering the state Legislature’s reluctance to put more money into higher education, all state colleges and universities must look closely at their budgets.
Dr. Cooksey told a Jonesboro Sun reporter that reducing the number of salaries for college deans from nine to six would save about $390,000 annually. But she also said in a letter to the editor of The Herald, ASU’s student newspaper, that “efficiencies and cost savings ... are not the driving force” behind the proposal. The idea instead is to get the various disciplines to work together better to meet 21st century needs.
If that’s the case, why not eliminate all of what she called “the artificial barriers of colleges?”
Let’s look at the proposal by the numbers of students in each college since they are why we have colleges and universities. Here’s how the structure would wind up, with the total number of students, undergraduate and graduate, for the fall semester of 2014 in parentheses:
• College of Agriculture and Technology (488) and College of Engineering (408) would be merged, leaving a new college with 896 students;
• College of Business (1,577);
• College of Education and Behavioral Sciences (3,525);
• College of Fine Arts (414), College of Humanities and Social Sciences (983) and College of Media and Communication (374) would be merged, leaving a new college with 1,771 students;
• College of Nursing and Health Professions (2,100);
• College of Sciences and Mathematics (1,060); and
• University College (470).
I’ve heard no logical explanation why the College of Engineering should be merged with Agriculture and Technology, instead of Sciences and Mathematics, which would seem to be a more natural fit. It would also appear that while you would eliminate one dean’s position, you’d need to establish positions for two departmental chairmen.
As to the three-in-one merger that would result in 11 highly diverse departments being placed under one dean, I suggest that the resulting unit be called the College of Miscellaneous Studies. Or maybe the academicians can invent a new term to cover everything from criminology to music to journalism.
Again, the unanswered question is: Why?
Communications majors have been minoring in humanities and social sciences since before there was a university so there is no barrier. Further, students majoring in art, music and theater, as well as those majoring in most of the communications fields (journalism, photojournalism, broadcasting, etc.) require individualized, hands-on instruction. The marching band may include 100 members, but you don’t teach music in large classes.
To look at the proposed restructuring another way — by the number of faculty involved — the College of Fine Arts alone has 46 full-time teachers. The much larger College of Business, which won’t be affected by the restructuring, has 48.
By my count, the new College of Miscellaneous Studies would have 165 faculty members, including one dean, operating in at least five different buildings. And that will be more efficient?
This proposal still must go through the university’s shared governance process and gain the approval of Chancellor Dr. Tim Hudson before it goes to the Board of Trustees.
My suggestion: Go back to the drawing board. Reduce the number of colleges, but put the professional programs such as engineering, journalism and broadcasting in standalone schools. No dean or associate dean would be necessary, just a director with a good professional background and the various programs within each led by a strong faculty member.
That’s what we had in the Division of Radio-TV, Journalism and Printing before it was restructured into the College of Communications and, more recently, the College of Media and Communications.
That way you would maintain the identity of some of the strongest professional programs in Arkansas — programs that have put ASU on the map — instead of burying them further under an academic bureaucracy. Many of the universities I mentioned earlier have fewer colleges, but they also tend to have separate professional schools. That’s a working plan for the 21st century.
Roy Ockert is editor emeritus of The Jonesboro Sun. He may be reached by e-mail at royo@suddenlink.net.