What makes me angry

I rarely get angry on the job. Other people’s and my own errors don’t bother me much; I find the institutional quirks amusing and generally acceptable; human conflict seems natural and sometime entertaining. However, this week I got really angry, to the point of fuming. What gets me angry are the large, blunt, and completely irrational policies that know not what they are doing. A bad policy is a like a blind elephant that crushes everything on its way, without really having any ill intentions; it’s just very powerful, and cannot see.

OK, Carolyn, our Assistant Dean and I have met about the incoming State Reauthorization reports. The first news is, the two state agencies, CDE and CDHE, ask for separate reports. They do not get along that well, so they were unable to come up with a unified way of reauthorizing teacher education programs. But CDE is also very proud of its standards, and it will never just switch to NCATE standards like some other state did. As if being a Colorado teacher is somehow dramatically different from being an Ohio or Maryland teacher. So, we’d have to align out curriculum with State standards and the NCATE standards. It gets better: there are four sets of standards the state of Colorado would like us to consider:
1. Endorsements Standards (Program standards in Educator Licensing Act of 1991, 8.0-12.0)
2. K-12 Model Content Standards (What kids in schools supposed to know)
3. Performance-Based Standards for Colorado Teachers
4. Colorado Reading Directorate Literacy Standards

You’d think they all are different, won’t you? Well, the K-12 are different because they are about content knowledge, but 1, 3, and 4 cover the same ground. For example, look at just one standard for elementary school teachers:

Endorsement standard: 8.02 (4) (b) effectively utilize assessment results and related data to plan for appropriate student instruction
Performance-Based Standards: 3.5 Use assessment data as a basis for standards-based instruction.
CRD Standard: Select, administer, and interpret progress-monitoring assessments to evaluate students’ progress toward an instructional goal and determine effectiveness of instruction / intervention and regularly articulate progress to students
ACEI: Candidates administer assessments (i.e., formal and informal) to inform and to make decisions about objectives and materials

Or, as a Russian saying goes, horseradish is no sweeter than radish. Those are the same ideas, some more snottily expressed than others. CRD language is the snottiest, but completely unoriginal.

The State wants us to develop matrices for each set of standards, showing which courses meet which standards. Then they want us to align all our syllabi to meet these largely overlapping standards. And, they want the syllabi, clearly marked with the standards. Imagine a course syllabus of, say an undergraduate Reading course for elementary teachers. It would have a list of course objectives, and each with a mysterious line like this: ESS 8.2 (4), PBS 3.5, CRD 8.1.1, ACEI 4.1. None of our students will ever ask what these things mean. None of the instructors will take the time and pain to explain this to students. No human being can teach a class while constantly thinking about meeting four sets of standards.

The State examiners will look at the matrix, then randomly pick a syllabus, find the code of the standard there – and voila, we are reauthorized. This somehow passes for evidence that we do a good job here at UNC. What makes me angry is that this work is completely useless, and does not help to improve the quality of our programs. The work is wasteful, because we will spend hours upon hours compiling matrices no one will even look at with any degree of seriousness. It makes me angry because we will do this instead of doing something really important, like talking about improvements and program development. But what makes me especially mad is that there does not seem to be any realistic way in fighting the madness. And mind you, ours is a small State where our Dean can pick up the phone and speak directly to most CDE and CDHE officials. It is not a huge faceless bureaucracy; all these people from CDE and CDHE have faces and are well-meaning and generally pleasant. They just have too much power and cannot see.

And it is madness. The very notion of multiple sets of standards is oxymoronic to the point of being simply moronic. You need a standard as long as there are no other standards; that is, roughly, an idea of a standard. If you have both a VHS and Beta, one should be on its way out, because they do essentially the same thing, so one must be better than the other. There should be just one short, clear set of standards, easily measurable by outcomes, not by inputs. And the State should be interested in evidence of whether our graduates can actually perform in the field, not whether we put the stupid codes in the syllabi. Don’t they realize it just does not change anything? Taxpayers should complain bitterly when the accountability process starts damaging the very work for which we are supposed to be accountable. This is wasteful and unethical. It is also horrendously inefficient, and does not serve the purpose. So, the public is interested in how well we spend the dwindling state support money? Well, let us show that our graduates teach well, but don’t pretend the few characters on syllabi mean anything other than our willingness to comply, comply, and comply. The State’s Education Deans for years have asked to find a way of identifying teachers by a college from which they graduated, so kids’ performance can be traced to their teacher’s college. This is too complex, apparently, and has not been done. Yet it is easy to ask for four matrices (multiplied by our dozens of programs) and hundreds of coded syllabi, because the regulators don’t have to prove they actually have read all of this stuff.

As a friend pointed out, this is done by a political party that argues for less government interference. Where are the good fiscal conservatives when you need them? So far, they seem to out-regulate the liberal regulators, at least where education is concerned. Why do they believe the whole economy has to be efficient and driven by the markets, while education must remain state-run and state-regulated to the extreme degree?

Picture a third grade teacher who tells her students: “And now, class, we are going to see how well you can add and subtract. Please write down when did you learn how to add, how did you learn it, how did you feel when you learned it, and finally, tell me if you did learn it and how well, OK? We will do this for the next two weeks. I will expect every one of you to write a book titled How I learned arithmetic” She never asks them to solve any problems, and they skip two weeks of math instruction. Well, this is what the State is, essentially doing with its teacher education programs. The regulators are unregulated, and only interested in maintaining appearances, with total disregard for efficiency or cost of compliance.

Who is going to regulate the regulators? Can we put limits on how much reporting and what kind of reporting the State can demand? Can the regulators be held accountable for following the best practices of regulation? Does anyone actually check their review process for integrity? Can someone ask them to prove that their specific way of authorization actually does ensure quality of programs? How about some validity check here? After all, the standards demand that any elementary classroom teacher understands the concepts of assessment validity. Yet the very people that demand it, do not seem to demonstrate any knowledge of the concept.

Can you tell I am still mad? I think we should sue the State for imposing unreasonable reporting expectations. Their case will withstand no court test, and perhaps a law suit can generate some public interest.

Gospriyomka and NCATE

When Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in 1985, one of the first things he did was establishing a highly centralized federal quality police. It was given an unpronounceable Russian abbreviation name Gospriyomka, which means simply “state inspection.” Its officers had the authority to inspect quality of any merchandise on the premised of any production unit, and deny its release. The Soviet economy had a horrendous production quality problem, and a significant portion of goods were shipped across the huge country only to be discarded as defective by on the receiving end. So, his idea was to stop the waste and at least save on shipping. Of course, it did not work, and could not work. Production stalled, because producers had to fix a lot of defective goods; consumers quickly realized that having bad quality goods was better than having no goods at all. This was one of the last convulsions of the planned economy. It became clear to most that the state has to abandon price control, privatize most of industries, and allow enterprises to compete, so the inefficient ones will go bankrupt and stop producing junk altogether. Of course, it is easier said than done. In the next fifteen years, the Russian economy experienced a tremendous collapse about twice as bad as the American Great Depression (in terms of real GDP contraction). Many of the problems still persists, although high oil prices bailed out the country out of the immediate danger of total economic collapse.

I remembered the Gospriyomka story as our NCATE and CRD (Colorado Reading Directorate) stories unfold. These are local skirmishes of the much larger accountability campaign raging across the educational field, and several other industries. No Child Left Behind is the major battle; ours are much smaller. I hope the analogy makes sense. First, both are well-intended at some level seem very reasonable. Indeed, who would be against improving quality of goods and services? Who would object the need for educational institutions to measure how well they teach and to be held accountable? The Soviet economy was in such an apparent trouble that any means of improvement were welcome. The same could be said about American education: its cost has been rising significantly over the last fifty years, while outcomes remain flat and lag behind other countries. Education is a sick man of American economy, so let’s do something, right? On a smaller scale, Colorado kids do not do that well on reading tests, so introducing some minimal standards to literacy instruction in teacher education cannot really hurt, can it? Considering it does not cost very much to the taxpayers, well the State should do something, or so the logic goes.

Gospriyomka failed not because it was a bad idea. It failed because it was a good idea within a bad economy. It’s like when your car is stuck in a deep mud, at some point it starts digging itself deeper and deeper. Ironically, the more powerful is your car, the deeper hole it digs for itself. If you’re traveling off-road, at some point you realize a simple boat is better than the most powerful 4-weel drive. This is exactly what happened to the Soviet economy: it did OK for a while, but it was simply not suited for consumer economy rigors. It can never produce good quality consumer goods (although it could produce a lot of tanks and missiles, some were not bad). The same thing is happening with American education: it was just fine when it was selective, and most people never graduated from high school. However, it is stuck deep in the mud when most of people now need to be at least somewhat educated. By the way, American education loses the global race not because it is exceptionally inept, but simply because it reached the mud pit first. Everyone else in the world is cheerfully speeding towards the same pit; they just don’t realize it yet.

