Counting Vice Presidents Misses the Point (opinion)

I’ve spent a lot of my profession working as a school administrator. I’ve held senior roles, carried expansive portfolios, and had titles that critics of upper schooling more and more cite as proof of “administrative bloat.” I perceive why these titles and the organizational charts behind them can really feel alienating to school. They’ll reinforce an unhealthy sense of “us versus them” on campus.

However after years inside these roles, I’ve come to imagine that title inflation isn’t the core drawback it’s usually made out to be. It’s seen. It’s irritating. And it’s simple accountable. Nonetheless, focusing solely on titles dangers mistaking a symptom for the illness, and in the course of, leaving the actual explanation for administrative overload unexamined.

That’s why Austin Sarat’s current Inside Greater Ed essay asking, “How Many Vice Presidents Does a Faculty Want?” resonated with me, at the same time as I believe it in the end misdiagnoses the problem. Sarat is true to be uneasy about what he calls the “vice presidentialization” of upper schooling. Titles matter. Hierarchies matter. And the proliferation of vice presidents deserves scrutiny.

However the development of administrative titles isn’t what’s hollowing out institutional capability or widening the divide between college and directors. It’s what occurs when management repeatedly avoids the tougher work of setting priorities and imposing limits.

Criticism of administrative development in larger schooling isn’t new, and it’s not fully unfounded. Faculties and universities have undeniably expanded their administrative features over time. However the concepts behind lots of these roles are sound and, in lots of circumstances, important. Retention issues. Monetary help issues. Pupil help, compliance and information matter. Investing in these features improves scholar success. The issue begins with what occurs after these roles are created.

Over time, directors are assigned work that’s solely loosely related or not related in any respect to the tasks their titles recommend. Priorities proliferate. New initiatives emerge. New reporting necessities arrive from accreditors, legislators, donors and boards. Crises, actual and perceived, demand instant consideration. Nearly nothing is ever taken away. Every new precedence is layered on high of current work, usually with out readability about period, possession or trade-offs. Vice presidents successfully develop into executives’ administrative assistants.

To grasp an establishment’s true priorities, don’t begin with the strategic plan. Look as an alternative at how directors are literally spending their time. What you’ll usually discover is that individuals employed to do one important job are doing 5 or 6 others as an alternative. A lot of that work isn’t merely peripheral; it’s squarely outdoors the scope of the position. This isn’t a failure of particular person directors. It’s a failure of organizational self-discipline.

I do know lots of the folks filling these roles. I’ve been considered one of them. They aren’t avoiding college or college students. They might like to spend a while in a classroom. They aren’t ignoring telephone calls and emails out of indifference. Most of them are in it for the proper causes: the college students and the nationwide crucial of postsecondary attainment. If they’re hardly ever of their workplaces in any respect, it’s as a result of they’re being pulled into conferences, process forces and disaster response for points far faraway from their core tasks. Many work nights and weekends, skip holidays and nonetheless fall behind, not as a result of they lack dedication however as a result of the system nearly ensures overload.

That is the place Sarat’s critique falls brief. It’s not that directors take their titles too critically. It’s that establishments tackle too many priorities with out making corresponding selections about what to not do. And whereas lots of these initiatives may be “good,” too lots of them fall outdoors the core scope of training college students. The consequence isn’t just administrative pressure, however much less institutional consideration dedicated to educating and studying itself.

Our schools and universities are beneath higher and extra diversified strain than ever. They’re being squeezed from each route: demographic decline, rising prices, declining public funding, rising accountability calls for and more and more numerous scholar wants have made it inconceivable to proceed working as if capability had been limitless. But too usually, institutional “technique” nonetheless quantities to including priorities slightly than selecting amongst them. What this second calls for as an alternative is institutional redesign, a deliberate rethinking of buildings, roles and work so that faculties and universities can concentrate on what issues most for right this moment’s college students.

Actual technique isn’t about what initiatives establishments undertake, however what they intentionally determine to not do. In a second when right this moment’s college students want clearer pathways, stronger help and higher outcomes, establishments shouldn’t have the luxurious of letting work proceed to creep in unchecked, or of making an attempt to be all issues to all folks. When leaders keep away from making these selections, the strain doesn’t disappear. They push it downward and outward till including folks and titles turns into the default method to cope.

Finally, one thing should give. When a vice chairman reaches the restrict of what one particular person can moderately handle, establishments hardly ever slender the position or make clear boundaries. As an alternative, they add one other layer: an affiliate vice chairman, an assistant vice chairman. Titles proliferate not as a result of directors crave standing, however as a result of establishments use folks and titles as workarounds for unresolved management failures.

Satirically, that is exactly what deepens the divide Sarat worries about. When directors are stretched impossibly skinny, they develop into much less current, much less responsive and fewer related to educational life. School expertise this as indifference or bureaucratic conceitedness. In reality, it’s structural misalignment. The gap is actual, however it’s produced by overload, not hierarchy.

Which is why the resolution can’t merely be fewer vice presidents or humbler titles. It should begin with presidents, boards and college leaders prepared to train actual management self-discipline. Meaning distinguishing between core educational work and aspirational initiatives. It means abandoning applications and committees as readily as launching them. And it means acknowledging an important reality that larger schooling usually avoids: Including priorities with out subtracting others isn’t strategic ambition—it’s organizational debt.

The very best administration is commonly invisible, not as a result of it lacks worth, however as a result of it’s doing its job so properly that educating and studying can take heart stage. Centering college students and their schooling ought to imply fewer symbolic fights over titles and extra trustworthy conversations about priorities, capability and trade-offs.

Sarat is true to warn towards importing company hierarchy into larger schooling. Nonetheless, to deal with administrative bloat critically, we should look past the organizational chart. The actual query isn’t what number of vice presidents a school wants. It’s the variety of priorities an establishment is prepared to desert to serve its educational mission successfully. It is a take a look at of management and self-discipline. We have to do a greater job guaranteeing that our establishments are designed round educating our college students slightly than working an ever-expanding enterprise enterprise.