Iowa is going to can overpaid (any pay would be too much) DEI deans.
6 thoughts on “A Good Start”
The first question they should ask is ‘Why are there so many administrators per student?’ DEI buffoons, child psychiatrists, and so forth and so on …all needing their own staff of secretaries and helpers. Many times I saw my older sister taking homework and tests home to grade at the kitchen table — no secretary for her!
“Iowa is going to can overpaid (any pay would be too much) DEI deans.”
Don’t bet on it. Colleges specialize in cutting meat and bone (academic programs) to protect the fat (everything else). The odds are much better that they’ll create a new department with an inoffensive name like the Department for Snuggle Bunnies and Jelly Donuts, move all the DEI personnel, and continue doing the same things without calling it DEI. “See, there’s no DEI here! None at all!”
With legislative law, that’s an easy defense. I think though that the board of trustees can hit a moving target. Whether they will remains to be seen.
For example, they can replace a state college president that plays these games. The real problem though are the people at the university (students and staff mostly). They protest hard and long enough, they can get the trustees to back off or be replaced.
I think this will backfire. DEI is too narrow and popular a target to be nixed by this sort of bureaucratic maneuver. I think the attempt will divert into a political tug of war that won’t go anywhere.
A holistic approach that works on reducing overall bureaucracy will likely see less opposition and more support. Students are paying more in tuition and taking on greater debt for this stuff. Similarly, faculty teachers (not so much researchers who might get larger grants to pay for this increased bureaucracy) are in direct competition with these administrators. It should be a straight-forward case to make to reduce administration and get some combination of lower student tuition and higher faculty pay.
DEI could survive the cull – but at least it would require state universities to prioritize what ideological programs they keep around rather than accumulate them indiscriminately.
Tell the universities that they will cut the number of admins by a set amount (say, 20%). Then let the university decide who gets let go. If they try to keep things like DEI and “gender studies”, then they are telling the legislature that the cut wasn’t big enough. And the response is to send them another round of cutting until they get the message.
For those wondering if this will actually come to pass, don’t underestimate the power of a focused legislative and executive trifecta. It becomes rather trivial to write DEI out of existence in Code, and to cut funding unless or until compliance is met.
Iowa is also the state that recently restructured a not-insignificant percentage of it’s state bureaucracy out of existence by completely dumping the state code and replacing it with a new version minus a dozen or so offices. They would have little problem getting a page to write the colleges themselves out of existence if they felt squirrelly enough about it.
The first question they should ask is ‘Why are there so many administrators per student?’ DEI buffoons, child psychiatrists, and so forth and so on …all needing their own staff of secretaries and helpers. Many times I saw my older sister taking homework and tests home to grade at the kitchen table — no secretary for her!
“Iowa is going to can overpaid (any pay would be too much) DEI deans.”
Don’t bet on it. Colleges specialize in cutting meat and bone (academic programs) to protect the fat (everything else). The odds are much better that they’ll create a new department with an inoffensive name like the Department for Snuggle Bunnies and Jelly Donuts, move all the DEI personnel, and continue doing the same things without calling it DEI. “See, there’s no DEI here! None at all!”
With legislative law, that’s an easy defense. I think though that the board of trustees can hit a moving target. Whether they will remains to be seen.
For example, they can replace a state college president that plays these games. The real problem though are the people at the university (students and staff mostly). They protest hard and long enough, they can get the trustees to back off or be replaced.
I think this will backfire. DEI is too narrow and popular a target to be nixed by this sort of bureaucratic maneuver. I think the attempt will divert into a political tug of war that won’t go anywhere.
A holistic approach that works on reducing overall bureaucracy will likely see less opposition and more support. Students are paying more in tuition and taking on greater debt for this stuff. Similarly, faculty teachers (not so much researchers who might get larger grants to pay for this increased bureaucracy) are in direct competition with these administrators. It should be a straight-forward case to make to reduce administration and get some combination of lower student tuition and higher faculty pay.
DEI could survive the cull – but at least it would require state universities to prioritize what ideological programs they keep around rather than accumulate them indiscriminately.
Tell the universities that they will cut the number of admins by a set amount (say, 20%). Then let the university decide who gets let go. If they try to keep things like DEI and “gender studies”, then they are telling the legislature that the cut wasn’t big enough. And the response is to send them another round of cutting until they get the message.
For those wondering if this will actually come to pass, don’t underestimate the power of a focused legislative and executive trifecta. It becomes rather trivial to write DEI out of existence in Code, and to cut funding unless or until compliance is met.
Iowa is also the state that recently restructured a not-insignificant percentage of it’s state bureaucracy out of existence by completely dumping the state code and replacing it with a new version minus a dozen or so offices. They would have little problem getting a page to write the colleges themselves out of existence if they felt squirrelly enough about it.
Don’t forget the staffs…..
Don’t worry, deans: McDonalds is hiring.