I have thought long and hard about why NCATE reporting is such an arduous, elusive task. I considered my own ineptitude, other people’s ineptitude, and other theories; they all play small roles. However, there are deeper problems. Again, NCATE reporting is very reasonable in its intent. We do need to collect data and use it to improve our programs. NCATE have come a long way simplifying, streamlining, and making the process user-friendly. It’s the motivation that is all wrong. Our motivation is to comply and to be accredited, so we can accumulate kudos. In order to be effective, the culture of assessment should come from within, from genuine interest in improving the quality of our service. Two people may do exactly the same thing, but one does it much better than the other, because they operate in two different economies and hence have different motivation. Motivation is not a psychological phenomenon, not a personality trait; it is a function of the system.

If you are producing coffeemakers in America, you would be ultimately concerned with people buying or not buying them. From that act of consumption, the motivation to improve and innovate would percolate up to the production process. In the Soviet economy, the act of purchase had no bearings of your production; you were forced to improve and innovate by purely administrative measures: your boss would tell you to do so; yelling was the most common form of motivation. Your immediate concern would be to please the boss, not to sell the coffeemaker. No matter how good your workers and your bosses are, a Soviet coffeemaker would always be inferior to the Japanese or American, or Turkish one. Gorbachev introduced Gospriyomka, which meant that the bosses would apply even more administrative pressures, because they were pressured themselves. So you increase the overall administrative stress, but guess what? Your coffeemakers still suck AND there are fewer of them.

So, at UNC, the President and the Provost both believe NCATE looks good on our list of accrediting agencies. In other states it is not an option at all, and you do not get state accreditation unless NCATE accredits you. Carter Hall applies pressure to the Dean, who in turns applies pressure to me, who in turn will cajole, threaten, bribe, and shame people into doing their assessment bits. Paradoxically, because of all of this flurry of activity, we do not really have the time or the reason to actually sit down, and talk about how we are doing and what data we really need to do a good job. We also don’t really know how good a job we are doing, because we don’t really believe in our own NCATE reports. We produce them to get accredited.

Of course, it is not NCATE’s fault entirely. There is also no meaningful market or informed consumers to apply different kinds of pressure. This is where governments should really step in and create an infrastructure for educational markets. All they need to do is two things:
1. Make it illegal to ask which college you went to in all job applications, so colleges stop selling their brand names, and will start selling actual quality of service.
2. Force all colleges to disclose publicly the educational value added, using the same simple formula (pre-test/post-test ratio by major and licensure area). This could be tricky, but doable, and this is where specialized professional organizations could come up with measurement tools.

If that happens, consumers will quickly figure out what quality they want for what amount of money, and education will cease to be a positional good.

Time density

Time is not like a constant stream; it varies greatly in density. Today, for example, Jenni, Jeanie, Eugene and I were able to formulate a long-term strategy for our off-campus offerings, and solved (imperfectly) some short-term scheduling problems. Besides, there were probably four or five other significant problems that I was able to figure out for myself, again, with great help from other people. So, it was a very-very busy and a very productive Friday; and example of very dense time. Yet some other days feel like walking through deep mud of vaguely unpleasant, irresolvable, and needless problems. The time is thin, watery, and slow. It is filled with people who misunderstand each other, with lost memos and forgotten commitments, with small errors that go unnoticed and cause large problems, with tasks no one wants to do, and no one is sure are needed at all.

How is that possible? How can we work so well together one day, and then things just sort of disintegrate? The machinery of social interaction clearly has different modes, some a lot more efficient and pleasant than others. One day we are capable of very effective communication, lucid thinking, and great ideas. The next day wounded egos, sheer incompetence and ill will take over, and nothing of substance gets done, or things slip backwards. This is not just my personal feelings; I don’t think anyone would seriously dispute the existence of “good days” and “bad days.” The difference between the two can be described as a difference between dense and thin time. Of course, this is oversimplification, because different time density can occur on the same day and be strangely mixed.

But why is that? Why does social time have different quality? My old Honda runs about the same every day. Its performance slightly deteriorates with time, but it won’t run much better, unless I put a new engine in it. If it breaks, you can fix a part, so it works better for a while, but you can always explain why. If human organizations were cars, they would run great for a while, then suddenly stumble and crawl without any visible reasons, then fix themselves and race better than new, then fall apart again. They would never completely stop, but you can’t effectively steer them either. That is not to say that driving skills are unimportant; they certainly are. Different managers will get the same organizations to perform better or worse, on average. However, no one can predict how fast each individual stretch of highway will be covered. Managing an organization is nothing like engineering. We do not really know how things work; we just tinker with these marvelous machines, hoping to get them to work.

I am fortunate too work with very smart, very good-natured people all around me. But groups are very different indeed from individuals. Several good people together may both tremendously increase each other’s creative potential, and the same group may completely cancel each other’s strength and become stuck. Paradoxically, the same group can alternate between the two modes in the course of a week or a day. What we don’t really know is how to increase a likelihood of the former outcome, and decrease that of the latter. Problems that go back many years, and seem intractable, will suddenly resolve themselves without much of an effort. Others that seem insignificant and easily solvable will become monsters that take a lot of time and energy to manage.

So here is my theory. The organizations remain the same, but they encounter different kinds of time. It’s like a vehicle that travels sometimes through the air, sometimes through water, and sometimes in airless space. Because the medium is different, they perform differently, depending on what is the ether through which they move. This week for me, was extremely rich in time textures. A lot of things went right, many things went wrong, and some things went nowhere at all. I know it sounds wacky. That was the intent.

The clouds glide by

When I get too busy, I slow down. This is probably a way of calming myself, and fighting anxiety. I will either read a book that has nothing to do with my work, or will try to figure out some quirky computer thing, or do something else totally irrelevant and low-priority. It really does help, perhaps because a different part of the brain is engaged. After such a exercise for a couple of hours, some creative solution inevitably come, new energies come from somewhere, and life generally looks a lot better. So today is such a day. I have been shamelessly wasting my work time on trying to translate Joseph Brodsky’s poem “The clouds glide by”; also listen to a song written by Elena Frolova on Brodsky’s lyrics.

Now, there is probably a better translation somewhere; and I probably have butchered English poetic expression horribly. Sorry, I still don’t know that well how this language sounds. One rule of a good translation: people can translate into their native language, but never from it. It is also a fall poem, and is out of season. But guess what? I don’t care, this is something I need to do to stay sane, OK? So there. Eugene (he is our Dean), if you are reading this and want to mark this day as vacation, go ahead. I am taking a day off (although I am sitting in my office and answering the goddamned e-mails).
----------------------------------------------------
The clouds glide by

Can you really hear when children sing in the grove,
those voices ringing, ringing over the dusky trees,
vanishing, gradually disappearing into the dusky air,
the heavens vanishing into the dusky air?

Among the trees, the shiny threads of rain intertwine
and quietly hum, quietly hum in the bleached grass blades.
Can you hear the voices, see red combs in children’s hair,
see the small palms raised to touch the wet leaves?

“The clouds glide; they glide by and vanish…”
children sing and sing in the bustle of black branches,
through leaves and blurred tree trunks, the voices rise
in the dusky air, one cannot hug and hold voices back.

Only wet leaves ride the wind, hurry back to groves,
flying away, as if to answer a secret autumn call.
“The clouds glide by…,” children sing in the darkness,
from the grass to treetops, nothing but pulsing, trembling voices.

The clouds glide by, your life glides by, glides by,
Learn to live with it, this death we carry within,
Among the black branches, clouds with voices, loving…
“The clouds glide by…, ”children sing about it all.

Can you really hear, when children sing in the grove,
the shiny threads of rain intertwine, voices ring,
near narrow treetops, in the new dusk, for an instant
do you see heavens fading again, yes, fading again?

The clouds glide by, they glide over the grove.
Water falls somewhere; time to cry and to sing by autumn fences,
to weep and weep, to look upwards, to be a child in the night,
to look upwards, just to weep and to sing, and to know no loss.

Water falls somewhere, along the autumn fences and vague tree rows,
Singing in the new dusk, just to weep and to sing, just to rake leaves.
Something higher than us. Something higher than us glides by and fades,
just to weep and to sing, just to weep and to sing, just to live.

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Thanks to Bob King for providing great feedback. OK, I cheated, and rewrote based on his input.

This is hard. Russian has longer words, so it can use the multi-syllable words to create this peculiar chanting rhythm. In Brodsky’s original, it’s Anapest, the meter where two weak syllables are followed by a strong one. In English, the anapest is not only very difficult to reproduce, but it also sounds silly. Also, Russian has grammatical cases, and a free word order, while English depends on words order to express grammatical meaning. So, the first line in Russian reads, literally “Hear if, hear if you in the grove, children’s’ singing?” Because English word order is relatively locked, it takes a lot more skill to provide a variety of patterns; a skill I clearly lack. Also, because of its long poetic history, English has run out of good simple rhymes a long time ago; that is why rhyming sounds so silly. Russian, on the other hand, has an inexhaustible rhyming bank, because words can be changed with various particles. Although English has a much bigger number of available roots, Russian can produce many more word forms from a smaller number of roots.

Russian does not have articles, so children, groves, fences, and other objects Brodsky has in mind, are all somewhere between “the” and “a”, somewhere vaguely undefined. You would never know if he is there physically present listening to specific children singing or he has some abstract children in mind. The same thing can be said about tenses: Russian does not make a distinction between continuous present and simple present tense. So, you cannot know a difference between “is singing” and “sings,” unless the speaker intentionally uses another way of specifying this distinction. And of course, poets like to keep it vague. Much of Russian poetic expression is derived from this grammatical vagueness of the language itself. English is a lot more specific about the definite/indefinite status of its nouns, and is enormously more precise about the timing of any event. Yet English poets seems to be much more concerned about the sound, about alliterations, internal rhyming, half-rhyming, etc.

