0 Shared Governance in UW System

One week ago, a group of concerned faculty, staff, and students organized a forum at UW-Madison to discuss shared governance: what it is, how it's been challenged in the past, and what current risks it's currently facing.  The forum, held at 5 pm on the Monday before Thanksgiving, drew more than fifty people to the Wisconsin Idea Room in the School of Education. Speakers included former chair of the University Committee, Judith Burstyn, Professor Emeritus of History Jim Donnolly, Professor of Political Science Don Downs, David Ahrens of the Wisconsin University Union, and Chad Goldberg, Professor of Sociology.

There was a robust conversation about the precedent set by the famed Spoto case in establishing the importance of joint decision-making in shared governance, a process that in the University of Wisconsin System goes well beyond simply advice and input.  The key takeaway: when faced with an impasse between faculty and administration on an issue over which faculty have primary domain (e.g. academic affairs), both parties must continue to negotiate until an agreement is reached. Until then, no action can be taken by either side.

My sense is that leaders all over campus-- administrators, faculty, staff, and students-- misunderstand this key attribute of shared governance. The buck simply stops without agreement. There is no right to "move on" without compromise.  Simply collecting input, providing information, holding listening sessions, etc, that's all wonderful but also entirely insufficient without explicit agreement.

It's nearly impossible to overstate the importance shared governance to the University of Wisconsin System, to maintaining high academic standards, crafting an engaged body of teaching and learning, and ensuring operations that are high quality and cost-effective.  We have no faculty union -- no collective voice-- while shared governance is a collection therefore of individuals, it is what we have.

I will end with a wonderful talk given by Chad Goldberg during the forum. He's quite the wordsmith, so I'm grateful to him for allowing me to post it in full.

**************

"Current Challenges to Shared Governance at UW-Madison" 

Chad Alan Goldberg

November 19, 2012

"I’ve been asked to speak about current challenges to shared governance. I will talk about two kinds: external challenges, from outside authorities, and an internal challenge, from faculty disengagement. Ultimately, I will suggest, the latter encourages and reinforces the former.

The external challenges, though predating the current HR Redesign Project, have been thrown into stark relief by the Administration’s handling of it.

To be sure, the HRDP has been participatory in a certain sense. The Administration formulated the “Strategic Plan for a New UW-Madison HR System” based on the recommendations of eleven work teams on which many employees served, and it followed up the release of the plan with information sessions at which further feedback was elicited. Notwithstanding the problems that David Ahrens and others have noted, including disproportionate representation of OHR on the teams work teams and dependence on their technical expertise, this attempt to gather input from employees was commendable. I availed myself of some these opportunities, as did many others. However, providing feedback and input is no substitute for shared governance, especially when people must rely on an atomistic and aggregative mode of producing public opinion that demobilizes them.

Furthermore, the language in the “Strategic Plan for a New UW-Madison HR System” was itself problematic. Shared governance was redescribed there as giving “input” and “feedback.” We did not want to see this definition of shared governance fixed in place by the plan and, worse yet, endorsed by the Faculty Senate itself.

We moved to postpone endorsement of the “Strategic Plan” at the November 5th Faculty Senate meeting for two reasons. First, we were asked to vote on a plan before it was finalized. As my colleague Sara Goldrick-Rab put it, this would be like signing off on a master’s thesis before it was finished. Second, we were asked to endorse a plan despite ongoing controversy about and significant resistance to specific changes affecting the job security and wages and compensation of other university employees. Vice Chancellor Darrell Bazzell’s comments to some of the Faculty Senators calling for postponement were revealing. The Vice Chancellor asked why we were doing this, and he expressed concern that postponement would deprive the faculty of a chance to vote on the plan before it was sent to the Regents. Not only did these remarks reduce shared governance to a plebiscite, they also implied that the plan’s executive sponsors can act unilaterally, without agreement from the faculty.

I see these external challenges to shared governance as part of a broader erosion of the rights of faculty, staff, and students to participate in decision-making on campus. Another instance of this erosion is the evisceration of collective bargaining rights by Act 10. While the Administration cannot be held responsible for Act 10, it can be criticized for its unwillingness to commit itself to a “meet-and-confer” process in the absence of collective bargaining. In addition, current disputes over WISPIRG funding indicate that students are also facing an erosion of their rights. As I understand it, WISPIRG funding requires, in addition to student approval, a contract with the University, which has been signed by previous chancellors in the past. Interim Chancellor David Ward has yet to grant the contract that the Associated Students of Madison requested almost a year ago to keep WISPIRG in existence. His refusal appears to stem from a legal dispute about the process by which student government should identify student needs and act to meet them. Should the Administration prescribe this process on the basis of its interpretation of the relevant statutes? Surely students ought to have the right to determine how best to identify their needs and to decide where their fees go. What do students learn about democratic citizenship when those rights are denied?

Alongside these external challenges to shared governance, the HR Design Project has also underscored an important internal challenge. Insufficient faculty engagement in the HRDP is symptomatic of what, many years ago, Alexis de Tocqueville called individualism: the tendency that “disposes each member of the community to sever himself from the mass of his fellows and to draw apart with his family and his friends, so that after he has thus formed a little circle of his own, he willingly leaves society at large to itself.”

Insufficient faculty engagement in the HRDP is a kind of abdication of responsibility for the university’s public affairs—not an abdication by all faculty, and certainly not by the University Committee, but by a significant portion of the faculty and even, I suspect, by some members of the Faculty Senate itself.

There are many reasons for this abdication. Faculty are extremely busy people, which leads to a desire to delegate: let Pushkin do it, where Pushkin in this case is the Administration or OHR or perhaps the UC. The perception that the HRDP affected faculty less than other university employees also no doubt discouraged faculty engagement. And we generally trust the groups to which we seek to delegate such matters. Trust is not a bad thing. As a sociologist, I know institutions and organizations cannot operate without it. Still, it’s worth bearing in mind the old Russian folk saying: trust but verify.

I’m not suggesting that faculty have the time or expertise to design the university’s personnel system ourselves, but we need to be engaged in the process, and not just as individuals but collectively, as a body, through the Faculty Senate.

Why is individualism a problem? Because the alternative, as Tocqueville pointed out, is guardianship and tutelage. Bad guardians use their power to make decisions with which citizens may not agree and which may even be detrimental to their interests. But even in the best case, when benevolent guardians have our best interests at heart, guardianship gradually degrades our capacities to think, feel, and act for ourselves in matters that affect us and for which we have a legal responsibility."

0 Revised HR Design Plan

The Chancellor just released the revised HR Design plan. Lest anyone wonder "Why did we postpone the vote at Faculty Senate," here's your answer.

