4 ms·

Bullshit Jobs by anthropology professor Graeber talks about this a lot, but comes to a different conclusion - that leadership for universities should be from Pr

Bullshit Jobs by anthropology professor Graeber talks about this a lot, but comes to a different conclusion - that leadership for universities should be from Professors and that we should have a universal basic income so that useless administration will not be forced to spend 8 hours a day pretending to be useful.

amluto 4y ago
This is not a good idea. Let people who are qualified to manage do the managing. There is very little about having a PhD or being tenured that makes one qualified to run a large institution.
- nisegami 4y ago
  If they "Let people who are qualified to manage do the managing" then they wouldn't be in this position to begin with.
- core-utility 4y ago
  Who says that any significant portion of these administrators are "running a large institution?" I'd be willing to be that the average professor manages more people than 99% of these administrators. This isn't about running an institution, these administrators are employees through and through. They are simply employees sharing 1 meaningless task with several other team members and taking eons to complete anything.
  - zdragnar 4y ago
    Most administrators aren't in leadership positions, which is what the recommendation from bullshit jobs was about- not general administration positions.
- m000 4y ago
  To add to the siblings, academic leadership != management. An academic leader can easily be a bad manager. A manager cannot provide academic leadership.
- caned 4y ago
  Professors need not administrate themselves, but school administration should, above all else, serve the needs of educators and those being educated.
  - spencerflem 4y ago
    exactly this, thank you
- spencerflem 4y ago
  I was maybe too pithy, the book unsurprisingly goes into more depth (and is a good read!) - but if administration has all the control, they will unsurprising favor administration problems. Professors could hire good management if that was useful while keeping the goal in line with education and research and not administration and finance
- QuadmasterXLII 4y ago
  I would like to introduce as evidence this email I just recieved: Dear Carolina Community: I am excited to announce that Michael Andreasen, senior vice president for university advancement at the University of Oregon, has been selected as Carolina’s next vice chancellor for development, beginning Jan. 23. A seasoned leader, Andreasen believes strongly in the mission of public universities, and I am confident he will continue to engage supporters and alumni and build on our recent fundraising success. He will succeed David Routh, who announced in April he would step down at the end of the year. For the past nine years, Andreasen has overseen all aspects of advancement at UO, including development; state, community and federal affairs; advancement operations; stewardship and public events and alumni relations. During his tenure, he consistently increased annual fundraising totals and secured some of the largest donations to any public flagship university. Among his accomplishments, Andreasen helped complete a $3 billion campaign at Oregon, raising $3.24 billion, including a final fiscal year fundraising performance of $867 million and maintained fundraising momentum through the transition of five university presidents. He worked in collaboration with campus leaders and a small team of faculty to secure two $500 million gifts to establish and build the Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact and helped garner a transformational $425 million gift to establish the Ballmer Institute for Children’s Behavioral Health. Andreasen began his time at UO as the vice president for development, leading efforts to establish campaign priorities, setting a working goal of $1.2 billion and developing a communications plan for the public launch in collaboration with the president, executive leadership and school deans. Over 12 years, he has served as a member of the University of Oregon Foundation Board, the Alumni Association Board, the Portland Business Alliance Board and the Greater Portland Chamber of