As a more or less bilingual person, I always struggle with the limits and possibilities that both languages have. Certain things cannot be said economically in one of the languages. I don’t believe in the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis. All people think alike, and anything can be said in any language. However, certain things just sound much better in one language than in another. Here is a couple of examples: try to speak and write for a week without ever using such common words as “issue”, “sophisticated,” “challenge” or “proficient.” Yet all these words are lacking in Russian language. I mean, you can express the same ideas, using different words in different context, but just try avoiding use of these four words. I can give a long list of reverse examples, where a handy Russian word just does not have an equivalent in English.

I have learned to tolerate these linguistic limits, and to work around them. It strikes me that not only in speaking, but in the rest of out lives, we operate within a set of certain limits. Monolingual people often fail to perceive the profound weirdness of their only language, because they have nothing to compare it to. Similarly, people who used to working and living in similar cultural and social systems fail to recognize the implied limits of those systems, but also the unique opportunities the systems provide. Moreover, when exposed to another language or culture, many see difference in terms of hierarchy, and just have to say which one is better and which is worse. How do we get to understand difference without pecking order? One useful exercise is to translate a poem. Another is to see what can and what cannot be done in YOUR organization or culture, and what can and cannot be done if things were otherwise.

The ethics of rumoring

Rumor is essential to any community’s life. It’s the oldest and one of the most efficient means of group communication. People select the most important information and pass it on to the next person. The information spreads really quickly, because the channels of communication are horizontal, and because the information is selected, arranged, and made more interesting with each transmission. Rumors allow for both anonymous and named sources; they also serve as an instant, continuous measure of public opinion and provide valuable feedback to the group’s leadership.

Of course, information also is changed with each transmission. Each transmitter has his or her own agenda, and will put a spin on every message to achieve certain goals. So, the originator of the message does not control the message, like in the mass media. Rather, the message is controlled by multiple players; it mutates again and again. This fluidity is what makes them so appealing to people: everyone gets to be not only a passive recipient, but an empowered creator of the message. While no one likes to find out about a rumor where one figures in a bad light, we must admit that the limitations of the medium are the other side of its strengths. Rumors are also conveniently deniable, because no written record of them exists. It is also impossible to trace the rout of the rumor, so the authorship of alterations is always unclear; they have certain authority without having a real author. It is a profoundly democratic and profoundly unfair medium of communication.

People who argue against any rumors are sadly mistaken about the nature of the informational space. Information is always contested, and messages are distorted in every media; rumors are not exception in this regard. Mass media all do and have always done the same thing. It’s the multiplicity of media that makes the consumer of information free to chose which spin to believe, and how to play all messages against each other in the elusive search for truth. So, if you do not like a rumor, start another one, or counteract it through other kinds of media.

In my experience working in two cultures, I have noticed that Russians are a lot more proficient in rumors than Americans. Because of the decades of alienation from state-controlled mass media, and lack of informational technologies, Russians have developed very efficient horizontal channels of communication. When I worked with Russian groups, all I needed to do is to say to one person: let’s get together tomorrow morning at 9. The whole group will show up, because every member feels an obligation to convey any relevant information to everyone else. In the same way, opinions, stories and explanations are easily spread. Americans will usually make a distinction between official information on a bulletin board and just something someone has said. Their trust for official channels is much greater; they are more likely to believe the official story and ignore the rumors. This is not to say that Americans do not enjoy a good rumor, especially if the official channels of information are suspect for one reason or another. The rumor mills kick in overdrive really fast in the situation of conflict or tension, especially involving authority.

There is still the ethics of rumor. Like any other human activity, rumor mills cannot operate without some norms. For example, a colleague came in this morning to confront me about something I have said about her to someone else. Of course, the quote was wrong and the intent of the statement was reversed. While I wanted to comfort and protect the person's dignity, the message came back as mean and degrading. There were at least two information transmissions here: one between myself and the third person, and another between the third person and the colleague. In both there could have been simple misunderstanding of the content of the message, or intentional change, or some of both. Because rumors are so powerful, and so secretive, most people are actually careful to guard the most affected and vulnerable people against potentially hurtful rumors. For example, you don’t just come to someone and say: “hey, I’ve heard your marriage is falling apart.” Or, “Say, I’ve heard you’ve got cancer.” This is what kids do in junior high, where they just learn the art and the ethics of rumor. Adults who care about each other create protective informational bubbles around each other, and will try to avoid hurting their neighbor.

I know that certain personal tidbits of information about me are circulating among my colleagues, but I also trust they won’t just bring it up in a conversation with me, unless someone is trying to manipulate or fight me. I have made some comments about my colleagues that I need to trust will not get to them. Those comments were made to solve a particular problem, or to vent, or to help someone to find a way of working together. The assumption is such comments are confidential. Confidential means the comments may be shared with most people, but not with the person in question. Rumors rely on trust and sensitivity. Taken out of context of a conversation, most things we say about each other can be damaging.

Another good rule is about crossing the media boundaries. A message that came through as a rumor cannot be directly converted into a mass e-mail confronting the messenger. Of course, if you’re in a middle of a war and there is no real community, those rules are ignored. However, in an everyday normal course of events, this is a violation of the ethics of rumoring. If you received a rumor damaging to your reputation, your first obligation is to trace and confront the source in person, just to find out of the message is correct. This is simply to acknowledge the nature of rumor: it is not designed to convey accurate information, but to tell a story. Any sort of mass media message (including e-mails) requires a fact-finding mission first. The gap between two media cannot be crossed arbitrarily and at will, because each medium follows different rules and assumptions. This is why no real journalist will publish something not confirmed on record. They all know a lot more than they can publish, precisely because rumors are a very different kind of media. It took hundreds of years for journalists to develop this ethics; in the age of electronic media everyone has to learn the same.

Rumors also cannot be used in important, formal decisions. Either good or bad things we hear about someone cannot be used to evaluate one’s performance, for example. For decisions like that, we need hard evidence produced with some rigor. So, one who engages in rumors should have an ability to ignore information gathered by them. They provide much needed background knowledge, but not the foreground knowledge. No one can be hired, fired, or evaluated on the basis of rumors.

Some people simply refuse to discuss someone in one’s absence, and refuse to engage in any kinds of rumor. I think this is unwise and too extreme. Getting along in complex groups is all but impossible without these sorts of discussions. How do you get along with someone difficult if you can never discuss your problem with any third person? It is also helpful that some of these discussions leak into the informational space, so their results can be shared. Rumors can be both healthy and damaging, but they can never go away. Therefore, we just need to work on ethics of rumors to minimize damage and maximize benefits.

Time Management and Sorry

This is going to be short one. I am really behind on many things, which makes me think about my poor time management skills. Or, rather, about what the heck is time management.

The truth is, people like me do not really have a lot of control over what needs to be done and when it needs to be done. Things just come our way out of the left field, at whatever rate they please. What time management means, is, really, a strategy of prioritizing. Then it is a matter of putting some things off, while doing other things really quickly, so we can concentrate on things that have to be done no matter what. One cannot do all things equally well and in a timely manner. However, people on the other end of all these tasks may not share my sense of priorities, so they rightfully perceive some of my actions they really are concerned about as shoddy work, or lack of time management skills. And they are right, of course. I just made another big scheduling error, and keep putting off things like grading my student papers, filing PES taxes, developing out new database, etc., etc. Of course, there are things I was able to do more or less on time, and more or less competently. Yet no one sees everything I do, but everyone around me sees a little thing, and it just possible that the only thing they see is the one I had to postpone or do a quick and dirty job on.

I am not at all complaining about lack of time. That is the silliest complaint; there is no such a thing as little time or being too busy. It’s all about deciding what to do and what not to do. The problem that I have not resolved is how to communicate to people in a respectful and meaningful way these priority decisions. How do you tell someone: sorry, your question will have to wait? Or how do I explain people that I did a poor job on something because it was not really a crucial task for me at the moment?

Again, this is not whining, just a reflection on a systemic problem of an organization that has a lot of centralized decisions and processes. Management books, of course, recommend delegating responsibilities, but it does not always work, simply because of the human resources limits. No matter ho much I want my work to be transparent, how do I really explain the interplay of pressures and priorities to everyone? There is a chance, everyone won’t be that interested anyway. And then, how much time do I want to invest in communications? Perhaps I should put a webcam looking into my monitor, so people can watch what I do all day? Perhaps they can help me better if they really do know?

Anyway, it’s been a tough week, and I was hitting some walls and spinning some wheels. If I screwed up your particular part of the puzzle, I am sorry.

The Lake Wobegon Effect

Here is what Wikipedia says:

The Lake Wobegon effect is the human tendency to overestimate one's achievements and capabilities in relation to others. It is named for the fictional town of Lake Wobegon from the radio series A Prairie Home Companion, where, according to Garrison Keillor, "all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average". In a similar way, a large majority of people claim to be above average; this phenomenon has been observed among drivers, CEOs, stock market analysts, college students, police officers and state education officials, among others. Experiments and surveys have repeatedly shown that most people believe that they possess attributes that are better or more desirable than average.