The red-lined version of the Plan and the list of changes should be read in full.  But there is clear evidence on the pages as to why a strong pushback at Senate was smart and appropriate.  For example:

p. 4  and 41 Mandatory placement of laid off employees has been restored!

p. 42 Right of return has been restored (for up 30 days)!

p.10 A commitment to using HR to achieve excellence in all disciplines and to emphasize learning is now included

p.25 and 26 Internal equity is now explicitly included as a factor continuing to affect compensation (see Strategic Plan Components #1 and the following paragraph on p. 26)

p. 28 Living wage for contracted employees is officially under consideration again

But the language on shared governance is still too weak. This is ironic given tonight's forum (which I'll write about tomorrow!)  "Advice and input" was replaced with "engagement," and "participation" and "involvement" and "review" which are still incredibly passive terms (e.g. p. 24, 32). I'd prefer to see "joint decision-making authority" and "approval" used instead.  Spoto sets the precedent here-- no changes to faculty compensation should be made without the explicit agreement of BOTH the faculty and the administration.

SUMMARY:

This is a major improvement on the prior iteration of the plan and it is responsive to nearly all of my recommendations and requests. However, this language, authored by Noah Feinstein, should be added in order to ensure Faculty Senate approval:

"A commitment to shared governance extends to direct participation of governance groups in relevant decision-making. This must include guarantees that any future results and recommendations of the ongoing HR Design process, including especially the title and total compensation study, will be subject to approval by all affected shared governance bodies without which approval they will not proceed."

0 Shared Governance at UW-Madison -- In Jeopardy?

Since last week's Faculty Senate meeting, my email inbox has grown cluttered with letters from faculty, staff, and students who are experiencing violations of shared governance at UW-Madison.  All are afraid to speak out with their names included, fearful of responses from the Administration.  I can't tell you how upsetting this is, especially given my own Biddy battles during the term I was up for tenure.

In any case, one brave soul has decided to allow me to quote from his letter.  I hope you'll consider his words (below) and then decide to join us next week for a discussion of the past and future of shared governance at Madison.

There will be a FORUM on these issues held on Monday November 19 from 5-630 pm in the Wisconsin Idea Room of the School of Education. Sponsors include WUU, TAA, WISCAPE, and UFAS.  You can rsvp here.

******

Hi Sara,

The biggest issue for me now is the apparent demolition of faculty governance. Wisconsin has a long history of egalitarian democracy and shared governance. It's one of our hallmarks compared to other universities.

The HR redesign process has been most offensive to me in its top-down dictatorial nature. It's like someone asking for you to sign a blank check and saying "trust me" when asked what dollar amount and payee will be written in.

That's like when Noah Feinstein says "the devils that lurk in the details yet to come."

At the last faculty meeting, after the sham representation we received from the University Committee, I thought this whole vote is a sham. They are saying "it's like a courtesy we are being asked to render an opinion, but don't expect to play more than an advisory role."

My immediate thought was to make a motion to postpone so they have to show their cards and reveal it's a sham. When Chad Goldberg beat me too it, and so eloquently too, and you made the ten-faculty-needed-for-a-paper-ballot motion -- well it was one of my happiest days at a faculty senate meeting in my life!

So, I think the bigger issue here is the move by the administration to subvert faculty governance. More people will be outraged by that that the HR redesign.

I liked Noah's statement that faculty governance is the ability "to approve or reject policies - not merely offer advice and input to some uncertain end."

That to me is the crux of the issue.

0 HR Design in the News

This ran in today's Capital Times. 

Stay tuned... more to come. 

0 THIS is What Shared Governance Looks Like!

All over America, faculty, staff, and students are losing their collective voice as a tidal wave of "reform" washes over higher education. The adjunctification of the faculty is well underway and some administrators and members of the public cast faculty as the enemy of progress, despite hard empirical evidence to the contrary.

We've been confronting our own dilemmas at UW-Madison, where a deeply conservative Wisconsin legislature handed us the "tools" requested to bring efficiences to our human resources system.  It is indeed an old system, which insufficiently recognizes the needs of educational institutions, and it is indisputably in need of modernization.  The plans are in process to use the new flexibilities to improve the system, and today the Faculty Senate was to vote on those plans. The problem? The plans aren't yet  fully articulated.  They are still in process, in a draft stage, and it's hard to tell whether they really take UW-Madison forward-- or backward.

A year or two ago I could've predicted the meeting's outcome.  Under the thumb of a chancellor who not only misunderstood shared governance but deliberately squelched it, the Senate was rife with meek and silent professors.  Attending those meetings, I was awed by how many strong intelligent people could be rendered mute when confronted with the likes of Biddy Martin.

That was then, and this is now.  Biddy is gone, thanks to her inability to recognize the importance of institutional culture, and the people of the Senate are free. So in a remarkable turn of events, this afternoon the UW Madison Senate took decisive action to reject a push by the Administration for premature yet supposedly "time-sensitive" action and instead postpone a vote on the proposed Human Resources Design plan until the Administration reveals its full and revised plan.  By waiting until December 3 to vote on HR design, the Senators essentially said: "We'll vote when we are shown what we are voting on."

To some, this was stunning. Those are the folks who misunderstand shared governance at UW-Madison, falsely believing it is merely "advisory" and that ultimately the Chancellor decides.  Not so. Not at all.  In the coming weeks,  this will become a great subject of conversation on campus, since the Senate meeting revealed that key administrators among us do not understand Faculty Policies and Procedures as written in law.

The faculty, students, and staff care deeply about the future of this great university and recognize that key changes are needed to strengthen it.  HR Design is one of those things, and that's why it's worth taking the time to get it right.  We won't be pushed into premature judgment, or told that we can only vote "now or never."  The responsibility is too great. As Professor Chad Goldberg told the Senate today, "Our educational activities depend vitally on the contributions, well-being, and morale of all of the university’s employees, including faculty, academic staff, and classified staff. None of us built this university on our own. None of us can do our jobs without the help and support of others. When we succeed, we succeed because we work together."

Today is what happens when faculty are equipped with Robert's Rules, informed by a full discussion with all of the relevant parties, organized, prepared, and motivated.  Don't worry-- it wasn't a one-time thing. This is how Senate will be going forward. Our work is cut out for us.

Next on the agenda:

(1) We expect that the UW Madison Administration will meet and engage with campus labor to reach an agreeable plan for moving forward.  I hope to see those meetings begin within 72 hours and continue until there is a reasonable solution.  If they do not, we'll know there are larger problems at Madison-- and we'll make sure the community knows it.  I'm sure this won't be necessary though, given Vice Chancellor Darrell Bazzell's stated robust commitment to fair and equitable treatment of unions.

