Earlier this afternoon we published an email to the University of Kentucky’s faculty from Dr. Irina Voro that focused on administrative accountability. It’s just a taste of why administrators and Voro’s fellow board members are anxious about, you know, having someone to answer to.

But you already know from our years of coverage that it’s not just Voro who want administrators at UK to face some sort of accountability measures. It’s nearly every faculty member.

So we thought it’d be a good idea to take a look at a treasure trove of opinions from faculty at the University of Kentucky, which we pulled from recent surveys.

There are a ton. Be sure to read them all.

Here goes…

• “New administrators typically surround themselves with a bunch of like-minded sycophants whose primary job seems to be to maintain their own employment…”
• “To finally get some accountability we should adopt a policy that all personnel at UK who provide any service to any part of the university are to be evaluated in a meaningful way by those receiving the supposed services. Since the faculty and staff are evaluated regularly (mostly yearly) by those receiving our services (students) and by the administration, so should the administration be evaluated by the faculty, staff and students (at least if not by others). In a “meaningful way” means that this would not be a token non-binding survey, but an actual stay on the job or get fired result. These administrators do not have tenure (at least most of them don’t) and are “at will” employees and should be subject to consequences for their job performance just like we are. Secondly, there should be a “zero tolerance” policy implemented for administrators and especially those in supervisory positions over faculty and staff (think deans and department chairs) that if they violate a governing or administrative regulation and state and federal statutes, they are fired for incompetence (read their job descriptions and the first responsibility they have is an executive function) and for misconduct.”
• “I just received the email from (removed for privacy) asking us once again to submit our “Faculty Performance Review” materials. This, as you know, is in addition to my yearly “Activities Report,” and “Teaching Portfolio,” and individual conference with (chair). I’m an untenured assistant professor, and every semester I’m required to submit evidence of how I spend my time. In addition, I am additionally evaluated each semester by students from two to three separate courses. Which raises this question:
  Why do the people who have so little power (teachers) have so much more accountability than those who are in power (administration)? In this system, feel that I have to be apprehensive all the time about whether I’m doing enough to retain my position (all for a whopping $50,000), whereas others have seemingly no worries, nor need to prove that they’re worthy of their position and compensation.”
• “How are administrators accountable? To whom? To the faculty? To the students? How? By what process? Etc etc. Also, there is another issue regarding the hiring of (esp. higher level) administrators. For faculty hiring we have very high standards. We bring to Kentucky the very best people by conducting open, transparent, affirmative action compliant, national and international searches. What about high level administrators? Are they the very best people UK can find from transparent national and international searches? Are we competing with the best universities to hire them (as we are with faculty)?”

