The Netherworld of Public Universities: Free Tuition Redux

One of the arguments made against the free tuition programme in NB is that it does not include "private institutions." It includes only, say, its opponents "public institutions," like Mount Allison University, where I work. There are actually reasons for this. They might not be good reasons but there are reasons and those reasons do not include, as some of the policy's opponents suggest, an attack on religion. In my last post, I tried to address this issue with regard to Crandall University. I argued that Crandall was, in fact, the "author of its own misfortune" in this regard. One need not and one should not slag Crandall, insult its students or its faculty or even its mission. These are choices that the folks who run, work at, and attend Crandall have made and we don't have to like them to be polite.

It might however be a different matter to talk about "public" and "private" institutions because the language does not exactly fit the NB post-secondary educational system. This language of "public" and "private" is, from what I can tell, a language imported from the US where there is a distinction between private institutions and state-run university systems (like the University of California system, as an example).  I'm not at all certain that this language applies easily to Canada, although there might be examples of instances where it does. It does not fit the other universities in NB well at all and its use, particularly by those defending Crandall and its desire to obtain "free tuition" for its students, clouds the issue.

The truth of the matter is that so-called "public institutions" like Mount Allison University exist in a sort of netherworld between the state and private institutions. Crandall, as I noted in my last blog, is a "private institution" for its own reasons. It adopted this approach precisely to avoid the influence of the state on it. (That was, of course, their choice and they did nothing wrong in making it. My question is simply this: after making it, do they have to live with the implications of their own choices?) But, does this make Mount Allison, say as an example, a public institution?

In one sense, yes. Mount Allison is bound by the state.  The provincial government, for instance, can tell us how much we charge for tuition (in practice this takes the form of telling us how much we can increase tuition each year -- 2% this year; 0% last year).  While it does not do this -- and is bound by the law of contract (which all parties prefer) -- it can legislate my salary, that of administrators. We are certified by the MPHEC, which tells us what programmes we can offer and whether or not those programmes are up to snuff. Should they want, the provincial government can also tell us how to teach (specifying say, "deliverables" in terms of learning outcomes or something like that). Our budget is, likewise, dependent on the state and we are bound, as a result of this, by the Charter, the Citizenship Act, and human rights legislation. As a public institution, in this sense, we cannot set limits on who we hire (something the folks at Crandall want to do) in terms of diversity. I don't want to make this point too strongly. The hand of the state rests lightly on Mount Allison University. It is there and it imposes obligations (most of which I have no problems with) but it is not a heavy burden.

It differs from private institutions in a number of respects, most which I addressed in my last blog. One key respect, however, is that Mount Allison is not -- and cannot  be -- a for profit institution. It runs a balanced budget but it cannot run a profit. This is what makes it different from most private post-secondary educational programmes. They are in the for profit business. NBCC, of course, is also a state-run not-for-profit enterprise. Other institutions, however, are. They are in the educational game to educate but also to make money. Crandall is different. It is not a money making institution. It might make money. I don't know: I tried to find its budget online and couldn't, which doesn't say much since I won't claim to be good at searching. My point, of course, is that Crandall is private not because it wants to make money but because it allows it to avoid the obligations that affect Mount Allison and other universities (UNB, UdM, etc.) in NB. Is this category appropriate? Likely not and I'd suggest that it likely should be changed. But, it is the category that Crandall chose for itself.

Mount Allison, however, is also a private institution. The state regulates Mount A but does not own it, as it were. It contributes significantly to its budget but it does not provide its entire budget. Mount Allison has its own governors (Regents) who approve its budget and make financial policy. Its president goes to the legislature (actually, I think, a legislative committee) and answers questions about it, but its budget is determined by the Board of Regents, as opposed to the government. Its academic programmes are approved and certified by the MPHEC and the province can tell us what to do, but the University Senate approves individual courses, changes to majors or minors, and the like. There is, in other words, a substantial degree of self-regulation that goes on (in my gig we call this collegial government)-- including that done through MASU (the student union whereby students regulate themselves) -- and that makes Mount A something of a private institution as well.

For those who know it, Mount Allison's history is that it developed as a Methodist and then United Church institution, becoming increasingly connected to  the state for budget support after WW II. At the same time, it was involved in a process of slow secularization, as a result of a variety of factors. As an institution, Mount Allison confers its own degrees, makes its own decisions about building priorities, and sets its own agenda regarding its self-regulation and administration, among other things. This process of self-regulation does not always flow smoothly as those who witnessed or were part of the strike a couple of years ago know, but that is how it operates on a day to day basis.