Commerce. Prior to joining UO, Andreasen was at the University of Michigan for seven years – first as executive director and assistant dean for advancement for development and alumni relations and then as executive director and assistant dean for advancement at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business. His more than 32 years of fundraising experience includes roles in major gifts and campaign leadership at the University of California, Santa Barbara and the American Film Institute. He began his career as the director of the annual fund for the University of California, Irvine, where he also earned a Bachelor of Arts in political science. I want to thank the search committee, chaired by Rachelle Feldman, vice provost for enrollment, and John Montgomery, executive director for The Rams Club, for the time and effort they have devoted to this search. I’m appreciative for their work in identifying multiple leading candidates for this important role. Andreasen joins University Development at an exciting time as the Campaign for Carolina comes to a close, and we look to what’s next in Carolina’s future. I’m grateful to David Routh for serving as an incredible leader and ambassador for Carolina throughout his tenure. Please join me in thanking David and offering your congratulations to Mike as we welcome him to Carolina. Sincerely, Kevin M. Guskiewicz Chancellor Tell me with a straight face that that's not a God of Grift among Gods of Grift
- 8f2ab37a-ed6c 4y ago
  In tech we have the saying "we take our best engineers and turn them into our worst managers"
  - spencerflem 4y ago
    theres also the positive saying about engineering / product driven companies vs finance / marketing driven companies. Hard to get all nuance in a comment, but meant that ultimate control of direction is from the people doing the work, not that they necessarily were involved in the minutia of management
  - a4a4a4a4 4y ago
    Idk about you, but the worst managers I've had were _not_ engineers. They had no idea what the actual day-to-day of the projects looked like, would blindly promise deadlines, etc. I'm not saying that the best engineers make the best managers, but I don't think someone can be the best manager (in tech) without being at least a good engineer.
    - bluGill 4y ago
      Sure, but the best manages I've had have not been engineers. Engineers generally don't make the worst mistakes manages can make, but they often don't make the best choices all the time.
- zajio1am 4y ago
  Public universities here in Czechia have academic senate, body of representatives elected by academics and students (with 1:1 - 2:1 ratio), which elects university president / rector and votes on university bylaws.
  - spencerflem 4y ago
    That's pretty sweet :) Here in Florida the governor chooses the university's president (and wouldn't you know it, they're a sitting Republican senator https://news.yahoo.com/incoming-uf-president-ben-sasse-223100344.html https://news.yahoo.com/incoming-uf-president-ben-sasse-22310...)
- elgar1212 4y ago
  > people who are qualified to manage do the managing It's very convenient that those who are "qualified to manage" consistently come from the same stratum of society
Aunche 4y ago
> we should have a universal basic income so that useless administration will not be forced to spend 8 hours a day pretending to be useful If the problem is that some people are being paid too much to do nothing, the exact opposite solution is to pay everyone too much to do nothing. I'd be 100% supportive of UBI if that meant paying everyone in the world $2 a day, but what UBI actually means is giving exclusive in-groups more money than the median global income for free. We see exactly what happens in the gulf oil nations like Qatar. The citizens outsource all their real work to an out-group that doesn't receive free money, so they have absolutely no incentive to improve working conditions.
- torstenvl 4y ago
  I sort of agree with you, except that the problem isn't "that some people are being paid too much to do nothing." The problem is that some people are being paid too much to be meddlesome.
- UncleMeat 4y ago
