Chemical Engineering Education, 37(3), 220–221 (2003).
THE INCONTROVERTIBLE LOGIC OF THE ACADEMY
Richard Felder
I’ve spent decades at one university and regularly visit others, but I still sometimes have trouble understanding academic logic. Whenever my bewilderment reaches a critical point I like to check in with my old grad school buddy Kreplach, who always seems to be on top of everything. I ran into him at a conference the other day.
“So, Kreplach—I hear
your
“Right—our `Forward to the Future’ campaign is off and running. We’re going for 150 million big ones.”
“But last month you told me that you just finished
raising 50 million in your `Tackling Tomorrow’s Technology Today’ drive, and you
haven’t spent all of that money yet.”
“Right again…so what’s your problem?”
“Why do you need another 150 million?”
“So we can build new state-of-the-art bionanoinfotechnology facilities.”
“I thought you already had them—wasn’t your
biotech center built just last year?”
“Well sure, but what we’ve got now doesn’t
have nearly enough room to put in the labs and offices that the new graduate
students are going to need.”
“What new graduate students?”
“The ones we’re going to go after with those
60K fellowship programs that will come out of the 150 million.”
“Sixty thousand? But
that’s more than we pay our new assistant professors.”
“Yep, same with ours,
and with that kind of money we should be able to pull a bunch of hotshot undergrads
away from Stanford and MIT.”
“That would be nice, but don’t you and your
colleagues already have as many graduate students as you can handle—can you just
keep on adding new ones indefinitely?”
“Probably not, but that’s where the new
faculty members come in.”
“What new faculty members?”
“The ones in the new distinguished chairs,
of course.”
“You mean the ones you endowed from the 50
million?”
“No, the eight new ones that
will come from the 150 million.
We’re going to be able to pay those puppies a lot more than the chancellor gets
and almost as much as the football coach—the Stanford and MIT faculties will be
falling all over themselves to get some of that action.”
“That would make sense, since you’ll be
getting their students…but look, Kreplach—why do you
need so many new professors? Most of you
are already teaching only two courses a year.”
“Right, and with those new professors on
board we can get it down to one. Pretty sweet,
eh? Besides, who’ll advise the new graduate
students if we don’t bring in more faculty?”
“I forgot about that.”
“See, that’s your problem—you keep missing the
big picture. Now, what do you think will
happen when we’ve got all those new faculty members and graduate students on
board?”
“It will get even harder for you to find a
parking place on campus?”
“No…well, yes, but never mind that. Think about all the grants we’ll pull in and
the papers we’ll churn out and the research dollars we’ll spend—we’ll be right
up there with Stanford and MIT!”
“You
should be ahead of them since you’ll have most of their faculty and graduate
students…anyway, I’m still not sure I see the point.”
“It’s simple. Since U.S. News & World Report bases its
ratings on grants and papers and research expenditures, we’ll move right up
into the top ten…”
“And then…”
“And then our graduate school applications
from other top ten schools will go up and we can boost our productivity and cut
down our teaching loads even more, and we’ll become attractive to faculty at…”
“Cal Tech and
“Right! Is that a plan, or what?”
“Let me see if I have it straight. You’re trying to squeeze 150 million dollars
out of companies and alumni so you can build new facilities to house new faculty
members and graduate students who will increase your research funding and
output, enabling you to recruit even more new faculty and graduate students?”
“I couldn’t have put it better myself.”
“But where will you put those people?”
“Aha—glad you asked! The Dean has put me in charge of the `Engineering
the Dream of a Brighter Tomorrow at the Dawn of the New Global Millennium’
campaign we’re getting ready to announce.”
“Catchy title.”
“Yeah, the Dean thought of it himself. We’re thinking that 400 million dollars
should cover most of our needs for at least two years.”
“I like how you think big, Kreplach, but where are you going to find any more
companies and alumni willing to kick in after all those other campaigns?”
“We thought about that, and we came up with
two untapped sources with a strong vested interest in making us numero uno. Here, check this out.”
“Let’s see—whoa, a pledge form for the
faculty with check-off boxes for salary tithes and a free legal service to help
them redraw their wills. Outstanding!”
“Yeah, and don’t overlook the space for the
number of boxes of cookies they commit to sell every year.”
“Brilliant thinking, Kreplach—I
know everyone on your faculty will jump at the chance to help out…but what’s your
other group of eager donors? I can’t
believe there’s a turnip you haven’t already tried to squeeze blood from.”
“Lots of them, my boy.
Think—who is the most important person on campus, the one the faculty
and administration are primarily there to serve, the one who gets more benefits
from the university than anyone else?”
“That would be the football coach.”
“Don’t be absurd—it’s the undergraduate
student. The value of a college education
to every undergraduate over the course of a lifetime is over a million dollars,
right?”
“Yes, but…”
“So if we just ask each of them to kick in a
mere $100,000, which is only a tenth of what we’re giving them, we’re home
free.”
“Fiendishly clever, Kreplach—our
fundraising people would be green with envy.”
“And who could blame them? Oh, before you go,
our chocolate macadamia shortbread wafers are particularly fine this year. How many boxes can I put you down for?”