I really liked the piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education titled “The Administration Vacation“. I think the paragraph “In short, we as faculty members and administrators have to stop viewing one another as monolithic and antagonistic entities, and instead begin seeing ourselves as dedicated individuals and shared stakeholders working toward a common good.” captures the current situation in Higher Ed accurately.

Each of us is on the “inside” in several aspects of our work and life and “outside” in others. And our view points differ so drastically depending on the view that we have. The article suggests that we should have the faculty shadow an administrator for a few weeks and vice versa as a way to get a better understanding and appreciation of the other side. This is the same as moving someone from the “outside” to go “inside” to get a better understanding of the situation.

The practicality of this is a serious issue, but we all can benefit from trying to find some common ground, whatever the path is.

I often hear from my friends how the higher ed costs are just not acceptable and way too high. This is from those who can easily afford to pay full tuition in the most prestigious schools. I try to explain the reasons, which doesn’t go too far. I talk about the problems we all face because of this and what we are trying to do. For these outsiders, the high cost of higher education is irresponsible behavior that affects them and no one is doing anything about it.

Then the conversation shifts to the cost of medication (you can guess my age group by now) and I am now an outsider and some of my complaining buddies are the insiders. I argue that the cost of medication is way too high and my friends in Pharma and biotech are irresponsible. They try to explain the reasons, the low success rates, the tight regulations, so on and so forth. But to me, they could do a much better job screening for drugs so that the success rate is far better, but they try to explain to me why this is not the case.

Same thing with my friends in the insurance industry. The reason why the rates are so outrageous is not because of them! It is all because of the lawyers and doctors (of course, my doctor friends complain about outrageous malpractice insurance as well as the horrendous bureaucracy of billing and collecting from the insurance folks amongst the other things).

So on and so forth. In general, the faculty members who are in committees with other administrators tend to be more understanding of the way the administration works and are more sympathetic to some of the ways issues are handled. In other words, getting people to come inside serves the purpose. But, it is not scalable. For example, I can’t spend time to look at how a pharmaceutical company works (nor do I want to) to be able to understand why the drugs cost as much as they do. However, if each of us can explain to the others the reasons in ways that a reasonable person can understand, may be it has a chance to work.

For example, I love this attempt on the part of Dartmouth to explain why “Dartmouth is so expensive“. Or better yet, the video from Williams – “How Williams Works. Financially” found in this page.

Of course, someone in my circle will complain that cost of producing such videos contribute to the increase in tuition. Whatever!