48. University 101, March 2015
“First come, first served,” is an ancient verity. In an environment of legitimate needs, limited by scarce resources, those who are first in line are advantaged, particularly if it is within their power to decide who gets served after they do. That is why the needs of the University of Maine System office regularly trump those of the universities it is supposed to serve: it is first in line; it receives and administers the legislative appropriation intended to fund the university.
If I am, for instance, in the System office passing tenure applications from seven different universities on to the Board, it would clearly be advantageous to me if I could develop a unified, twelve page form for each and every submission. Of course, that would not be helpful or advantageous to the people on the campuses who have their own forms and procedures for this most important of decisions. For them, the System form represents simply another, superfluous, obstacle to be overcome. But the System is ahead of them in line; consequently they will complete the form. More importantly, (from a System office perspective), it would be helpful if I could have another professional colleague to assist me in managing/processing paperwork (tenure forms, et. al.). Doubtless the campuses are also understaffed, but I’m first in line; they are not, so I get the extra help I need.
The above is hypothetical; the following is not. In this difficult budget period when the University, (like many other Maine services), is being forced to cut back, the University System as a whole (i.e. including its seven universities) lost 70 employees from 2011 to 2012 while the first-in-line System office gained five. In the judgment of the System office we could spare 70 faculty, counselors or maintenance staff on the campuses, but could not do without an additional five employees in the System office (of 165).
“First come, first served,” is not unique to system offices or to higher education: it is all around us. But, when the principle of “first-come first-served” is invested in an office charged with serving rather then taking it can, indeed it does, become self-serving –- like the parent who instead of providing food for his or her child, takes it instead.
How, you might ask, could our legislature have been so foolish as to establish such a “first come, first served” University System office that invariably starves the campuses it’s intended to serve? The answer, I think, is that the legislature also installed a safeguard that was intended to curb the appetites of the System office: it is called the “Board of Trustees”.
It is the Trustees who are entrusted with the overall welfare of the University. It is the Trustees who are charged with responsibility for seeing that resources don’t all go to the first-in-line System office, but are made available to the students, faculty and staff of the University to accomplish their important work. This is particularly critical in the case of smaller campuses. An Orono, or even a Southern Maine may occasionally be able to muscle its way to the head of the line, but not so the smaller campuses that not only lack the muscle, but are also sorely dependent on the largess of the System office to survive. Best for them to not “rock the boat”.
By what principle ought the Trustees to be guided in the distribution of scarce resources? Trustees should have sufficiently broad appreciation of the University as a whole (and not just its System office) to discern where its limited nutrition is most needed and will do the most good. To do that Trustees need to understand the “economy“ of the University and of its work.
Let me suggest an example: imagine that the hypothetical colleague the system office needs in order to help with its self-generated paperwork earns $75,000 a year. If the Trustees could look beyond the “first-come, first-served” System office and look instead at the relative value of the investment made, they might come to understand that that investment of $75,000 could buy approximately 1 full-time faculty member, (at the University’s average faculty salary of $73,605). What could they get for that campus-based investment? The prescribed system-wide average faculty course load is four courses per semester, or eight per year. (Moreover, faculty members also have research and service responsibilities.
I asked the System office what the actual course load was. Understandably, they could not tell me given different levels of research responsibility on different campuses. I will assume that the de facto load is seven courses a year. At a system-average enrollment of approximately 18 students per course, that would mean the same investment that provided another person in the System office could have provided educational opportunities for 126 students [seven courses x 18 students per course]. But, of course, the system added not just one additional employee, but five (while the campuses were asked to cut 70). That means that 630 students [126 x 5] were denied an educational opportunity so that the system could add five new people to its offices. This is the balance that is the Trustees’ responsibility to carefully weigh. To do so, they must look back in line, beyond the first-in-line System office, to see the compelling needs of the campuses.
One of the first and most fundamental principles of leadership is well captured in the military maxim: “the troops eat first”. I am not saying that those additional system employees do not do valuable work. Indeed, I do not know what they do. My point is that they do that work at a cost of shifting our tax dollars away from the students those dollars are intended to serve.
I said it was the Trustees’ “responsibility” to consider the needs of the whole and not just of the System office. Consider that word, “responsibility”, for a moment. It means “to be answerable for”. But to whom are the Trustees answerable? To us, the citizens of Maine.
The University of Maine System is the locomotive of Maine’s future growth and development; unfortunately, our Trustees are asleep at the switch.