(2) We will work to educate and inform the full UW-Madison community of the meaning of shared governance as it exists here.  We have every right to vote on the plan as it is put together after the Chancellor's approval.  We will do so, on December 3-- and then the Board of Regents will know where we stand.  Whether or not they choose to ignore us, our rights and responsibilities on behalf of those who fought for and established FP&P will be intact. In that, at least, we can trust.

Tonight I stand in awe and in solidarity of my university tonight, and am deeply proud to call it home.  To Noah and Chad, Bruce and David and Judith and Pam, Charity, Robin and Eleni and Gary -- all I can say is, "On Wisconsin."

0 Petitioners Receive Response from HR

At 3:51 pm, I received the following letter from UW-Madison Human Resources Director Bob Lavigna in response to the Change.Org petition. The full text follows.  I have underlined key sentences since it is rather long and inserted with ** some comments of my own.

I am very pleased with this display of engagement on the part of the administration and shared governance units, and hope you will agree with me that this is a significant step forward.  On Wisconsin!



November 2, 2012

 Dear UW-Madison colleagues:

I am writing in response to the October 30 petition asking me to, “… issue a list of written assurances regarding all planned significant changes to the Human Resources Design Strategic Plan on which the Faculty Senate will vote on Monday, November 5, 2012.”

 First, I want to outline where we are in the process of finalizing the HR Design Strategic Plan, and what will occur as we move forward.

On September 21, we posted the plan for campus-wide review and comment. Since then, we have engaged in another aggressive round of soliciting campus feedback, including in-person and online forums and presentations to groups that include the Faculty Senate. We have also continued to meet regularly with the University Committee and other governance and stakeholder groups to discuss the plan.

This wide-scale engagement is a continuation of the campus engagement strategy we have used from the time the 11 HR design work teams issued their draft recommendations last spring. To date, our outreach has resulted in nearly 10,000 contacts with members of our campus community.

Later this month, our executive sponsors – the Interim Chancellor, Provost, and Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration – will consider feedback on the plan from across the campus, as well as resolutions and other feedback from governance groups, and then make final decisions on the plan. It’s also important to remember that once the framework goes forward there will also be continued consultations as specific implementation details are developed. 

Then, on December 7, the Board of Regents will consider both the UW System and UW-Madison approaches. At this stage, we do not know what level of detail the Board will request that this discussion cover. We expect to issue a final version of the HR Design Strategic Plan after the Board meeting.

I have outlined this process to make it clear that the executive sponsors will make final decisions on the HR Design Strategic Plan based on the input we are receiving from the campus community.  

******

Over the past two weeks, we have had a series of communications with Associate Professor Sara Goldrick-Rab, the originator of the petition. These communications have included an in-person meeting which we initiated, as well as a series of follow-up email communications. These exchanges have been positive and constructive.  

Professor Goldrick-Rab identified several issues that she believes need to be clarified or modified. On October 29, I responded to her, agreeing in most cases with her suggestions (**these suggestion are listed as each "Issue" below**), and committing to recommend changes to the plan to the executive sponsors. What follows is a summary of my understanding of these issues, and my responses. 

Issue: Pay a living wage to contractor employees who work on campus premises, on contracts that exceed $5,000 in value. 

Response: We understand the importance of this issue and have asked for information on how many contracts UW-Madison has (as opposed to any contracts the Wisconsin Department of Administration manages, which we can’t control). After we receive this information, we will be in a better position to understand the scope of this issue and work with the appropriate campus units, particularly UW-Madison Business Services, to conduct an analysis. We understand the legitimate concerns about paying the living wage to contractor employees, including the potential impact on UW employees if contractor employees do not receive a living wage. We do not yet have a timetable for completing this analysis.  

Issue:  Address tensions between equity and market in the current plan. 

Response: We plan to 1) recommend language further clarifying that UW-Madison places a strong value on internal equity as a campus climate and retention strategy; 2) recommend editorial changes to the plan to make sure the terms “market” and “equity” are given equal consideration in the text; 3) clarify, after speaking again with our classified staff representatives, what is meant by market with regard to unskilled and semi-skilled classified employees; and 4) add a discussion of the importance of collaborative, interdisciplinary work on our campus and that this factor needs to be considered in compensation decisions.(**This is exactly what I had asked for**)

Issue: Revise the language in the plan regarding shared governance to be consistent with FP&P.

Response: We completely agree that the plan should accurately convey the precise nature of faculty governance and its role in implementing the new HR system. It’s also important to emphasize that the plan does not call for any changes to the nature of faculty or academic staff governance. Moreover, the plan calls for extending formal governance rights to university (currently classified) staff.  (**Again, exactly what I had asked for**)

Issue:  State more clearly the strong need to train faculty, chairs, and deans to appropriately determine compensation packages and to retain employees and help them be productive. Call for a campus-wide discussion about how best to create incentives for faculty to learn how to perform effectively in management roles. 

Response:  We agree there needs to be thoughtful and widespread discussion about how to create incentives and accountability for managers, including faculty, to be consistently effective. We believe that this point is already made in the plan but will review the plan to make sure it is clearly stated. (**Again, request fully met**)

Issue:  Assure that accountability metrics and measures are included in the plan. 

Response:  We agree that accountability measures and clear assignment of responsibilities are important. According to the HR Design Strategic Plan (page 54), “OHR will develop a dashboard of key measures to help track the effectiveness of university HR practices.” These metrics will provide a set of reference points to assess progress. Developing these measures must be a thoughtful and collaborative process. The plan includes a list of possible metrics. We will build on this list to develop a more robust set of measures.

Issue:  Modify the portions of the plan that eliminate the right of classified employees who transfer to other jobs on campus and fail probation to return to their original jobs. The determination of transfer itself may involve multiple factors but seniority should be used as the determinative factor in the case of ties. Create a roster of laid-off employees. Employees on the roster would have the right (provided that they are physically and mentally capable of performing the job) to an open position of the same job classification held by the employee or a classification in which the employee previously served. 

Response: We believe the appropriate forum for discussing these important issues right now is the Labor-Management Advisory Committee (LMAC). This committee, composed of labor and management representatives, has been in place for many years to discuss work-related issues that affect classified employees. We have been discussing these and other issues with our classified employee/labor partners and are willing to continue these discussions.

Issue:  Publish a list of written assurances regarding all planned significant changes to the Human Resources Design Plan on which the Faculty Senate will vote on Monday November 5, 2012. 
 