  There's a difference. If you have a bullshit job you are paid to do nothing. If you have UBI you are paid no matter what you do. Somebody who has to not get fired cannot do anything other than sit in their chair and do their bullshit job. They are actively removed from the pool of useful laborers. But somebody who is paid regardless can choose what to do. Yes, they can watch TV all day. But they can also do something that isn't bullshit.
  - Aunche 4y ago
    There is little difference between UBI and useless college administration jobs or useless gulf nation oil administration jobs. Both jobs have high autonomy and very little accountability, so they already have the option to not do bullshit if they really want to. Many Saudis got paid even if they didn't even bother to show up to work and protested when the higher ups demanded attendance. Demanding attendance is even worse than letting them do nothing, but it does go to show that they simply had no expectations to begin with, and that higher ups are also doing nothing all day. https://www.newarab.com/opinion/saudi-workers-enraged-five-times-day-attendance-checks#:~:text=Workers%20in%20the%20western%20Saudi,day%20to%20validate%20their%20attendance https://www.newarab.com/opinion/saudi-workers-enraged-five-t....
rhino369 4y ago
>and that we should have a universal basic income so that useless administration will not be forced to spend 8 hours a day pretending to be useful. Or you could make able bodied people work to support themselves. It takes a ton of work to keep people alive and well. Society will find something useful for them to do.
- spencerflem 4y ago
  Graeber's book talks about this in a much more interesting way that I can, and is very explicit about not trying to be a book about basic income. So me adding that was a little editorial. But the point is that for a large variety of cultural, political, and economic reasons there are a lot of jobs like university administrators that are simply not useful but get paid nonetheless, in many cases much better than the people doing the actual work. In both public and private spaces (eg. Harvard, a private university). Even in tech circles we see this argument, like, why does it take 10,000 developers to run a website etc. I think most people want to be useful to society and have a meaningful job but a lot of jobs that pay well are not that. With UBI those admins would be able to volunteer, teach children, make culture, or all the other useful things that pay terribly. Note that these admins are already working to support themselves but society is still failing to find something useful for them. I'm happy to talk abt this more of ya think it would be useful to you :) Got more to say but comments are hard to fit nuance into
etempleton 4y ago
The truth is, and this will be hard for a lot of people to hear because it goes against their preconceived ideas and this authors claim, is both professors and the average arm-chair commentator have no idea what it takes to run a university. They have no idea the amount of work and logistics and everything else that goes into the day-to-day.
- spencerflem 4y ago
  The book covers this by interviewing people working those roles - and by and large they consider their own jobs to be useless. Graeber is not making these claims as an armchair expert, decreeing whose jobs are useless. It's an anthropological study of the people who themselves think they have a bullshit job. I'd highly recommend reading the book! It's much more nuanced and reasonable than any 5 sentence comment can be
evanelias 4y ago
In my direct experience, Harvard's faculty (professors) are a lot more involved in the leadership of the university than at most universities. There's a reason Harvard's arts & sciences school, including the undergraduate College, is called the Faculty of Arts & Sciences (FAS) -- the Faculty really do have a lot of power there. I worked in the FAS IT department for several years in the mid-to-late 00's. A huge chunk of my team's projects were custom software solutions, necessitated by top professors being extremely picky about random things, which prevented use of off-the-shelf software. Pretty much nothing in this Crimson article lines up with my experience. Maybe things have changed a lot since I worked there, but I'm skeptical.