Read the rest after the jump…

• “I suggest to draft a letter or maybe several letters to the UK president. The letters should be circulated among the faculty and signed by name and send to the president, cc to you.
  The one page letter should state first the desire to keep this internally (before going to the Harald Leader) and then list the demands:
  How many administrators, vice presidents etc. are there, how much do they cost, who is paying them and what do the payers get in return (I am definitely not happy with the ‘administrative service’ I get for the overheads that I generate). How did the administrative costs develop over time? How is the salary of the administrators determined?
  How does our administrative overhead compare to the reference Universities and to Universities that climbed up in the ranking (like the U Vermont you mentioned)
• Initiate a process to make the University more efficient by reducing administrative burden (this is not mentioned in any of the development plans I have seen)
• Set up a system to review and evaluate administrators, similar to the constant faculty evaluation (are the administrators necessary, are new procedures mandated by the federal government as usually stated or made in-house, do the administrators create benefits that justify their salaries?) One way (drastic) would be to collect the complaints and publish them on the respective vice president’s UK web site, for face saving reasons password protected for UK faculty.
• Create accountability of the administration: (name removed for privacy) lost grant money because of mishandled paperwork, the accounting and grant handling procedures are completely opaque, slow and unpredictable… Bottom line should be if the administration screws up, they have to pay something from their budget and if the screw ups continue, changes in people need to be made. I would end the letter with stating that this is a chance for the president to make a positive mark and really distinguish himself from other presidents and to put the university forward. The letters should be mailed at the same time. I talked to lots of faculty who would sign something like this. I guess that most faculty will wait until enough people signed to join out of fear of repercussions. It would therefore be good to get an initial idea of people signing.”
• “From my experience as a faculty at UK, the administration is bloated and fairly inefficient. There are too many forms and lawyer-driven procedures that put unnecessary burden on faculty. Worst of all, there is no procedure in place that systematically identify administrative weaknesses and administrative excess. Whereas faculty is reviewed by students, department heads and constantly through funding agencies, there seem to be no such review in place for administrators. The refusal of giving Dr. Voro information to do her job as trustee is just another example that the administration is not accountable to the faculty of UK. Streamlining and improving the administration would be a great resource to save money.”
• “When I came to Uk 32 years ago we had a President and vice president no provost. I know of few Universities who also have provost along with vice-presidents as we do.
  I believe each College had added way to many administrators.”
• “If you look at what’s happened at universities, the growth in budgets are not toward faculty or students, but in the administrators and “other” category. The McKinsey report does a good job of pointing out that some of that “other” spending is good (e.g., if we spend money on staff to retain students, measure student retention, and make certain that the staff helps us to increase student retention, that is a good outcome for the student and the institution that lowers the cost of the degree), while most of the “other” spending is horrible (e.g., having our own janitorial staff or IT staff when those things can be done better and more cheaply by outside entities). The board and the president need to set a goal to have the money spent on students and faculty grow at a faster pace than that spent on administration and “other” spending. Another way of doing this is to set a cap in the growth of “other” spending. Notice that I’m not saying to cut administrators’ salaries or the number of administrators or staff — just limit their growth for a while and try to grow other parts of the budget. Over time, however, it will have the desired effect, which is to reduce the rampant inefficiency and waste.”
• “Is anything being done to address the explosive growth in administration? This never seems to be of concern from administrators but, it seems to me that a large fraction of the increasing university overhead is coming from the rapid growth in these high-salaried positions. The role of administrators should be to facilitate the activities of the faculty in carrying out their missions to educate the young and create new knowledge. Instead, my feeling is that administrators are adding to faculty workloads and detracting from our core missions. I also don’t understand why administrators have a pay & benefit structure that compensates their activities at a level higher than that of the faculty. Here’s a crazy suggestion. I hear complaints about over-the-hill tenured faculty that don’t pull their weight. How about replacing some of the administrators with several (each) of these over-the-hill faculty and saving on the salaries. I bet several experienced faculty could outperform a single administrator at most of the functions that they perform.
• …There have been several high profile donations in recent years that have gone to the building of dorm rooms for basketball players, scoreboards for the Commonwealth Stadium and upgrades to the faculty club. If they exist, I have not heard about donations that go toward improving classrooms, upgrading deteriorating facilities, etc. Years ago, I witnessed a senior colleague being chastised for attempting to raise donations for laboratory facilities by his own efforts. He was told that his efforts would make it more difficult for the professional fundraisers to target those same donors to give toward projects that were ranked more highly by upper administration. I accept that argument but insist that it applies to other donations as well. If wealthy donors give funds to build basketball dorms, they are less likely to give money for other campus needs. Lee Todd was regularly praised by the BOT (and had his compensation increased) for his fund-raising abilities. I would argue that if he (or the current president) can’t convince donors that their money is better spent on educational priorities rather than sports (or faculty club) priorities, then the president is not doing an effective fundraising job. Targets should be set for university priorities that donated funds should be directed towards and the President (and his associates) judged on how well he can direct donors contributions to those priorities. Here’s another crazy idea. We have some classrooms in pretty poor shape in the medical center (and I’m sure elsewhere on campus). Tell the donor that the students passing through those classrooms every day go on to become fairly well-to-do MDs or other professionals that spend money on luxury products. Can you imagine the potency of an advertisement that was placed in those classrooms (“The upgrades to this classroom were made possible by a donation from Lexus of Lexington”). I’ve seen this done at other universities, but never here. I’ve seen a lot of strategic plans come and go over the years, but never a tactical plan. The strategic plans are great—increase faculty salaries, increase student retention, increase quality of incoming students, put a chicken in every pot, end war in our time, etc. Year after year, they are virtually the same. Without a tactical plan, they’re basically useless, like the many politicians that have a wonderful image of what they want America to look like but are clueless as to how to get there. How about insisting that a tactical plan be produced?”
• “…An issue here is that some academic policies tend to discourage entrepreneurship. Our byzantine approval process is ridiculous at times. I sometimes spend more time going through UK paperwork on my funded projects than the projects themselves (which is simply obscene- and is why many good people leave academia)…”
• “We have no feedback loops. People generate administrator imposed strategic plans, which are filed, and not followed up on. This is all paperwork generated for administrative purpose, more and more required by the CPE and Accrediting Agencies (Empires). If we abolished the CPE, we would have real money for education (teaching, research and service). Of course, we would have fewer administrators. The CEP was the product of politics. It provides high paying jobs for people’s friends. So I guess we know where my abolish the CEP idea is headed. By the way, does anyone know how much money we are spending on the QEP nonsense we are being forced to participate in?”
• “Part of the problem with Top 20 was that it was top down. Looks like the “Consultant’s Report” is more of the same. The new President comes from Alabama knowing nothing about us, and hires a bunch of strangers to do an assessment (based on what?). I expect that we will abandon “Top 20”, and also ignore all current plans and aspirations. That may be inevitable, and may even be good. I am not sure we need to pay a lot of money to Consultants to come up with that ending. All of this reporting up, and out, and so on makes for administrative jobs and money for consultants, but doesn’t teach one student anything, or lead to any new discoveries.”
• “Administration at UK became a large structure that make more and more rules constraining application of judgment based on common sense and conscience, that are sufficient for running the institution and are by far less expensive. When I was hired as full professor I got $32,000 salary, when President Singlentary was making $83,000. Compare this with the present situation. University was run by four top officers. Similarly at the Dean office the staff was 1/4 of the present. Now we have probably 13 vice presidents, [correction from Irina Voro: Actually, we have about 30 Vice-presidents. The exact count is promised to be delivered in response to my open records on Nov 24, but I am not holding my breath] Provost office and I am sure that the administration is a large part of the school budget. In my over 30 years career I dealt may be two times with Vice President for Research, before his function had the Dean for Graduate School who was also teaching as Professor of mathematics). I believe that at Frankfort there is a list of all State employees with their salaries (na public record list).
  Unfortunately all this is a national trend, and UK is not alone in it’s ways of running itself. Federal reporting requires laborious documentation as a condition of funding. Accreditation (ABET) became a nonsensical monster eating time of faculty. It is based on premise that every department must prove it’s innocence by answering hypothetical questions and possible criticism according to measures that are different that programs objective with all foolish terminology.
• Rift between Administration and the Faculty was never deeper than now. In the old days administrators were professors who returned to their faculty duties when the finished their terms in the office. They did not keep their salaries increased for administrative duties. They feel as members of the Faculty rather then ruling elite with higher income insured in perpetuity. Faculty morale was much higher and there was an air of collegiality.”