Response:  We are still gathering and analyzing feedback on the plan, including by engaging in conversations with governance and stakeholder groups. We will use this feedback to recommend changes to the executive sponsors. Therefore, it would be premature at this time to finalize any lists or draft specific language about possible changes. However, we plan to make the recommendations described above (and perhaps others as we continue to receive feedback and speak with stakeholder groups) to the executive sponsors. Specific modifications to the plan will be driven by the decisions of our executive sponsors. 

*******

I believe the above discussion responds, as best as I can at this stage in the process, to the request for a list of written assurances. At this point, it is not possible to identify each potential change that the plan might include, or the specific language of changes. However, we will continue to 
meet regularly, as we have been doing, with governance and other stakeholder groups to discuss possible changes and provide updates. 

I hope that our colleagues across the campus appreciate where we are in the process and how this affects our ability to provide detailed information on possible changes. I also ask that our colleagues recognize the transparency and candor that have characterized our conversations and campus engagement activities about the HR Design Strategic Plan.

Sincerely,


Robert J. Lavigna
Director

0 Information? Intimidation? It's Hard to Tell

This morning the Dean of Letters and Sciences at UW-Madison sent the following email to all faculty and staff in his college.  Since that time, my email inbox has flooded with concern expressed by staff, students, and faculty who are not sure why he sent it and what it's meant to accomplish.


Subject: [xtmp] Human Resource Design Strategic Plan
Date: Fri, 02 Nov 2012 09:37:26 -0500
From: Gary Sandefur
To: xtmp@lists.wisc.edu

Dear L&S Staff and Faculty,

 There have been many documents and statements floating around about aspects of the Human Resources Design Strategic Plan.  Some of this information is not factually correct.

To address these misconceptions, campus has developed the attached fact sheet.  You can also find the document at the following website: http://hrdesign.wisc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/120921HR_Facts.pdf

 I encourage all employees to read the Fact Sheet to ensure you are accurately informed.  If you have any questions at all about the information in the Fact Sheet or the HR Design Strategic Plan, please feel free to contact the following L&S Human Resource Staff:  [deleted]

You may also want to refer to the general HR Design Website at http://hrdesign.wisc.edu/  for additional information about the HR Design Strategic Plan.

Cheers,
Gary

-- 
Dean, College of Letters and Sciences
105 South Hall
1055 Bascom Mall
University of Wisconsin – Madison
Madison, WI  53706

As I wrote to Gary in response, there are at least two problems with this email. 

First, the information distributed is titled "facts" but is in fact hardly objective or "factual." At best, it's one point of view, and at worse, it is administrative propaganda.

For example, point 15 is misleading. The stated "misconception" is that HR Design work teams were dominated by HR staff. The statement that the teams had "representatives" from stakeholder groups does not contradict the claim. The fact is that 1/3 of the reps were HR staff and another 1/3 were managers above the HR staff level--only 1/3 were from lower-status stakeholder groups or faculty.  Clearly, the work teams were predominantly HR staff and managers!

Second, the timing of this email is worrisome since right now there is a petition being circulated asking that HR simply provide clear details on planned modifications to the Plan so that the Faculty Senate knows what it's being asked to vote on on Monday.  That petition includes large numbers of L&S faculty and staff who were brave enough to make their request for transparency public. 

It is 11:40 am right now, the petition asks for these details by 12:00 pm today. Nothing has arrived.

Instead, I am now hearing from people who signed the petition and who feel this email was intended to intimidate them.  

Since I'm sure that was not Gary's intention, I urge him to take immediate action to correct that impression and ensure that everyone on campus feels they are allowed to sift and winnow their way through this absolutely crucial process.

0 UPDATED! UW-Madison's Community Speaks Out on HR Design

Tuesday morning at 11 am, my colleagues and I initiated an online petition requesting that the Director of Human Resources at UW-Madison, Bob Lavigna, put his good intentions for revising the HR plan in writing before shared governance groups are asked to vote on the plan next week.

Just one day later, we had 223 signatures and counting!  Two days later we crossed the 300 mark.  This includes dozens of faculty, including many prominent, senior members who know and love the place.  Clearly, in this town people care about having information at hand and in writing before they're asked to vote.  As Marcia Schiffman of the Department of Opthamology and Visual Science put it, "How can you make an informed decision either way without the actual proposal, changes and all, in front of you?"

One of the best things about an online petition is that signers can leave comments, and as a sociologist I'm finding their words full of insights into how we struggle to make public higher education a better place.  Consider what this effort means to them.

********

"The HR redesign plan will have deep, long-run implications for the climate and values at the University of Wisconsin. Often such institutional redesigns have significant 'unintended consequences.' Only if the details are clear and explicit is it possible to assess these implications."

Erik Olin Wright, Professor, Department of Sociology

"There are reasons why people work for corporations or work for the University. I've worked at the UW for 20 years and I always felt the employee had a voice. This has not been the feeling in the last few years. We need to bring that back and now is the time to start."

 Mark Mears, Graduate Coordinator, Department of German

"As an Assistant Professor at UW-Madison, it is imperative to me that the process and outcomes of the HR Design plan reflect our campus values and commitments, and that this process be as transparent and open as possible."

Edward Hubbard, Assistant Professor, Department of Educational Psychology

"I sign this petition because I love this university and am so proud to work at a university that values faculty governance and values every one of its employees. The HR design can strengthen or weaken this incredible institution."

                          Nancy Kendall, Associate Professor, Department of Educational Policy Studies

"We don't need to move backward, we need to move forward. This effects all employees of UW-Madison. Everyone has a voice and should be heard. We should be able to work coopertavely, together."

Marsha Abrams, Medical Associate, Department of Psychiatry

"Working for the UW used to come with shiny bells and whistles. The shininess has been replaced by rust in the matter of a few years. People are talking more about leaving the UW than staying. I don’t want to feel as if I am expendable, nor do I want my fellow co-workers to feel that way. It is only fair and just to be fully informed, not just be shown what are to be the benefits of the new OHR system, but what is hidden in the dark corners as well. A well informed community is what is needed in order to make a wise decision towards any investment, and this would be a huge investment for our University. Our place of work, our lives, our family’s lives, the student’s lives, and the city’s heart will all be impacted."

Kristina Kendall, Accounts Payable

"Effective faculty governance requires full access to information."

Jon McKenzie, Associate Professor, Department of English

"As encouraged by George McGovern, I wish to be a voice of conscience."

Teryl Dobbs, Assistant Professor, Department of Music Education

**********

Finally, as we look forward into our future-- and our new chancellor-- I leave you with these words of warning issued by Jay Stamper, Professor Emeritus of the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis: "It is best to go into the future with a well developed plan." 