While my wonderful colleagues were enjoying the Spring break, I spent last three days solid looking through their peer evaluations for annual review. Thanks God, UNC does it together with merit review; my previous institution thought it necessary to do two separate reviews. At any rate, t is extremely slow, frustrating, and taxing work, perhaps the lest favorite of my duties.

The taxing part does not bother me. It is the relational tensions that get me. Let’s face it, no one likes to be evaluated by others, unless the results are congratulatory. No one really likes to evaluate others. As a new School Director, what stake do I have in being harsh on my colleagues? None, for I neither want to make enemies within this actually very friendly group, nor will such harshness make any difference in terms of improving the School. So, everyone in my School is above average, and I just go along with that, with minor variations. I am trying to do my best to make this process constructive, and include some recommendations, but where the rubber meets the road, that is in actual numbers, I am not doing anything drastic.

However, this institution’s long-term survival depends, in part, on its ability to raise its standing, to attract good faculty and good students, and generally to get better. To do this, we need to produce higher quality scholarship, and generally move closer to institutions with a stronger research mission.

The Lake Wobegon practices are clearly against the long-term interests of the whole, although they maybe in the short-term interest of many individual members. How do you crack this paradox? It is certainly not unique to higher education, but more or less describes the main tension of the entire social life. That’s the classic tragedy of the commons. Do I step forward and force everyone to do what’s best for them? Not likely. First, because I do not have nearly enough power to do so, and second, you cannot force people into a paradise against their will. If the expectations are to be raised and more efficiently enforced, this has to be a collective decision, one supported by the majority, if not by all.

Here is how Lake Wobegon effect works in the Academe. First, you need to design evaluation criteria that are…. Let’s just say, flexible. If you lay out, oh, seven criteria, but do not say how many of them have to be met, one can think of a number between one and six. Next, do not be critical towards your colleagues, and nod-nod, wink-wink to their exaggerated claims. Let’s pretend a small local journal run by our friends is an international peer-refereed publication. Let’s list all the non-existent committees, oh, so what? Who is getting hurt here? And finally, convince yourself that because the monetary gains from merit pay are so small, the fight is not worth fighting. Live and let live.

One problem with the Lake Wobegon is that it creates disincentive for highly productive people to produce. Again, from the point of view of the whole group, it is a bad system, because the highly productive people are valuable asset of the group; they generate most publicity, help attract other productive folks, and generate incomes that can be shared by everyone. Of course, they also create envy and are hard to control. How do we learn to accept inequality when it benefits us all?

I actually agree with the merit pay argument. Merit pay does not work when many states are financially starving their state universities AND blaming them for being liberal, or for not teaching the right stuff. If we are to get more rigorous, this has to be done for reasons other than merit pay. So we are now up to two unlikely suggestions: raising the bar needs to be done collectively, and not for any monetary considerations. Can we do it?

The “B” Word, or How do you know what you say you know

I always encourage my students to use the “B” word in their speaking and writing – “Because.” When you act as a consumer or as a voter, your opinion is very important, and you don’t have to explain it to anyone. However, when you act as a member of a professional community, no one gives a rat’s ass about your opinion, unless you can actually show that it is based on something. You can provide empirical evidence, or a good argument, but you need to have the “B” word there somewhere. Your opinion or belief means nothing if you cannot convince other people that it is somehow better than other people’s opinions. And not all kinds of convincing will do; only those the community accepted as reasonable.

That’s my usual routine speech. What I am not telling my students is that their professors do not necessarily do this in their own professional community. Many university conversations, especially those involving difference in opinion, very often degenerate into proving one’s point by insinuating that one has the authority over the matter and thus one’s opinion should not be questioned. The implication is always “trust me, I know.” Well, another mantra for my students is this: “Don’t trust anyone without questioning; especially don’t trust me.”

How do you know what you know? And don’t tell me you know this with your guts, or this is your philosophy, or that you had this long experience in the field. As a philosopher, I am especially offended by statements of beliefs without any justifications. If you think a naked belief is philosophy, you’re sadly mistaken. Sorry, I don’t buy crap, and I won’t buy it from you, whoever you are. Now, people also imply that if you do not believe their opinion, you somehow question their truthfulness or integrity or their qualifications. This is a subtle psychological manipulation, a form of relational violence. OK, I like and respect you, but why should I believe every opinion you might have? And if I don’t believe what you just said to be true, why should it affect our personal relationships? After all, we deal with professional matters, and must obey the rules of rational professional discourse.

For example, some people can call a certain position on program revision a deep commitment to the values of liberal education, while others call the same position a cynical turf grab. Who is to say who is right? Just renaming the position does not change its substance. Or, some say cooperating teachers won’t like this or that configuration of our field experience, while others say they won’t mind. Who is right? Can you ever know every teacher’s preference? Can we base our decision making on gut feelings, or even on conversations with a few teachers? How representative was your sample? How did you frame the question? Was your instrument valid and reliable; are your findings generalizable? As researchers, we all know how important these questions are. As members of this community, we routinely ignore them. All in exchange for feeling good and righteous, for that fleeting sense of having authority no one dares to question. It’s like this: “I just gave you the shakiest piece of data, but if you disagree, you’re calling me a liar.”

In a professional community, we would need to agree ahead of time what sort of evidence and arguments will prove one side or the other correct. We would marshal logic, research, and other good evidence to support each position. We would openly agree that good data is missing (which is true for %90 percent of decisions we make), and figure out the likely outcomes of decisions given the imperfect body of evidence and reasoning. Instead, people dress their frivolous opinions contaminated by personal interest in colorful garb of rhetoric. It’s all about concern for students; it’s what best for them. It’s because of the state or national standards. Oh, this is what any educator with any values would have supported. It’s for justice. But how do you know what you know? How do you think this is best for students? All these questions are rarely asked, because people get caught in the rhetorical battles, and respond to rhetoric with more sophisticated rhetoric. Hence battles without substance, where egos have overshadowed the issues and concessions are not an option. I like to cut to the chase and lay it out on the table, which is not always wise, and gets me in trouble sometimes. But I’ll take the risk, because there is nothing more torturous than a conversation where real motives are never discloused.

When entering a dialogue, one has to allow a possibility of changing one’s mind. If certain beliefs are too deep seated, or too dear to you, an honorable thing would be to disclose that in advance, apologize and say it is non-negotiable. That would save everyone time and effort wasted on conversations with predefined outcomes. The very act of entering a conversation implicitly states willingness to change one’s mind; otherwise it is deceitful and dishonest. If everyone know there are irreconcilable differences, then it is just easier to see who has more power, and whose opinion shall prevail without the empty dialogues leading to nowhere. However, once a conversation begins, all participants must have a shared sense about what sort of reasons will be acknowledged as valid, what sorts of arguments all parties accept as convincing.

Notes from AACTE, or American Absurdities

I was at AACTE conference over the last weekend. One of the most intriguing general sessions was a critic of neo-liberal approach to education. The term is confusing, because it refers to free-market approaches, and such thinkers as Milton Friedman , the author of voucher proposal. In American political culture, that would be called conservative, but because we deal with a world-wide phenomena, it is referred to as neo-liberalism. So, it was a crowd of liberals bashing neo-liberalism, if that makes any sense. All presenters were equally frightened of the horrors market would cause in education.

At the very end, I raised my hand and asked the panel, why there are no neo-liberals among them; why not invite someone who represents the opposing point of view? The panelists were literally at loss to respond, because it might not even occur to them that such a thing is possible. That is deeply disturbing to me. Whatever one’s political beliefs, why not engage the opponent? AACTE represents an entire profession, so how can it be so mindlessly partisan? Why through all the chips on a particular wing of one political party? Is it a surprise no one is taking AACTE and the whole profession seriously in the Congress? We complain that no one is listening to us, but does it occur to anyone that this might be because we are not saying much of substance? Instead of developing balanced, thoughtful positions, the profession seems to relish its old-school liberal roots over the practicalities of the 21 century educational policy. Hence the paucity of new ideas coming from within our profession. We are good at criticizing everything, but not that good at finding any solutions.

Once again, I found myself at a very awkward place, not quite fitting in natural political divisions of this country. My social beliefs are very liberal; all my friends are liberal, and I share the liberals concern for justice and multiculturalism. However, it is very difficult for me to imagine that direct government intervention through taxation will solve any of the issues the liberals are worried about. I have a deep suspicion of unions and other monopolies. So, does it make me a conservative? I have a lot of criticism toward the voucher initiatives; they are not working and are not going to work. But is more of the same an answer to public education’s persistent problems? Not really; we do need to move towards more market-like self-regulating mechanisms.

I find composition of both main American parties absurd and unprincipled. What do religious conservatives have in common with free-market libertarians? What do prolife activists have in common with the right-to-bear-arms crowd? Why do they all cling to the unholy alliance called the Republican Party? Similarly, what do gay rights activists have in common with old-school trade unions? Why environmentalists go along with pro-choice movement? What do urban poor gain from alliance with Hollywood? The Democratic Party is just an absurd a collection of people who have very little in common. Both parties are defined in opposition to each other, and this is the whole reason for their existence.