This is important because some people -- particularly the belated and odd right wing proponents of free speech -- seem to feel that universities are the equivalent of the state and thus they can just go in book a room and give a public lecture that says whatever anyone happens to want to say. Universities are not branches of the state the way, say, the public schools are or community colleges or even public parks. They are also private institutions and, as a result, have the right to regulate who can rent rooms or speak on campus. Said differently, Mount A is not an open space -- akin to a town square -- and does retain autonomy and independence from the state.

Mount Allison is, thus, neither a branch of the state (in the manner of the public school system) nor fully independent of it. It is neither public nor private, retaining elements of each and existing in between ideal types. This is important because the state does not consult Mount A with regard to policy (because it is independent) even while it regulates Mount A (because it is not independent).  This situation seems contradictory and it may be. It is, however, to suggest that the stark distinction some people want to create between public and private universities in NB does not exist. The distinction is the product of choices different institutions have made and the degree to which they are willing to accept regulation.  This last point may be, in fact, the key difference between, say, Crandall and Mount A and that, it seems to me, is something different than saying one is public and one is private.

The same thing, btw, applies to Crandall. Its web site, for instance, tells students and potential benefactors about the tax implications of their tuition or gifts and that they can qualify for public bursaries and the like. I will confess that I am not familiar with these things because this is not something with which I have much interaction but I think you can see my point. Crandall is also dependent on the state for things like tax breaks for its students and benefactors or public bursaries in the same way that Mount A is.

Said differently, the supports of "free tuition" for Crandall are missing a significant point when they define Crandall as a private institution and fail to note the character and nature of what that means: it does not cut Crandall off from the state-sponsored economic benefits. It cuts them off from this one -- the low income free tuition policy -- but not others. Hence, the distinction that they are making between public and private as if it were black and white fails to acknowledge the gray quality of the distinction they are drawing. Crandall is not being treated markedly different from other institutions excepting to the degree that it has asked to be treated differently. Once we understand the netherworld of so-called "public" universities and the degree to which the state already supports "private" universities, the concerns being raised by those who claim that this policy is an attack on religion become even more difficult to understand.

Student Evaluations of Teaching .... Why?

I had a long chat with a co-worker the other night and it was a good chat. I'll leave her name out of this since it is not fair to tar her with my thoughts, particularly since she may not share some or even all of them. We were talking about Student Evaluations of Teaching (SETs), those course-end evaluations that students at universities complete. Many universities require them; some requirement that they be included in packages submitted for tenure or promotion. Mount Allison does not, although we are required to complete a self-report and be assessed by respective deans every two years and most people include SETs in their reports. There has been remarkable controversy lately over SETs that, in my view, is frankly misplaced. Why? That is what I want to explain in this email, but I'll tip my hand at the outset: mandatory SETs that are assessed by deans will not accomplish their goals. Hence, they become a hoop through which people jump rather than a meaningful part of work in the post-secondary environment. What is more, we have alternatives. People who are looking to meet certain goals can use these alternatives to a better end.  SETs are not a waste of time but if you are looking to (a) improve teaching, (b) provide higher accountability, (c) ensure a student voice in the evaluation/assessment of profs ... SETs will meet none of these objectives. Hence, promoting them is not a good idea when we can more profitably direct our attention to mechanisms that will work.

One of the things about SETs that surprises me is how the debate -- at Mount A at least -- has become frozen in time. It has, in short, not kept up with the scholarship of teaching and learning as it pertains to SETs. Once, when I first started out in this gig (let's say 15-20 years ago), there was a vigorous debate about the accuracy of SETs. Do the scores students accord to profs accurately reflect teaching ability; that is a competence and so can be used as a tool of evaluation. This debate is old and settled. Anyone who keeps debating it is, frankly, missing out on a lot of scholarship. The scholarship on SETs falls into three camps. There are ardent defenders of their accuracy. There are ardent rejectors of their accuracy. Both are small groups. In other words, just about no one takes one side or the other in an extreme form. Instead, most people fall into a third camp that we could call "yes ... but ...." The basic premise of this perspective -- which represents the mainstream of SETs assessment the following:

