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Worth noting, for crusaders against administrative overhead at colleges & universities: > In the basement of the University of Colorado Boulder’s main library,

Worth noting, for crusaders against administrative overhead at colleges & universities: > In the basement of the University of Colorado Boulder’s main library, an 85-year-old stone fortress built in the Italian rural style, the archives of the school’s Rare and Distinctive Collections occupy rows of shelves as far as the eye can see. Here, amid yellowed books, historical maps and medieval manuscripts, Martin Scorsese has quietly made public a very private preoccupation. More than 50 storage boxes hold thousands of VHS tapes that contain films and television programs Scorsese recorded directly from broadcast television. The renowned director and film preservationist, it turns out, was also, for decades, a prolific guerrilla archivist. > For the archivists at the Rare and Distinct Collections, the most pressing issue at the moment is the preservation of the Scorsese collection. Magnetic media degrades as it ages. It is believed that a VHS tape begins to progressively lose image quality after only 10 years. Some of Scorsese’s tapes are more than 40 years old. And so the entire archive must be digitized – a major undertaking. Converting thousands of hours of analog recordings is slow, tedious work. In a perfect world, there might be plenty of well-run and -funded museums, which could do such work. In the world we've got...yeah. Big, prestige-hungry universities probably bear 90% or more of this burden. In a far-from-perfect world, it would still be lovely if universities provided detailed, honest financial statements - which clearly distinguished this kind of "preserve history" technical work...from the all the myriad sorts of education-irrelevant crap that they squander fortunes on these days. In the world we've got...I'm sure that top-of-market administrator salaries and hand-carved jade ceilings in the shiny new student amenities are higher priorities.

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nxobject 3y ago
For what it's worth, I'm sure that, if you asked every direct report why they created a position below them, they'd give a perfectly cromulent justification. That doesn't explain away the inefficiencies of college in general, but I do think there are root causes of that that are worth going in depth into. For example, presidents have large offices because they would say they hold many hats these days, more than they did in the past when higher ed institutions recieved more state money: fundraising on the road and glad-handing big donors for that personal touch, going to policymakers for more money and for advocacy, working with big donors to plan large investments that open entire research units, dealing with internal governance of the college and with faculty. No one person can handle all of these responsibilities. Or you could look at student services: some administrator saw a need to support certain student populations to increase retention (more college completion = more alumni $$$$, more good press about alums), so you now have people that create programming to engage first-generation college students, Black students, students with disabilities. That's a huge set of communities to engage (especially in large institutions), and no one person can do all of that as well. The question is: are colleges doing work that should rightly be done elsewhere, and why isn't society making that happen? For example, colleges are developing integrated safety nets and free services (people who disburse emergency funds, mental health care, people that help students navigate this internal system, for example), because American society and government doesn't offer such an integrated system, at least to the standards that colleges are now aspiring to.
- BirAdam 3y ago
  Tbh, regarding the preservation and digitization of the collection of concern in this thread, plenty of institutions, private individuals, companies, and organizations would love to take that work from the university. The uni, otoh, has no incentive to let the asset out of their hands.
  - bell-cot 3y ago
    True - but "of the collection of concern in this thread". And at this point in time. Vs. many older & larger universities have accumulated vast collections of stuff over the centuries - 99%+ of which would attract zero-ish interest from qualified alternative custodians.

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nxobject 3y ago

For what it's worth, I'm sure that, if you asked every direct report why they created a position below them, they'd give a perfectly cromulent justification. That doesn't explain away the inefficiencies of college in general, but I do think there are root causes of that that are worth going in depth into. For example, presidents have large offices because they would say they hold many hats these days, more than they did in the past when higher ed institutions recieved more state money: fundraising on the road and glad-handing big donors for that personal touch, going to policymakers for more money and for advocacy, working with big donors to plan large investments that open entire research units, dealing with internal governance of the college and with faculty. No one person can handle all of these responsibilities. Or you could look at student services: some administrator saw a need to support certain student populations to increase retention (more college completion = more alumni $$$$, more good press about alums), so you now have people that create programming to engage first-generation college students, Black students, students with disabilities. That's a huge set of communities to engage (especially in large institutions), and no one person can do all of that as well. The question is: are colleges doing work that should rightly be done elsewhere, and why isn't society making that happen? For example, colleges are developing integrated safety nets and free services (people who disburse emergency funds, mental health care, people that help students navigate this internal system, for example), because American society and government doesn't offer such an integrated system, at least to the standards that colleges are now aspiring to.

BirAdam 3y ago
Tbh, regarding the preservation and digitization of the collection of concern in this thread, plenty of institutions, private individuals, companies, and organizations would love to take that work from the university. The uni, otoh, has no incentive to let the asset out of their hands.
- bell-cot 3y ago
  True - but "of the collection of concern in this thread". And at this point in time. Vs. many older & larger universities have accumulated vast collections of stuff over the centuries - 99%+ of which would attract zero-ish interest from qualified alternative custodians.