Logically, if you are against government intervention in board rooms, you should also be against such intervention in people’s bedrooms. If you are for preserving the traditional cultural norms, you should also be for preserving traditional natural environment. If you’re against business monopolies, you should probably be against worker’s monopolies.

Public intellectuals who try to remain rational and coherent in their beliefs have a hard time fitting in. What was heartening to see is that Diane Ravitch received a standing ovation at AACTE, even though she admitted being surprised by it. She does not fit into one camp or another, mainly because her own core beliefs are consistent and independent of political parties. Not all is lost, and perhaps we can get from under the spell of traditional American politics; that is where real possibilities of progress are. And this is not limited to teacher education.

On Scholarly Productivity

Some people find joy and satisfaction in research and writing, while others have found happiness in other things. I don’t believe tenured lives should be exactly the same. Most universities developed systems of subtle humiliations and pressures to induce more and more scholarship from both tenure-track and tenured faculty. I don’t find these systems sensible or productive. One of the major unintended consequences is the proliferation of shoddy scholarship. Publishing for the sake of publishing encourages new journals and publishing houses to pop up every minute, each with slightly lower standards than the previous one. Drastic reduction in publishing costs made this even worse. In today’s academia, there are more writers than readers.

It is also clear to me that most people will only have one or two good ideas in their life time, if that many. It is sad to observe a publishing machine consisting of many poor graduate students and one academic superstar; a machine that keeps churning out the same book under different titles every year. I have a great respect for textbook authors, who constantly revise and improve their very valuable texts, but little respect for so-called prolific writers who have ran out of steam decades ago, and still pretend to be original. On a personal note, I believe I have one more book in me, but that’s about it. Who knows, maybe another idea will come to my mind later, and then I will write something else. Of course, some people are genuinely prolific, and keep coming up with new ideas throughout their lives. Those are the lucky ones, and they are rather exceptional.

However, scholarship is essential to the whole business of being a university. If we only consume but do not produce any new knowledge, how do we justify our ability to teach students? Where does our claim to authority reside, if not in the ability to produce knowledge? This is especially important in graduate education, where we are supposed to teach our students to generate knowledge and original thought, and teach it by example. So, universities are right to demand evidence of continuing scholarship from its faculty. Or, rather faculty are right to demand it from each other.

How do we reconcile this paradox? On one hand, the publishing game as a whole does not seem to be very productive. On the other hand, scholarship seems to be as central to university’s mission as teaching. A complicating factor, but also a possible solution is the concern for fairness and equity. Since the medieval times, scholarly communities had a specific ethos: they are places where excellence is valued, and yet they are self-governed bodies of equals. Fairness is important on both counts. So when a professor A teaches six classes and publishes two or three refereed papers a year, but professor B publishes nothing, and teaches the same six classes, we have an equity problem. It’s just not fair. The most honorable solution would be for the non-publishing colleague to pick up another class and teach it, or take on a large service project and complete it for the benefit of the whole group.

As I was trying to show, there is nothing embarrassing or shameful about quitting the publishing game. It is just an acknowledgement of a certain course one’s life has taken. For example, I am a full-time administrator, so no one will accuse of me of slacking off if my publication record slows down, right? The assumption is that I am busy and somewhat useful to the university in another capacity. The same logic of respect should be applied to people who decide to concentrate on teaching, and take a break from scholarship. If someone wants to claim 80% of one’s workload as teaching, and 0% as scholarship, such a choice should be greatly respected and appreciated by others. After all, teaching 30 students might do more good than writing another paper. It might not, but it might.

Again, it is not as much an issue of employee’s contractual obligations, or an issue of money. Rather, this is an issue of simple equity. Every faculty should apply about the same effort, but perhaps to different things. And as long as those things are not self-serving, but useful to the institution, others should accept and respect various choices. Active scholarship is good for the institution, but so is teaching and some service. In general, people are most productive when they do what they like to be doing. A university will gain from promoting a culture of diverse interest and equitable but diverse workloads. Of course, such a culture will demand some level of trust that others will chose to carry their fair share of work, and some administrative and peer controls to make sure it happens.

To most people, fairness is more important than money or the amount of work. Whatever the grumblings, our jobs are some of the best ones around. Feelings get hurt when people perceive being treated unfairly by either administration, or by colleagues. Feelings get hurt when someone is obviously taking it easy, while I have to work hard for the same compensation.

Here I am, always arguing for incentives, entrepreneurship, and against egalitarianism. Yet fairness is not the same thing as egalitarianism. A fair person is OK with someone else doing better in life, as long as those better off truly deserve it. A fair person does not experience much envy, because she has her dignity and is given respect. A fair person wishes that no one will poor; he does not wish that no one will be rich.

Memories and time

The deepest, most carnal memories come uninvited. Triggered by a particular sensation, such a memory pierces your entire life like a threaded needle. It holds together the loose stuff of accidents and self-justifications we call life. Those ephemeral threads are the only connecting tissue; they allow us to claim kinship with younger strangers that used to occupy our younger bodies. The sound of your mother’s voice, the smell of the small creek in your hometown, the breeze playing with your hair; things like that.

One of mine is walking on a snowy path at night, frigid, snowy night. It will inevitably bring a strange feeling of acute loneliness, as if I am the only one left on this inhospitable, cold, vast planet. At the same time, I am elated and happy to see something beautiful, and just in the right place. Squeaks of snow. Pure paucity of colors. Short wind blows that make me gasp for air, exactly like fish out of the water. The strange depth of horizon, more imagined than real. Walking to school in early Siberian morning; the scratchy scarf against my cheeks; too tight, Mama, too tight, it is not that cold.

I can live in all times of my life at once; with no story, no biographic list of selected events, and nothing to explain. It is simply a different sort of presence in my own life outside of time. What is time, anyway? The biographic time of life span? Isn’t it just a convenient way of telling stories? Isn’t it simply a way of separating events into important and unimportant, and then editing them together in sequence? Time is arbitrary and constraining; time is the dictator whose power is as strong as our willingness to obey. In a very real, bodily sense, my trip to the second grade classroom just happened again several days ago, when it was cold in Colorado. It did happen again, you see.

Not only the past, but future is also already here. I remember the distinct feeling of a complete, transparent life already lived when I was just a small child. You might think I had no idea what is going to happen to me, but I know better. All my life was given to me as a preview. I cannot tell the events that will occur, but I know what will happen; those are two very different things.

The straight, artificial biographical time dominates our lives. We deem events to be important or trivial depending on how well they fit into the novel about ourselves we keep writing. This makes sense, because the biographic time is easy to communicate to others. Yet I just communicated my walk, and most people can relate to something like this just as well. Moreover, there is a serious problem with biographic time: it skews the importance of events in one direction. Jobs, publications, awards, evaluations, promotions, successes and failures, rites of passage, birth, death – all of these take too much of importance, and this is just not good. The events of biographical time do not always go well; we do not always have any control over them. This is where a relatively small unpleasant thing begins to eat at our sense of identity. It just does not fit well into the carefully constructed auto-biographical narrative. This should not be happening to me; and if it is, well, it is because other people are evil or I am worthless (Those two thoughts, by the way, are really identical in their origin). We torture each other because we want others to behave like characters in our own novels. But the characters to do not cooperate and stories do not come out as planned.

If human life is a novel, it has to be richer than the narrative. A simple recital of events makes a very boring reading indeed. Narrative should be punctuated with glimpses from other kinds of time, where the insignificant, dismissed, and forgotten bits of human life suddenly come back in full force and claim their unexpected importance. To live happy, full lives, we should always be on a lookout for the carnal memories I began with. We must constantly search for sensations, parallels, strange thoughts and feelings that take us out of the vicious run of the biographic time. We all are still little children, our parents and grandparents are all alive and well; we all are already dead and forgotten; we can have our first love experienced again and again. It is the same day as yesterday, and all e-mails in your mailbox you have read already. You are just here, and it is the time that keeps running in circles around you. So, stand still, and let the piercing memories and premonitions do their quiet job of threading your life together.

Symbolic violence

Pierre Bourdieu has introduced a fascinating notion of symbolic violence, “the violence which extorts submission, which is not perceived as such, based on ‘collective expectations’ or socially inculcated beliefs” (Practical Reason, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998, 103.). This is when someone reminds you of your duty, or exhorts compassion, or uses value-laden language to make his or her point. For example, someone says to you: “should we not have the interest of the student in mind, not our own personal interest?” This evokes the symbolism of altruism versus selfishness dichotomy. What are you going to say in response? No, we should really protect our own selfish interest and forget about students? Even if that is what you think, the power of social norms make such a statement forbidden, especially in a public setting. Moreover, there are certain things you won’t even allow yourself to think; certain feelings you experience but suppress; which is where Freud and Bourdieu nicely overlap. Everyone has got to love children. No one ever profess dislike for children. Of course, education is important; you can’t say that education is not really that important without losing respect or credibility. Teachers are supposed to love all children, care about them, and accept lower pay gratefully. We are not in it for the moneys, etc., ad nauseam.