Join us--sign now-- and tell us what you think.

0 Five Ways to Enhance the Effectiveness of HR Design

This fall marks my ninth academic year at UW–Madison. During my time here I’ve experienced our human resources system in many ways—as a new mother seeking a maternity leave (twice), as a temporarily disabled employee in need of a leave, as a frustrated faculty member seeking a raise, and multiple times as the director of a large research project trying to hire and retain qualified classified and academic staff. I know firsthand that the system needs to change in order to realize our campus goals of equity, efficiency, and effectiveness.

That is why I have taken seriously the HR Design team’s request for input from shared governance units, spending significant time studying the plan, and commenting on it in multiple venues. I think further adjustments to the current plan are required, because my own knowledge of higher education reform efforts and the scholarly literature on work and organizations suggests that as currently formulated it will have significant unintended consequences, eroding some of what we value most about our university. Therefore, I am providing five recommendations for revising the plan so that UW–Madison’s approach to the management of human resources continues to reflect an ethos that prioritizes egalitarianism over ego, and recognizes that our greatest resource is our communal passion for and commitment to our work, rather than the competitive yet aimless striving for prestige that has overcome many of our peer institutions.

Recommendation 1:Expand the plan’s current living wage provisions to include workers at businesses receiving university contracts of $5,000 or more and student hourly employees.

The current plan calls for the implementation of a living wage policy that omits two groups: student hourly workers and contracted employees. Including contracted employees would bring the policy in line with the City of Madison’s living wage provisions. Their exclusion creates an incentive for the university to outsource more functions, which may increase efficiency but will also erode job security. In addition, providing a living wage to contractors and students helps ensure at least a modicum of equity among all people working in our community.

           

Recommendation 2: Revise the compensation philosophy guiding the plan to make internal equity and collective performance the primary, rather than secondary, compensation drivers.

The current plan repeatedly emphasizes enhancing “individual potential, opportunity, and achievement,” which, while important, overlooks the critical role played by teamwork in providing high-quality learning experiences and producing innovative research. The 21^st century research university increasingly requires collaboration across disciplines and units, creating work environments where people trained in different disciplines (and who are thus part of different labor markets) work alongside each other. The plan briefly acknowledges this, but the compensation strategies it outlines focus first on the role of market competitiveness (noting that it will be a factor in establishing compensation) and only secondly (and far less frequently) on internal equity. The roles of these factors should be reversed in each section. After all, the compensation work team (which, as an aside, did not include any non-administrator faculty members) recommended that market value be considered in setting wages but said nothing about de-valuing or de-emphasizing equity (although it appears the committee did not consider alternative, equity-focused models of compensation at all). It is reasonable that the committee wanted to add market-based pay to the mix of compensation drivers. However, the extent to which this driver should be emphasized, and how to assess cross-departmental collaborations taking into account diverse disciplinary “markets,” are very complex questions deserving a more careful work.

Recommendation 3: Require mandatory training for all managers tasked with setting employee compensation and/or benefits.

Given the highly decentralized nature of the plan, managers will almost always be faculty members, and yet most would acknowledge that they are not trained for or comfortable with performing human resources functions. The compensation work group noted this among its concerns, stating, “Another concern is that not all faculty and staff supervisors will assume responsibility to fairly, objectively and consistently implement formal performance evaluation processes.” This is too important a role to be left to the untrained, but the efficacy of this plan relies exclusively on their responsible participation in the training. It is especially important to give managers guidance about how to conduct and utilize market analyses in departments and units where scholars from different disciplines work side by side (thus creating much potential for internal inequity), and also to train them in assessing the comparable worth of similar yet unequal tasks. The current plan notes that a lack of training for managers was named as a problem in the listening sessions and mentions the training of hiring managers, but says nothing about rigorously training those who set compensation.

Recommendation 4: Alter the recommendation in the plan associated with shared governance to focus on joint decision making rather than advice and input.

The recommendations on shared governance, particularly with respect to development of the compensation pay plan and changes in benefits (leave, insurances, etc.) stress that the shared governance institutions, specifically that of the newly created University Staff, provide advice and input to the administration afterthe plan is developed. This is not indicative of a collaborative or shared governance model. While at many institutions shared governance merely requires the involvement of faculty, staff, and students as listeners and occasional speakers, this is not the historic practice at Madison and shared decision-making responsibilities should not be eroded through changes to language in specific plans like these.

Recommendation 5: Require mandatory performance reporting and accountability metrics for the new HR System.

At minimum, the plan should explain which reports should be produced and what consequences will be associated with performance. For example, public annual reports should assess changes in internal equity (between faculty and staff, among groups with regard to gender and race), faculty and staff turnover, and the absolute and relative number of positions that are university employees versus contractors. These reports should be presented to both the Faculty Senate and the Academic Staff Assembly (and the shared governance body of the University Staff), and the senior leadership council should describe what responses to the plan will take place should inequity, turnover, outsourcing, or other negative unintended consequences of the new HR design emerge or worsen.

0 Just the "Facts" on HR Design

Yesterday's Faculty Senate meeting at UW-Madison provided a wonderful illustration of how the cycle of widening economic inequality is regenerated through the actions of colleges and universities.

A Word Cloud Illustration of the Terms Contained in HR Design's Strategic Plan Components.  Word size is relative to frequency in document. 

Here's a thumbnail sketch of the process leading to the prioritization of markets over equity as depicted above. (In case you can't find it, "equity" is that tiny word hidden under "Job" on the left, above)