amluto 4y ago

This is not a good idea. Let people who are qualified to manage do the managing. There is very little about having a PhD or being tenured that makes one qualified to run a large institution.

nisegami 4y ago
If they "Let people who are qualified to manage do the managing" then they wouldn't be in this position to begin with.
core-utility 4y ago
Who says that any significant portion of these administrators are "running a large institution?" I'd be willing to be that the average professor manages more people than 99% of these administrators. This isn't about running an institution, these administrators are employees through and through. They are simply employees sharing 1 meaningless task with several other team members and taking eons to complete anything.
- zdragnar 4y ago
  Most administrators aren't in leadership positions, which is what the recommendation from bullshit jobs was about- not general administration positions.
m000 4y ago
To add to the siblings, academic leadership != management. An academic leader can easily be a bad manager. A manager cannot provide academic leadership.
caned 4y ago
Professors need not administrate themselves, but school administration should, above all else, serve the needs of educators and those being educated.
- spencerflem 4y ago
  exactly this, thank you
spencerflem 4y ago
I was maybe too pithy, the book unsurprisingly goes into more depth (and is a good read!) - but if administration has all the control, they will unsurprising favor administration problems. Professors could hire good management if that was useful while keeping the goal in line with education and research and not administration and finance
QuadmasterXLII 4y ago
I would like to introduce as evidence this email I just recieved: Dear Carolina Community: I am excited to announce that Michael Andreasen, senior vice president for university advancement at the University of Oregon, has been selected as Carolina’s next vice chancellor for development, beginning Jan. 23. A seasoned leader, Andreasen believes strongly in the mission of public universities, and I am confident he will continue to engage supporters and alumni and build on our recent fundraising success. He will succeed David Routh, who announced in April he would step down at the end of the year. For the past nine years, Andreasen has overseen all aspects of advancement at UO, including development; state, community and federal affairs; advancement operations; stewardship and public events and alumni relations. During his tenure, he consistently increased annual fundraising totals and secured some of the largest donations to any public flagship university. Among his accomplishments, Andreasen helped complete a $3 billion campaign at Oregon, raising $3.24 billion, including a final fiscal year fundraising performance of $867 million and maintained fundraising momentum through the transition of five university presidents. He worked in collaboration with campus leaders and a small team of faculty to secure two $500 million gifts to establish and build the Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact and helped garner a transformational $425 million gift to establish the Ballmer Institute for Children’s Behavioral Health. Andreasen began his time at UO as the vice president for development, leading efforts to establish campaign priorities, setting a working goal of $1.2 billion and developing a communications plan for the public launch in collaboration with the president, executive leadership and school deans. Over 12 years, he has served as a member of the University of Oregon Foundation Board, the Alumni Association Board, the Portland Business Alliance Board and the Greater Portland Chamber of Commerce. Prior to joining UO, Andreasen was at the University of Michigan for seven years – first as executive director and assistant dean for advancement for development and alumni relations and then as executive director and assistant dean for advancement at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business. His more than 32 years of fundraising experience includes roles in major gifts and campaign leadership at the University of California, Santa Barbara and the American Film Institute. He began his career as the director of the annual fund for the University of California, Irvine, where he also earned a Bachelor of Arts in political science. I want to thank the search committee, chaired by Rachelle Feldman, vice provost for enrollment, and John Montgomery, executive director for The Rams Club, for the time and effort they have devoted to this search. I’m appreciative for their work in identifying multiple leading candidates for this important role. Andreasen joins University Development at an exciting time as the Campaign for Carolina comes to a close, and we look to what’s next in Carolina’s future. I’m grateful to David Routh for serving as an incredible leader and ambassador for Carolina throughout his tenure. Please join me in thanking David and offering your congratulations to Mike as we welcome him to Carolina. Sincerely, Kevin M. Guskiewicz Chancellor Tell me with a straight face that that's not a God of Grift among Gods of Grift
8f2ab37a-ed6c 4y ago
In tech we have the saying "we take our best engineers and turn them into our worst managers"
- spencerflem 4y ago
  theres also the positive saying about engineering / product driven companies vs finance / marketing driven companies. Hard to get all nuance in a comment, but meant that ultimate control of direction is from the people doing the work, not that they necessarily were involved in the minutia of management
- a4a4a4a4 4y ago
  Idk about you, but the worst managers I've had were _not_ engineers. They had no idea what the actual day-to-day of the projects looked like, would blindly promise deadlines, etc. I'm not saying that the best engineers make the best managers, but I don't think someone can be the best manager (in tech) without being at least a good engineer.
  - bluGill 4y ago
    Sure, but the best manages I've had have not been engineers. Engineers generally don't make the worst mistakes manages can make, but they often don't make the best choices all the time.
zajio1am 4y ago
Public universities here in Czechia have academic senate, body of representatives elected by academics and students (with 1:1 - 2:1 ratio), which elects university president / rector and votes on university bylaws.
- spencerflem 4y ago
  That's pretty sweet :) Here in Florida the governor chooses the university's president (and wouldn't you know it, they're a sitting Republican senator https://news.yahoo.com/incoming-uf-president-ben-sasse-223100344.html https://news.yahoo.com/incoming-uf-president-ben-sasse-22310...)
elgar1212 4y ago
> people who are qualified to manage do the managing It's very convenient that those who are "qualified to manage" consistently come from the same stratum of society