We all do this to each other, in small or big ways. “Do you love me? How do I look?” Hmm, let’s see what the right answers are. Or, in another situation: “Students should take responsibility for their own learning.” Or, “This if for your own good.” Much of what appears to be a dialogue is, in fact, thinly veiled power struggle, often using symbolic violence. One has got to be grateful, to return favors, to respect one’s parents, to love one’s own and other people’s kids. In addition, teachers and other educators must appear selfless, not greedy, etc. We all use this; this is just a matter of normal life. This is how we make other people do something they otherwise wouldn’t. Some people are better than others at detecting symbolic violence directed toward them, and some can defend themselves with either unmasking it, or trumping it with another form of symbolic violence. But we all do it.

I recognize symbolic violence as a part of regular social life, but question its efficiency in administrative matters. For example, someone says: “the university is in big financial trouble; we all need to make sacrifice. Let’s find our way out collaboratively.” What’s not to like? Sacrifice, collaboration, solidarity; all wonderful things; one would appear and perhaps feel guilty not collaborating. I’d rather have a direct order: cut your expenses 4%, or better, raise your revenues 4%. Or, something like this: “You are a campus leader; you are a part of this decision making process; you get to decide.” Great, I am a part of the group, therefore I must play along and say what I am expected to say. People want to be helpful, and don’t want to be confrontational. The most interesting part of symbolic violence is that it does not feel like violence; rather it feels like a free choice, except it is not really free.

The symbolic violence is one of many power mechanisms of administrative control institutions use. It works very well in cases of emergency. For example, to fight a war, massive symbolic coercion is needed to mobilize people. If you have one massive financial crisis, it works to get everyone to sacrifice. However, it does not work well as a routine administrative tool. If there is a conflict between self-interest and socially approved norms, self-interest often wins over time. Even if it does not win, people accumulate resentment and feel exploited and demoralized. Sometimes, they don’t even understand why, but in most cases, they do. In the short run, institutional symbolic violence saves resources, because it helps extort more labor for less money. However, in the long run, it backfires, because the quality of labor declines.

I am not saying that only self-serving behavior should be encouraged, or that people should care only about monetary rewards. That’s not the case at all. However, I always like to be clear if I am being to asked to volunteer and to help, or I am expected to do something as a part of my job, or someone will compensate me for doing extra work. If this is a plea for help, I will or will not do it, but most importantly, I’ll do it on my terms, and never ask anything in return. If this is something I should be doing anyway, fine. If you’re paying me, this becomes a different kind of arrangement, where we negotiate a mutually acceptable amount. However, I don’t want to be paid AND feel like someone is doing me a favor; that would be a primitive corruption. I also hate pleas for help which are impossible to turn down, because of the all symbolic BS that’s wrapped around the request. Charity should be between me and my conscience; work should have an accountant sitting between me and whoever wants me to do something.

One can see a clear difference in patterns of performance. If people are really interested in doing something, and are passionate about it, or really need it to be done; they do it really well, because there is a self-serving (albeit non-monetary) component. If they get paid well for doing something, they also perform rather well, especially if a specific accountability measure is introduced. However, when they hesitantly agree to do something, because of the symbolic violence pressure… that’ a whole different ball game. People forget appointments, postpone work, they drag their feet forever, and results are not that impresive either. The paradox is that people may sacrifice their lives for a symbol but they are not able to do a half-decent work for the same symbol, if it is extended through some time.

We need to be able to see through symbolic violence, and make our choices outside of this sort of pressures. I bet, we’d do more things better. I like to hear things like “ OK, I’ll do it, I need some service on my resume, and it might be entertaining.” Or: “I’ll do it, I need the money.” Or, “if I don’t do it, people I care about will be in jeopardy.” When people assume martyred look and pretend they’ll do it because some one has to,… it always smells fishy. In other words, they are saying: “OK, but now you all owe me big, because I do this for the Cause.” This is the symbolic violence directed at the institution, not from the institution. So, we all do it. Let’s just learn to see beyond it.

Merit, Shmerit, or “Evaluate not and thou shall not be evaluated”

It’s that time of the year when all university faculty in two thousand plus colleges across this great nation are getting ready to evaluate and be evaluated. Some schools have strong performance-based systems, where any salary increase is tied to merit, while others have much more egalitarian practices. The latter group may symbolically reward higher performance, but most of the available money goes to cost of living increases.

Let’s call these competitive and egalitarian approaches. Roughly, this is the difference between capitalism and socialism; both have clear advantages, and both have endemic problems. The competitive system encourages excellence, encourages the super-achievers to achieve even more, while encouraging or penalizing their less successful colleagues. However, the fights around merit policy, and actual evaluation process can get really nasty really quick. Academic communities can be destroyed, feelings hurt, and as a result, morale may suffer and productivity actually decline. In addition, a strong competitive system requires a highly structured, formalized system which can be manipulated (for example if each presentation is worth a point, people go to a lot of local conferences and present a lot of the same stuff. If editorship is worth 50 points, people create their own journals just to be editors, etc.). These are real, not theoretical risks, and one should never forget about them.

Now, egalitarian system promotes collegiality, and encourages solidarity. Everyone is above the average, and feels good about that. Even those super-achievers sometimes support the system out of solidarity with their less successful colleagues. Let’s not forget, that many university faculty have strong egalitarian leanings, so it is philosophically appealing to sabotage what administration wants (merit incentive), and just declare everyone above average. I am not being sarcastic here; egalitarian approach works well to sustain group cohesion. However, this system also caries long-term risks, mainly, the risk of becoming less and less competitive as an institution. Socialism has the same problem on a larger scale: such societies (whether Communist ones, or European social democracies) work well when isolated; they tend to lose when exposed to all those workaholic aggressive peoples like Americans or the Brits. So, Soviet Union collapses, Swedes reform their tax system, and even Germans think of cutting their welfare benefits. This happens not because of the internal problems, but because of the economic pressure from without.

Universities have been monopolies, fairly isolated from competition by state subsidies or by big names, as well as by historic high demand for their services. This is less and less the case. States tend to cut subsidies; enterprising neighbors steal their students, on-line competition makes it more difficult to recruit on-campus students. Student mobility makes transfers easier. The long-term danger of the egalitarian merit system is apparent: an institution may decline, because people relax to the point of doing very little besides teaching their course the way they always have taught them. It is difficult to encourage innovation without some sort of incentive. Why would you do it, if it takes very little to be excellent? Of course, everyone subjectively feels overworked all the time. But I am not talking about working more, I am talking about innovating, and working smarter. That’s the name of the game – productivity, not sheer effort.

It is very difficult to put the interests of the institution above your own short-term interests. It is also very difficult to agree to a policy that may or may not get you to the highest level of excellence. It is easier to avoid conflict and just agree to the lowest common denominator. Judging each other is hard; getting nosy about other people’s business is irritating. So, people should decide for themselves where to go – back to USSR or forward to the brazen cut-throat world of competition. The irony is, you might have no real choice about which way to go, only a choice about when change is going to happen – now and less painfully, or later, with a lot of pain. Do we make this university competitive and innovative, or we wake up one day with programs closing, tenured faculty being let go, enrollments shrinking, and the State imposing drastic cuts. Everyone complains about too much work, but think about having no job at all. I’d rather be slightly earlier, then constantly risking to have missed the train.

Why are we poor?

Lately, there has been much talk about money and the budget. The University leadership is trying to make the budgeting process transparent, and share responsibility of planning the budget with deans and directors. Basically, we won’t have much money coming in from the State, whether Republicans or Democrats are in power. We’d need to use whatever we have more efficiently, and generate more funds for ourselves. Although the University’s leadership is committed to a modest salary increase, there rest of the picture is quite bleak.

What kind of financial arrangement would allow the university to generate more funds? AT the moment, the thought at the top seems to be this: let’s collect whatever small carry-overs units might have, and invest them in university priorities. By collecting these small pockets of money into larger pools, we might build up enough momentum to actually do some good, innovative things. Besides, the university must have reserves for emergencies, unexpected expenditures, etc. Good logic, reasonable intentions, but I am afraid, it is all wrong.

The units are very unlikely to allow any carry-overs to accumulate, if they are going to be confiscated, or if there is even a risk of being confiscated. Why would we? Our school’s needs are enormous; we can spend every penny and more within a couple of weeks, and none of it would be frivolous. I am sure our Dean feels the same way about the College’s budget.

What needs to happen is this: The Provost should declare a competition of revenue-generating initiatives; business plans, really. Some body of knowledgeable people will decide which ones are likely to succeed and support the authors with specific commitments and maybe small start-up capital.

For example. Our Dean and I made a following deal just recently: We agreed to start a new Postbac cohort in Loveland. In exchange, he promised a new administrative position for us to support this and other off-campus activities we will have; plus we expect revenue-sharing practices to continue, so the School gets modest allocations. My point is this:

We could probably generate several more of projects like this – some more risky than others. We are not begging for money; we will bring money to the university. All we need is a clarity and stability of arrangements, an understanding that from profits we help generate, resources will be allocated to support these activities.

I always hear “we don’t have money to hire people, no resources for anything”. I am sorry, I don’t buy it. How is it possible that we do not have money to make more money? This is theoretically impossible. If there is a demand for our services (and we all know, there is), resources should not be a problem. We can easily grow our existing programs on campus, and offer many more off-campus. The problem is not the lack of resources, but a lack of connection between generating income and distribution of that income. There should be a simple feed-back loop: if you’re bringing money to the University, you will be allowed to use part of this money to support your faculty and reinvest it in more resources. That's all, no new money, no new taxes. just fiscal environment that is stable, clear, and allows for significant incentives.