1. Wisconsin's conservative politicians slash investments in public higher education. This is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the reduction of human capital formation via public institutions.  The following steps are also required.
2. Public colleges and universities struggle to respond. They have multiple options, one of which is to fight the disinvestment while protecting its most vulnerable programs, employees, and students, but instead they adopt a suggestion provided by fiscally conservative liberals: turn to the market for ideas and support!
3. University administrators promote a new set of principles for the allocation of resources based on market rationales-- efficiency, effectiveness, and performance! Of course equity will be preserved, they say, but that's "up to you and your managers-- the power is all yours and the devil is in the details!" Yep, sure is.
4. These new principles and plans are developed "in collaboration" with the very few faculty, staff, and students who, in the midst of great economic and time constraints, are actually available for these discussions.  The "opportunity" for a new model is repeatedly emphasized as an inherently good thing, a wise thing, and one that will help us "help ourselves." These discussions result in a set of stylized proposals resting on unquestioned assumptions.
5. The plans are presented to "stakeholders."  They are described as based on "facts" of unquestionable validity and declared "not part of an effort to corporatize the university."  Such declarations are made without justification-- but because stakeholders are insufficiently equipped to respond, time-constrained, exhausted from overwork, and accustomed to being ignored by the administration, few offered any questions.
6. Thus, even the faculty-- purportedly the best-educated stakeholders-- sit quietly.  Unquestioning. No sifting and winnowing.  Happy to have someone else solve their "problems," especially if it means money will soon enter their pockets.
7. And with that, university administration has "engaged" its publics in the relevant discussions and can proceed with its plans.  It will pass the new agenda through all channels and deliver it, fully rubber-stamped, back to the gleeful Legislature.
8. Thus, we in higher education have "helped ourselves." 
9. Fast forward 5 years:  in many units, the gap in pay between research staff employed in high-demand fields and those assisting with teaching and learning will have grown.  Substantial numbers of jobs will move from employee to contractor status, since the new system guarantees a living wage only to employees-- not contractors-- and as we know, living wages are expensive! The number of mid-level bureaucrats (managers) on campus will have doubled and increased their power, as they now control budgets through their special analyses of employees' market value.  But it will be impossible to document all of these changes since the data will continue to be held in an administrative unit that decides how it displays results and is only required to respond to request from administrators, not employees. 

But don't worry, folks, this isn't corporatization.

And never fear, since shared governance will continue to reign.  If by that term, you mean that employees will have "input."


Notes:

1. Bob Lavigna pronounced the HR plan "not corporatization" three times during yesterday's Faculty Senate meeting.
2. While Lavigna said that shared governance meant "joint decision-making" (in response to a question I raised) the HR plan never mentions joint decision-making and instead mentions "input" 19 times.

0 More Questions on HR Design

In advance of this afternoon's meeting, I received this very helpful document from the Wisconsin University Union, which summarizes the HR Design plan elements and how they compare to current practice, while raising some critical questions about each element.

Here are some questions that I think are especially deserving of response:

• Will the university staff assembly, created by HR Design, preempt or potentially undermine the re-establishment of unions?  
• Why aren’t all contractors (over $5K) included in the living wage provisions, consistent with the City of Madison policy? UW has shifted to using contractors for custodial and food-service positions, and currently pays custodians just $8/hour. 
• What provisions prevent a hiring authority from defining the “employing unit” as so limited as to “force” a layoff? 
• What is the evaluation plan to assess the impacts of these radical changes?

0 Concrete Suggestions to Improve HR Design

This evening my colleague Bruce Thomadsen, professor of medical physics at UW-Madison, shared several concrete recommendations for improving the HR Design plan.  I think highly of his suggestions, and thus with permission I am summarizing the most critical ones here:

1. Affirm the continuation of genuine shared governance, a pillar of UW, in this plan.  The language implies that employees will advise on the implementation of benefits programs, but this is far weaker than the current status of shared governance at our university.  Decision-making must be shard.
2. Amend the plan to clearly state that academic staff have the right to due process with respect to all University actions detrimental to their jobs. This is not currently clear, especially with regard to layoffs.
3. Provide much more detail on the implementation of the layoff procedures. In particular, explain how the new system will increase, rather than decrease, job security.
4. The plan says that hiring managers will set salaries.  Clarify how this will be accomplished, and be specific about the types of information that will be considered and in particular the role that market studies will play.
5. The plan discusses the challenges of creating a system of job titles and compensation levels that match the titles. The difficulties and process are listed, but it is not clear that the results will eliminate the problems encountered frequently in providing adequate compensation for long-time, experienced employees, where only by changing a job title (and, therefore the job description) can increased compensation be provided. Often, such changes are not possible or allowed. The solution is to uncouple the job title from compensation to give flexibility and establish compensation based on qualifications and performance. This would eliminate the problem of adjusting the compensation for persons at the top of their job classification’s pay range. 
6. The Guiding Principles for HR Design aimed to eliminate the disparity where 12-month faculty receive 22 leave days immediately upon hire while university staff start with a low number and work up to this through seniority and promotion. Instead, all employees should start with the full number of leave days. But this plan apparently lowers the beginning leave days for new faculty, moving in the opposite of the intended direction. To fix this, change the plan: all full-time University employees should have 22 vacation and personal leave days, with leave for employees with 9-month appointments prorated by ¾.
7. Under this plan, it is not clear what will happen to the conversion of accrued sick leave at retirement. Clarify this, leaving sick leave separate from other vacation and personal leave, and the current sick-leave accrual policy unchanged.
8. Eliminate the provisions to change rules regarding transferring positions. The plan eliminates the current right for employees to return to their original positions if a transfer to a different position does not work. The report states, “Also, by reducing the risk associated with accepting a new position, the current policy also reduces the incentive for both the employee and the hiring manager/supervisor to do effective onboarding and work together to address any challenges in the probationary period.” This opinion neglects to consider that the transferring employee wants to make the change and therefore has a stake in making the new situation work. The hiring manager’s incentive would likely try hard to fit the transferring employee into the working environment to avoid repeating the hiring process.

0 Human Resource Directors and Employee Unions

Tomorrow afternoon, the Faculty Senate at UW-Madison will hear from Bob Lavigna, the institution's Human Resources Director. Lavigna will be discussing HR Design, a new plan I've covered several times recently on this blog. It's a controversial proposal, in part because it shifts the focus on setting compensation from internal equity towards external markets.  It also reduces some of the benefits held by classified staff, who are currently unionized, and for whom perks like substantial vacation time slightly dull the pain stemming from the terrible wages.

I was therefore intrigued when this morning I delved into my Inside Higher Ed backlog of reading and found the results of a brand new national survey of HR directors and their opinions about the future directions universities need to take.  The results help to at least partially set the broader stage on which HR Design is occurring.   (Partially: the response rate for this survey is 15% and with just 324 participants, 42 of whom were at public research universities, who knows if Madison is represented.)

Here are some key highlights related to HR Design:

• Concerns about salary equity are losing ground. Nearly 32% of HR Directors at public research universities said they are paying less attention to equity in faculty and staff salaries than they did five years ago, and just 17% are attending to those issues more often, despite the strong likelihood (given austerity practices) that inequities are growing.

• Almost all HR Directors take a dim view of unions. Close to 90% of HR Directors at public research universities contend that unions inhibit their ability to re-deploy people and define job tasks, discourage pay for performance, and inappropriately protect poor performing employees.   Less than 1/3 of such Directors acknowledge unions' demonstrable roles in securing better salaries and benefits and ensuring fair treatment of employees.