Aunche 4y ago

> we should have a universal basic income so that useless administration will not be forced to spend 8 hours a day pretending to be useful If the problem is that some people are being paid too much to do nothing, the exact opposite solution is to pay everyone too much to do nothing. I'd be 100% supportive of UBI if that meant paying everyone in the world $2 a day, but what UBI actually means is giving exclusive in-groups more money than the median global income for free. We see exactly what happens in the gulf oil nations like Qatar. The citizens outsource all their real work to an out-group that doesn't receive free money, so they have absolutely no incentive to improve working conditions.

torstenvl 4y ago
I sort of agree with you, except that the problem isn't "that some people are being paid too much to do nothing." The problem is that some people are being paid too much to be meddlesome.
UncleMeat 4y ago
There's a difference. If you have a bullshit job you are paid to do nothing. If you have UBI you are paid no matter what you do. Somebody who has to not get fired cannot do anything other than sit in their chair and do their bullshit job. They are actively removed from the pool of useful laborers. But somebody who is paid regardless can choose what to do. Yes, they can watch TV all day. But they can also do something that isn't bullshit.
- Aunche 4y ago
  There is little difference between UBI and useless college administration jobs or useless gulf nation oil administration jobs. Both jobs have high autonomy and very little accountability, so they already have the option to not do bullshit if they really want to. Many Saudis got paid even if they didn't even bother to show up to work and protested when the higher ups demanded attendance. Demanding attendance is even worse than letting them do nothing, but it does go to show that they simply had no expectations to begin with, and that higher ups are also doing nothing all day. https://www.newarab.com/opinion/saudi-workers-enraged-five-times-day-attendance-checks#:~:text=Workers%20in%20the%20western%20Saudi,day%20to%20validate%20their%20attendance https://www.newarab.com/opinion/saudi-workers-enraged-five-t....

rhino369 4y ago

>and that we should have a universal basic income so that useless administration will not be forced to spend 8 hours a day pretending to be useful. Or you could make able bodied people work to support themselves. It takes a ton of work to keep people alive and well. Society will find something useful for them to do.

spencerflem 4y ago
Graeber's book talks about this in a much more interesting way that I can, and is very explicit about not trying to be a book about basic income. So me adding that was a little editorial. But the point is that for a large variety of cultural, political, and economic reasons there are a lot of jobs like university administrators that are simply not useful but get paid nonetheless, in many cases much better than the people doing the actual work. In both public and private spaces (eg. Harvard, a private university). Even in tech circles we see this argument, like, why does it take 10,000 developers to run a website etc. I think most people want to be useful to society and have a meaningful job but a lot of jobs that pay well are not that. With UBI those admins would be able to volunteer, teach children, make culture, or all the other useful things that pay terribly. Note that these admins are already working to support themselves but society is still failing to find something useful for them. I'm happy to talk abt this more of ya think it would be useful to you :) Got more to say but comments are hard to fit nuance into

etempleton 4y ago

The truth is, and this will be hard for a lot of people to hear because it goes against their preconceived ideas and this authors claim, is both professors and the average arm-chair commentator have no idea what it takes to run a university. They have no idea the amount of work and logistics and everything else that goes into the day-to-day.

spencerflem 4y ago
The book covers this by interviewing people working those roles - and by and large they consider their own jobs to be useless. Graeber is not making these claims as an armchair expert, decreeing whose jobs are useless. It's an anthropological study of the people who themselves think they have a bullshit job. I'd highly recommend reading the book! It's much more nuanced and reasonable than any 5 sentence comment can be

evanelias 4y ago

In my direct experience, Harvard's faculty (professors) are a lot more involved in the leadership of the university than at most universities. There's a reason Harvard's arts & sciences school, including the undergraduate College, is called the Faculty of Arts & Sciences (FAS) -- the Faculty really do have a lot of power there. I worked in the FAS IT department for several years in the mid-to-late 00's. A huge chunk of my team's projects were custom software solutions, necessitated by top professors being extremely picky about random things, which prevented use of off-the-shelf software. Pretty much nothing in this Crimson article lines up with my experience. Maybe things have changed a lot since I worked there, but I'm skeptical.