Midwives, matchmakers, Napoleon, and Kutuzov

Mamtchmakers and midwifes: that’s what managers are. The truth is, in a complex organization, managers don’t rarely come up with creative ideas, nor do they do most of the actual work. What we do is act as matchmakers, linking people, opportunities, and resources together. Notice, we do not create people, opportunities, and resources, we just looking for a match. To extend the metaphor a bit, managers don’t fall in love and conceive babies; they just make sure it happens regularly enough. Then when people work on a project, managers make sure the baby gets delivered, and does not get an infection, has some air to breath, etc.

The reason I am thinking about these things is this: We have actually accomplished quite a few things in the last six months, but I can take no more credit for that than a matchmaker and a midwife can take credit for new babies. Couples fall in love, struggle through misunderstanding, have dreams, conceive babies, make money, etc. It is women who bear, deliver, and nurse babies.

Let’s make a list:

1. Our revision of the Elementary PTEP has been approved yesterday. The idea, the understanding of the problem, and the expertise existed long before I came on board. I would be an idiot to imagine this is somehow my achievement.
2. Our new Early Childhood PTEP will accept new students in the Fall. Again, the revision has been in the works for a long time; all I had to do is to yell “push, push.”
3. Our newly redesigned Ed.D. program already has two new doctoral students, with assistantships. Again – was there before me, just took very little tweaking.
4. We will be opening a new Postbac Cohort in the Summer, and hiring a new cohort coordinator to run all off-campus cohorts. This was a s easy as poking a whole to let waters burst, pardon the analogy. The program has been very popular and successful, we had many more applicants than spots, so a no-brainer.
5. We will have a new and simplified record-keeping system in place by Fall, (check-point course system).
6. People write large grant applications, publish books and articles, organize conferences, try new things in class, deal with difficult students, develop evaluation policies, search for new hires, etc., etc., etc. All of this – with very little, or no help at all from me.

I am writing this not just to thank everyone (although this is clearly my intent), and not out of sense of modesty, for I have none. I think it is an important theoretical point; this is how organizations and their leaders function best. The easiest, most efficient way of achieving good results is to use what is already going on, and let the good things happen, while preventing bad things from happening. That’s about it, and then you’d get credit for other people’s work, shamelessly.

In War and Peace, Tolstoy makes a compelling case for how little Napoleon’s decisions mattered in the events during his Russian campaign of 1812. The small decisions and desires of many thousands of people seem to decide the course of events, the movements of huge armies, their victories and defeats. In contrast to Napoleon and his delusions of power, the Russian commander-in-chief, Kutuzov, clearly realized how little influence he actually had on the events of the war. Kutuzov led by what appears to be an inexplicable passivity. All he was doing is trying to sense where things are going, and not interfere with the natural course of events. For example, he had many opportunities to fight the French in better locations, but he did not feel that his army was psychologically ready for the decisive battle. Finally, the main battle that occurred at Borodino, began almost by an accident, developed in a way that no one could plan or predict, and ended in a way that both sides could claim victory. In the end, however, this was the most important battle that determined the utter defeat of the French army. Tolstoy does not claim that the historical events he describes are random. Quite to the contrary, he clearly sees patterns:

“In 1789 a ferment arises in Paris; it grows, spreads, and is expressed by a movement of peoples from west to east. Several times it moves eastward and collides with a countermovement from the east westward. In 1812 it reaches its extreme limit, Moscow, and then, with remarkable symmetry, a countermovement occurs from east to west, attracting to it, as the first movement had done, the nations of middle Europe. The counter movement reaches the starting point of the first movement in the west--Paris-- and subsides.”

Using purely empirical observations, Tolstoy questions the existence of the free will, at least in how it affects history, but also sees a remarkable regularity of these events. At the very end of the Second Epilogue, he draws parallel between Copernicus’s discovery and this new understanding of history. Because we do not feel that Earth is moving does not mean that it does not; because we feel that we have the free will, does not mean that we actually do.

Well, Tolstoy is exaggerating; there is free will, and leaders do make difference, just as Kutuzov did. But most of the events that occur are not determined by any one person, or any specific group of people. In fact, most of the things that happen in an organization no one wants to happen.

There are also two types of leaders, the napoleons and the kutuzovs. The napoleons always try to manage events directly, try to control what is going on in their organization. The napoleons can be very conservative, or very reform-minded (which, in my view requires similar type of personality), but at the core of their leadership strategy is the belief that events can be (at least in theory) controlled. The kutuzovs clearly understand the limits of their own (or anyone else’s) power. They sense the patterns. The kutuzovs may not understand the reasons for these patterns, or causes of changes, but still have a healthy respect for the forces outside of their control. The napoleons analyze the causes of problems, assign responsibility, plan changes, write mission statements, draw implementation plans. The kutuzovs also do all these things, but deep down doubt efficacy of such efforts. They try to soften the blows of administrative arbitrariness, and encourage small practical developments they find important. What I am really trying to say is that Kutuzov is my ideal, not Napoleon. But then again, this is maybe because I am Russian.

On failings of humans

Well, we’re back in full force. Vacations are really nice; Svetlana and I drove to Seattle to see both kids and our future son-in-law and his folks. But now I am so much back, the vacation seems like a distant memory.

One thing we all need to learn is tolerance for imperfection. In a complex organization like a university, nothing works perfectly. Things that one expects to be done often are not done; what should work, sometimes does not work, or works not as intended. Partly, this is just the human conditions: where people are involved, errors always occur. Besides, people tend to get engrossed in personal relationships, and develop skewed perspective on issues. They tend to find scapegoats and do not tolerate stress well. People have rather weak and selective memories; they are not at all like computers. Everyone who works with people must understand these weaknesses in others and in oneself. This is just what people are, and nothing could be done to change that. Sometimes we might think that only that or this person would go away, things will change to the better. This rarely happens, because any replacement will have either the same, or different problems. No one is perfect, and those close to being perfect we can never afford to hire.

Now, people also fun to be around, and they are a lot smarter than any machine, so let’s not forget that. People have common sense and sense of humor; they can work and get things done. It is just amazing how we take the good things about each other for granted, but are irritated by the weaknesses. But both are a part of the same package. If you cannot tolerate other people’s failings, take a hard look at yourself first. If still no tolerance to human failings, just go work with computers or other machines.

Bureaucracies are really social technologies designed to counteract some of the human failings, because in large organizations, those tend to multiply. We design policies, procedures, databases, forms, checks and balances, etc. They help, but then bureaucracies in turn bring new problems. Most remarkably, they slow down human interaction and tend to misrepresent human intentions. Humans have evolved to communicate in small face-to-face groups; we express a wealth of information through non-verbal cues. We also can keep a limited number of factors on our mind when making decisions. When we start writing letters, e-mails, talk on the phone, and develop complex projects involving many other people, we simply fail to communicate and to cooperate well. Hunting a wild boar or tending to a small garden – that we can do easily, if no more than couple dozen other people are involved. Now, designing programs of study, financial accountability procedures, evaluating employee performance – not so much. The very crutches we develop both help and impede us. Decision-making bodies routinely create more problems than they resolve; smart database systems create more confusion that existed before them; our policies have unintended consequences that are sometimes worse than the initial problem. That is just how bureaucracies work; this is the other side of human failings.

Our brains are great at recognizing patterns; way better than any computer now or for decades to come. We are quick learners, and we can learn operating in a bureaucracy just as well as we learn how to live in a forest. One thing that I wish everyone would give up is a belief that in the modern technologically advanced society, things will run smoothly, and no error or confusion will occur. So, here is a commandment for modern times: thou shall not be irritated by imperfection.

On the Money

Can you believe this? This is my blog #24.


The basic principle of a market economic system is that there is some feedback loop: those who produce things that other people need, get rewarded; those who produce nothing or something no one needs, get penalized. So, things that people need are produced more, their price falls, and the system reaches equilibrium. Any time demand changes, there is a mechanism that tells producers to cut or increase production.

The problems of capitalism have been known for a long time: because the economy needs freedoms of transactions and private property rights, it tends to produce tremendous inequality. Its strength, however, are also well-known: the system does not rely on centralized planning; it is self-regulating, disciplined, and is much more efficient than any other economic system.

American universities are slowly discovering the advantages and disadvantages of capitalism, only about four hundred years after its invention. Some are more successful at it than others, but most at least dibble into a more entrepreneurial, more market-oriented ventures. Every campus has an extended studies, or continuing education branch that offers off-campus, non-academic, or online courses, wherever there is a demand for them. Those branches tend to be much more flexible, practical, and efficient than the main campus, and end up supporting the inefficiencies of the traditional colleges.

Of course, all universities have to become more like their extended studies programs. Everyone needs to learn to count money and see where the money comes from and how it is being spent. This is the only way of moving toward greater efficiency and better quality. Yet the academic culture is very resistant to measuring educational work in terms of money. Underneath the snobbish refusal to talk money, there is a simple fear of competition, fear of being exposed as less than productive. Some very smart people go to all length with justifying their own highly privileged lifestyles with high-spirited arguments about the intrinsic value of education, sacrifice, academic freedom, and other such nonsense.