• Few HR Directors seem able to ground their assessments in data. Just 28.6% of HR Directors at public research universities report that they have good data on employee performance, productivity, and satisfaction, and only 21.4% say they use such data in campus planning and policy decisions.  (Sidenote: Oh. My. God.)

• And yet somehow, HR Directors are able to attribute low morale among employees to recent budget cuts. 74% of those at public research institutions agree that budget cuts did major damage to staff rationale, and 20-30% say their offices are unfairly blamed for cuts to employee benefits and services and even layoffs.  The frequency of these statements is twice as common at public research institutions as compared to elsewhere.

These will undoubtedly form a nice backdrop to tomorrow's discussion. I'm hoping Lavigna keeps his statement short and sweet, to allow plenty of time for questions. I'm told this hasn't been the case at recent campus events; for example at last week's Academic Staff Assembly meeting the members were not given responses to ASEC's previously issued comments.  But I'm sure tomorrow will be different-- faculty like to talk, at least as much as we like to listen.

0 Revisiting Compensation Plans in Higher Education

Like many universities throughout the country, UW-Madison is undergoing a restructuring of its human resources policies, aiming to make them more cost-effective by stimulating higher productivity-- bottom-line thinking encouraged and facilitated by the Wisconsin Legislature.

Among the planned changes in the new HR Design plan, released last Friday, is a shift to use of "new compensation structures...with market data... gathered to inform compensation decisions. Pay adjustments will reflect a broad range of factors (e.g., market, equity, performance) within defined parameters, and will be based on objective performance evaluations...These decisions will have to be made through fair, objective and transparent performance evaluations. Supervisors will be provided with training on how to conduct effective and bias-free performance evaluations and how to ensure that the supervisors who report to them are doing the same with their staff. Deans and directors will be responsible for ensuring that compensation decisions are fair and merit-based."

Unfortunately, the scholarly literature  suggests that some elements of this approach may be problematic. Here are some examples:

• The application of market data is subject to misapplication. The HR Design Plan says, "For example, for positions that require unique or advanced skills, the university must be very responsive to external labor markets in order to recruit and retain talent" (p.24). While this is commonly accepted wisdom, research discussed in yesterday's New York Times challenges it. Specifically, the use of market data has been shown to needlessly inflate the compensation of "stars" who are said to be flight risks, despite significant doubt about their transferability. Even though the article  focused on CEOS, given that these are jobs with unique or advanced skills too, the lessons seem quite applicable to high-level university administrators, athletic coaches, and "star" faculty-- who would likely find it very difficult to simply move to operating in an entirely different academic setting, moving their labs and students, etc.  There are big costs to doing so, and we have seen the results, since those stars often return to Madison after a few years away, and others seek to do so-- too late, when we no longer have space or desire to employ them. 

• There is a strong risk that these models will prioritize the pay of employees in a way that maximizes institutional prestige, rather than institutional effectiveness.  This is a common problem in the non-profit sector, and the current plan doesn't identify explicit actions to avoid it. It's currently a well-known problem, contributing to a rankings race that costs Wisconsin taxpayers money and comes at the expense of our educational mission.

• The plan makes statements about "considering" internal equity but does not make explicit the rank order in which internal equity should be prioritized by departments.  Admittedly, this is a highly de-centralized campus, but that should not come at the expense of equitable human resources practices. In the meantime, evidence continues to emerge from top scholars in economics and business suggesting that job satisfaction for university employees is really affected by relative pay in their workplace rather than absolute levels of pay such as those that would be constructed by setting pay within an institution based on pay given outside the institution. 

A few additional thoughts on that last point...We saw the anxiety about faculty pay that forms some of the ground for these changes emerge and grow quite heated during the New Badger Partnership discussion last spring.  I blogged extensively about this,  raising questions about the use of extra-institutional peer comparisons in defining "low" pay,  rather than intra-institutional comparisons (in other words, am I underpaid because my colleagues at Penn State make more money, or because my colleague in the office next door makes more?)   I argued that while Madison faculty (and many staff) operate in a national and even international marketplace, there are selection mechanisms operating that mean that many of us place a lower priority on such distinctions compared to other people who choose to work at notoriously well-paid places.  In other words,  people on whom the future of the university rest knew when they were hired that Madison wasn't known for its high salaries, recognized the low cost-of-living in the area and the great benefits, and while they have little tolerance for being inequitably paid among people on campus (nor look kindly on salary compression), didn't rank pay relative to other institutions as a top priority.  (Admittedly, it is hard to test the merits of my claim, since I cannot locate any high-quality surveys of our university community which provide an array of responses to questions about compensation and achieve high response rates-- and it's safe to say that those who step forward with complaints are a selected bunch upon whom new policies should probably not be based.  So, if this is incorrect, get the data and let's examine it.)

The shift to new compensation structures is part and parcel of wider efforts seeking to bring corporate models to higher education.  They convey a set of neoclassical economic constructs, such as self-interest, scarcity, maximization, choice, efficiency, value, and competition, with which we are all too familiar.  The effects of such models can be observed in conflicts like the one that arose at UVA this summer, when an external, bottom-line focus and disrespect for internal collaborative processes led Rector Helen Dragas to make an extraordinarily ill-advised attempt to oust President Terry Sullivan.

To be completely fair,  many disagree with me regarding this claim of corporatization. The HR Design team produced a document that proclaims, "Misconception: UW-Madison is moving to a corporate model. Fact: UW-Madison will be adopting a personnel system that meets the needs of our educational mission and culture. Our university will implement a new personnel system tailored to the needs of our higher education environment. Implementation will include working with governance and other stakeholder groups to ensure that the new HR system makes sense for our mission, culture and environment. We will also continue to identify and apply best practices from other educational and public sector organizations. (This point is emphasized throughout the plan.)."

I don't doubt the sincerity of this statement at all. But the problem is that the "needs" assessment is marked against the demands of external (and internal) stakeholders that seek to promote a focus on efficiency above other values, and among whom some politically seek an austerity budget for public institutions that will create room for new business opportunities for profiteering institutions.  Moreover, it's getting harder and harder to find practices in the public sector that are unlike those used by the corporate sector, given the longstanding conversion of universities and their brethren to this model.  So, it will be very easy to say "our friends do it, and we don't want to fall behind," even though this may serve to justify a model that is effectively destroying those friends.