Most importantly, our feedback system is extremely weak, convoluted, and unreliable. In most cases, there is no clear link whatsoever between what we do in classes and what the public, the students, or anyone else actually needs. I know my colleagues will be offended by this statement, and assure that they’ve been around, they have the degrees, so they know what needs to happen in the classroom. But any scholar is supposed to ask: How do you know what you know? Is that knowledge verifiable or replicable? Confidence notwithstanding, we have no clue, actually. Just imagine a situation when a car salesman would assure you that he knows exactly what you need, and that one car is the only one you can buy. That you go to the next door lot, and his twin-brother wants to sell you the same exactly model for the same or almost the same price.

The accountability movement tries to solve this problem by making universities to produce some evidence of their effectiveness. I am not arguing that this is difficult to do; I am arguing that it is impossible to do. The market is driven not by research, but by averaging millions of irrational single transactions. This is entirely different feedback loop; it bypasses any single brain, and the information is distributed throughout millions of independent agents. The market mechanisms are more efficient because they are not smart, and do not depend on having smart people making right decisions.

As a first step, we desperately need some link between revenue generation and funds available to colleges, schools, and individual faculty. If there is no direct relation between how many hours a college produces and how much funding it receives, it creates an objective incentive to reduce enrollments. No matter what administrative efforts, how many meetings and speeches we produce, the economic situation does not change. With a fixed income, one must reduce the effort. The same goes all the way does to school an individual faculty. We have every incentive to fight tooth and nail for keeping class enrollments as low as possible, whether it makes any pedagogical sense or not. This is not because we’re bad people, but because cap increase savings do not return to us in any form and shape. We have no incentive to build off-campus cohort until there is an assurance that some of this money returns to those who work on the cohorts.

Money talk is honest; it does not mean having money as the only value. Rather, it leads to seeing clearly that our values are upheld, and not talked to death.

What makes a problem hard to solve

Here are an examples of hard to solve problems:

1. Two starving sailors on a life-boat are deciding who to eat first. Each has a veto power on the decision.
2.
3. A teacher education program consists of three major course blocks; each block is divided amongst various schools and colleges, and individual faculty. Each involved unit feels passionately about his or her piece and has something close to a veto power, or at least a power to delay resolution. The task is to improve the program by strengthening some components at the expense of others.
4.
What makes both problems difficult to solve? OK, I’ll drop the pretence: what makes the second problem difficult to solve?

It is not the complexity of the problem. We are not rebuilding Iraq, for god’s sake. These course or those course, taught on this semester pr that semester. Not exactly the rocket science, or brain surgery. It should not take longer than a year to figure it out. A week of good planning should do it. Whatever philosophical disagreements people might have, are not very deep and certainly not irreconcilable.

It is not the high stakes; no one expect dramatic improvements from any kind of revision. In education, large effect sizes are truly uncommon, so we are talking about modest improvements. The truth is, whatever the configuration of the new program, it is going to be only moderately if at all better regardless of the specific configuration that takes place. No dependable data can be shown to demonstrate superiority of one proposal over another.

It is not that some people involved are evil or wrong. In fact, all people involved are highly competent, dedicated, and ready for change. I am an incorrigible structuralist, and never believe in much in “human factor” explanations. People tell all the time: “Oh, we would have been able to do it, if not for so and so, who is such a (select your own epithet).” Well, this is almost always the wrong explanation, because when the “bad apples” are replaced, things still don’t work out, and new “bad apples” are immediately and spontaneously appointed to take their place.

What then makes our problem difficult to solve? Very often, it is the way of solving a problem, rather than the problem itself. The smartest sailors should figure out how to fish, or the strongest sailor should fight and eat the weakest one. Deliberations won’t help. The same is true for our problem: if a solution involves real or perceived losses for one of the party, and it is not clear at the start which party will lose, no one should have a veto power.

The process must be structured in a way that the initial parameters make it clear what structural changes are needed to be made. No haggling over resources should be ever allowed, because it always muddles the issue. When people start dressing their concerns about turf in the rhetoric of “commitment to quality”, “research-based teacher education,” “liberal education values” and other venerable BS, no problem will be solved, and feelings will be hurt.

Then the parties affected by the structural changes should be given a full responsibility for making those changes happening to achieve certain given objectives. I don’t believe in holistic and perfect solutions. I’ve seen a lot of neat charts, but in real life, logistics and practicalities, the small details everyone wants to ignore, always trump our utopian designs. So, a series of incremental, localized, small solutions under a unifying vision are always more effective than one overarching, perfect-from-the-start plan. In the complex system like ours, part should be disentangled from each other, so they can show some flexibility and independence to address the practicalities, and remain in agreement on broad definitions of good curriculum.

To reform our IDLA/Elementary PTEP, here is what I would do:

Tell IDLA, PTEP, and Liberal Core faculty: here is your new share of credit hours. YOU will not get less or more; this is all you can play with.

Develop specific proposals for addressing the tasks outlined in the Provost’s charge. Keep in touch with each other while developing the changed.

Within each area, go through a similar process of setting the initial parameters, and them breaking up into even smaller projects (such as course mergers, course redesigned, new course development, advising structure).

Then get together and really coordinate how all your smaller projects will proceed. Appoint a small coordinating committee to make sure you will not step on each other’s toes all the time.

Conclusion: The sailors die not because their problem is hard to solve, but because they chose a wrong way of solving it. Instead of letting the smarter one think about fishing, and the stronger one save his strength for the last battle; they waste time and energy arguing to the point that they can neither think, nor fight.

UNC’s Organizational Culture and Change

I have been here for 5 month, so perhaps I can be allowed to make some observations on UNC’s organizational culture. The balance is positive; I like it here, and believe this is a very good institution with bright future. So, Svetlana and I are looking for a house, which is a good evidence of a willingness to stick around.

This place is comfortable with change. Most people do not actively resist; they all agree to do the extra work involved in change and improvement. There is also a tradition of openness – almost never do I get a simple “No”; people in all or almost all offices are usually willing to work on whatever problems and projects I bring up. Whether they can actually solve a problem or not is another issue, but everyone seems to be trying, and OK with new ideas.

The lack of inertia is generally a wonderful thing, because all higher education undergoes a rapid transformation, which I would reduce to three major factors: changing demographics, explosion of information technology, and accountability. Those who can change faster, will remain competitive; those who cannot change, will fail. However, this lack of inertia brings its own problems. It is clear that the University is trying to do too many changes too fast. The Banner implementation is the one central process, but it is in addition to the not-quite-complete transition to the new administrative structure, and a number of other changes. The combination of organizational complexity with the complexity of contemporary data systems is a volatile and sometimes dangerous mix.

I hate to admit it, but I am certainly contributing to this problem, because just our School has initiated a number of major changes:

· Two redesigned graduate programs (Ed.D. and a new MAT Emphasis)
· The new Early Childhood PTEP
· The revision of the Elementary PTEP (this one is a biggie; the changes are not very radical, but the numbers of students make it hard to transition)
· Phasing out Helix database and a switch to the checkpoint courses system. This sounds small, but is, in fact, a big change.
· Implementing new assessment data collection systems for all programs.

We also have a number of smaller projects in the works: encouraging the use of Blackboard to assist in regular classes, K-12 and Secondary Postbac programs, exploration of off-campus growth possibilities, two searches, new grad admission procedure, building a new database, implementing new on-line registration for Elementary and Secondary PTEPs, new STE Charter, and of course, a new rookie director.

It does worry me that at some point, some of the changes become unmanageable. Of course, nothing terrible will happen, because we are not building airplanes of performing brain surgery here. However, the confluence of the multiple changes may reach a point where some of these changes may become uncontrollable and morph into something no one has intended. Just yesterday, Pat Doherty brought up a danger in our new Elementary PTEP proposal that we have not thought in four months of developing the new Elementary program. It is not a huge problem, and we seemed to be able to alleviate it, but how many bugs are there we still do not know about? My biggest worry is that we miss a small detail that will negatively affect the main outcome – student learning. I trust this is not going to happen, because the ability to cope with difficult change seems to be so ingrained in the institutional culture here. People just do what needs to be done, sometimes at the expense of their personal time. I want to thanks you all for this. We cannot really slow down, because most of the changes are thrust upon us, so we need to find ways of coping with all that stuff.

Change is very expensive and time consuming. My other worry is that no matter how cool our institutional culture is, we might not have enough resources to process all the changes. Just one example: in my old university, at the College that is just a little bigger than UNC’s, we had three associate deans, one assistant dean, an assessment officer,a PR specialist, and an IT manager. Here at CEBS, we have an Assistant Dean, and that’s about it. I know less about other areas, but everyone in Carter Hall seems to be stressed out and frantic. STE’s staff and coordinators routinely get behind, not because of lack of effort or organizational skills, but because there is just too much to do, too many e-mails and phone calls to answer, and too many students to talk to. This is not a complaint and a plea for more resources; I am simply worried if we bit off too big of a chunk to swallow.

Well, it all will look better once we are on Winter break, and in a holiday mood.