So what are the alternatives? Absent the availability of a list of already-considered alternatives and their pros and cons, such as what could have been offerred by the HR Design team, I will turn to the work of noted scholars like Stanford's Myra Strober, and University of Massachusetts-Amherst's Nancy Folbre.  My assessment of their work leads me to suggest that we would benefit from shifting to focusing explicitly on the following in a revised HR Design plan:

(1) Ensure that first and foremost the university offers all employees compensation consistent with the UW-Madison community's collective norms. To do this, we must explicitly agree on and state our norms and values. When did we last (or ever) do this?   UW-Madison prides itself on developing in its students a sense of civic commitment and responsibility, and avoiding hypocrisy requires that we exert the value of altruism to be inherent in how we treat each other--including when it comes to pay.  While the HR Design plan pays attention to ensuring we pay a living wage, I think we can all agree that that's really the bare minimum.  To ensure we hire people committed to UW-Madison and retain them for the long haul, we need to make explicit a set of institutional priorities placed on internal equity and long-term employee performance.   Focus on ensuring that all campus units promote a culture of fairness among employees, where equity concerns are addressed proactively rather than reactively (as they are now).

(2) Focus on rewarding the type of work that produces high-quality outcomes for our students. As an educational institution, we engage in work that is inherently process-based, and the outcomes of which can take a long time to emerge. We should be explicit about discouraging units from emphasizing short-term gains that are often illusory and can serve to too quick elevate a "rising" star who may lack institutional commitment or perform very little "non-market" work.   Much of what the best members of our community do is essentially volunteer work-- service above and beyond the call of duty-- and unless we explicitly commit ourselves to paying for that work, it goes unacknowledged and will inevitably decline.

(3) Distribute gains effectively.  If employees at UW-Madison want to be national leaders in stemming the rising tide of inequality, we should actively discourage the "Matthew effect" on campus. In other words, we should prevent a winner-take-all system and ensure that gains come to those who have not typically be rewarded.  (There was some language about this in the Critical Compensation Fund guidelines this spring-- that was a good start).  For example, we will gain much more from ensuring the continuity of strong programs in the humanities because they are being decimated elsewhere, and because emphasizing the importance of the humanities in the teaching of our students will help our students stand out not only as workers but as human beings.  Humanities faculty need adequate support staff just as much as science labs do, and we collectively benefit from recognizing that.  The plan needs to be very clear on this point, lest departments be less to be seemingly "rational" but practically ineffective decisions.

(4) Focus on the distribution of abundant resources rather the adaptation to scarcity. The HR Design could leverage this opportunity to become part of a larger effort rejecting the claims that the university must tighten its belt because of tough times-- it is not because of a lack of a tax base that these changes are occurring, but because of particular policy choices.  Scarcity is being created and advertised to us-- and we are buying it.  But the psychological effects of scarcity rhetoric undermine any additional compensation and have long-lasting effects.  We should encourage in our community a sense of selflessness, and write a plan that maximizes everyone's benefits under conditions where we are wealthy, not poor.  This will effectively de-emphasize internal competitiveness, which creates strife, and create more opportunities to achieve intrinsic satisfaction in one's work. In the last 5 years, I have felt my colleagues grow more tense and worried, feeling as it everything is a zero-sum game and we are under siege. That's remarkably destructive, and should be addressed.

In summary, I am grateful for the work of all on campus who contributed to the HR Design effort. I think they worked within parameters and expectations which are common to campuses across the United States.  But therein lies the problem-- we need to better engage a process of sifting and winnowing that is open to thinking from outside the box lest we  perpetrate on ourselves a system that has demonstrably diminished the flourishing of so many Americans.

0 Faculty Involvement & HR Design at UW-Madison

As I recently described, UW-Madison is currently going through a process of Human Resources Redesign.  Today at Faculty Senate there was an unexpected and lengthy discussion of the recommendations of the HR working groups that was at times a bit acrimonious (I say unexpected because it was listed nowhere on the posted agenda). The exchanges between the faculty and the administrators--especially Darrell Bazzell and Bob Lavigna--were fraught with apparent frustration and visible annoyance from both men.  At several points, Lavigna said that faculty had been asked several times to participate in the working groups, but few had. Nothing that had transpired, he seemed to suggest, should be construed as an effort to circumvent shared governance, and transparency in the process was always the aim.  Moreover, he responded to faculty questioning, we should know that "our colleagues" had worked hard on the recommendations, and that he, at least, respected that work.

Driving home afterwards, I had a few reflections and observations I hope it's productive to share.

First, it seems all-too-common for our administrators to mistake faculty critique for dismissal of their hard work.  As if when someone says "I disagree or don't like your idea" they are really saying "You didn't try hard to come up with it."  That strikes me as a defensive posturing that's entirely unhelpful, since the critique is leveled at the idea not the person or their effort.

Second, it is also all-too-common for our administrators to bring forth proposals to the community without providing evidence to support those proposals.  The documents from the New Badger Partnership were heavy on big claims and light on data, and the same can be said for the HR recommendations.  As researchers, this is excruciatingly hard for us to accept.  After all, we spend our days seeking proof for ideas.  As such, we expect from anyone bringing forth ideas to say things along the line of "Based on a thorough review of evidence such as X, Y, and Z, we have concluded Q."  Instead, what we were told today was basically "Believe us, we did research--we talked to people in the community at many forums."  Well, that's not research-- it's a convenience sample of anecdotal evidence.  Where is the literature review? Where are the systematic methods? That's what we need to know.

Third, a favorite refrain appears to be "but we asked you faculty to be involved, and you wouldn't do it. Now you can't blame us."  Well...sorta.  But a key  problem underlying faculty non-participation is how administrators treat advice from faculty.  See above-- would you want to participate in meetings where the people you're having discussions with act as though your difference of opinion with them is an assault on their effort? Where they want to have policy discussions based on anecdote? Where they pull the common punch of "this isn't your area of expertise, so what would you know?"  Where requests for data and evidence are consistently met with suspicion?  This is the environment many of us faculty encounter when we serve on university committees.  So some rightly ask, why bother?

Sadly, that creates a vicious cycle-- out of frustration, we don't spend the time on these key administrative tasks that govern our daily work lives, and in turn we become increasingly disenchanted with the place. That goes to simply prove the administrators' point-- when the going gets tough, where are we?

My honest question is this: Does the administration genuinely want the faculty involved? If so, then the kinds of questions we asked at today's Senate meeting should be welcomed. No one should respond defensively when asked for further information -- instead, it should be sought and provided.  Instead of redirecting well-informed questioners to other people, people not present at the meeting, those who proffered their ideas for questioning should offer to promptly ascertain the information and respond.  Data should be plentiful, evidence brought forth, and open debates should ensue.  That's how academia works.  Despite the wishes of some, UW-Madison remains at its core an academic enterprise, not a business. Thankfully, some professors stood up today and  reminded us of that.