• SETs are valuable tools that cannot be taken in isolation. They must be combined with other forms of assessment. In other words, to use them by themselves as your sole or even dominant teaching assessment tool would be wrong and would create inaccuracies. It would be like using a year-end poll instead of having an on-going democracy. 
• SETs cannot be assessed outside of a chronological framework; that is: one needs a time span, ideally several years, for SETs to make sense. In other words, the trend is more important than any single individual number.  This point should not surprise us because it is a standard point of statistical analysis. Ask Michael Adams if you don't believe me. It is the pattern into which the numbers fit that is important.
• SETs require interpretation. You cannot just look down a range of numbers, see that one prof has 4.1/5 on average in their evaluation (we use a standard 5 point scale at Mount A)  and determine that that person is better than someone who had a 3.9/5. Why? We have no longitudinal data, we don't know how many students each of these profs taught, we don't know their stage of careers, we don't know the courses, we don't know how they provided extra help, we don't know whether or not the students in their courses has prerequisites. In other words, all we have is a number outside of context. What if the first person had six students and taught only one class of advanced, motivated students who happened to collectively be a really nice and deferential bunch who assumed that the prof knew what they were doing? What if the other prof laboured for hours with hundreds of students in core courses that students hated taking but were required for their degrees, providing endless hours of extra help, marking, say, hundreds of papers (I'm not exaggerating. I mark hundreds -- seriously -- of papers each year.) Would we think that a situation where the first prof's numbers could have changed dramatically if one student had changed their SETs as fair and accurate? Don't believe me ... take some time and do the math yourself.  What is more, however, we believe that everything requires interpretation. Geographers interpret space; biologists interpret living things, historians interpret the past, sociologists ... society. After we teach this to our students ... why would we suddenly believe that it would not apply to our jobs? After we spend hours teaching students statistical analysis, political inquiry, quantitative methods .... why would we ditch it as if everything that we taught were unimportant? 

Put together, no one who has serious studied this issue says "yeah, go ahead, look at one number and that will tell you whether person X is good or bad at their job." My point is this: in having a debate about whether or not we should have SETs and whether or not deans should look at numbers to assess faculty, we are missing an opportunity to leave an old debate in the past and have a new conversation that serves all of us (students, faculty, administrators, the institution) better. To get to this conversation we need to ask this question: why have SETs? 

I've encountered two answers to this question, one of which I accept and one I reject. The one I reject is this: we assess everything so why not use this tool to assess teaching. I reject that argument for the following reasons:

•  We don't actually assess everything. Most professions are certified, go through probation and then are approved to work in that profession. We do this with faculty; it is called tenure. After certification, though, we don't assess most professions regularly. We don't assess the ice cream we eat; the plumber who  comes to our door; the mechanic to which we take our car. The idea that we assess everything is, therefore, wrong.
• Why would we use a method of assessment that might be inaccurate? Even if we agree that assessment is good and useful, we want that assessment to be accurate. Simply implementing a SETs-based assessment policy will, therefore, do nothing but say we have a policy implemented, the accuracy of which we cannot guarantee. Does that inspire your confidence? Imagine using that line for a different profession. We have imposed a method of assessment on our fire department but we cannot guarantee that it is actually accurate and so we actually tell you whether or not they'll put out the fire if you call. Does that instil faith in the fire department? What about a medical professional? Yes, we've assessed your doctor and they passed but we can't actually say whether or not this assessment is accurate so if you are sick you might or might not get the right advise. Hmmm ...

Sometimes I hear people say "we  have to do something." Yes, we do, but let's do something that meets our goals; not something that we do just to do because that is a waste of time and resources. 

The correct answer to that question is that we need to assess teaching to improve teaching. There is absolutely no other reason to do so. (Pause and think about that if you disagree with me and you'll actually see that that statement is accurate. If we are not assessing teaching to improve it, what other possible end could we have in mind?) Now I am on the same wavelength. And, now you can see why accuracy, change over time, and context are so important. Without these things, we run the risk of drawing wrong conclusions and making changes that would actually hamper good teaching as opposed to enhance it. For instance, a person who is getting better at teaching every year might be someone who is worthy of commendation even if their numbers are not quite as good as someone else's who has basically flatlined. A person who innovates -- say, with regard to technology in the classroom, experiential learning, mentoring -- might run the risk of a horrible failure but we might all be glad that she ran that risk because it helps us. Should we condemn her for that? 

What I would suggest is that as part of this new conversation that we consider our objectives and think about the range of ways we can meet them. We approach our own developments on an opt-in basis, knowing that there will be people who will not opt-in right away, potentially never. I never mind it if someone says to me "you know, Andrew, I'm going to see if this works before I sign on." So, if someone is skeptical and wants to wait until we have evidence of success ... well, heck, that strikes me as just plain good sense. 

We could begin by looking at what SETs are used for in the scholarship of teaching and learning as one first step. We might discover that there is a whole field of research and we don't need to reinvent the wheel. We might encourage team assessments, student open fora on teaching, open fora on conceptions of what constitutes good teaching, or even what constitutes a class, experiential learning (done right), different forms of extra help, encouraging faculty involvement in the scholarship of teaching and learning, encouraging faculty involvement in teaching conferences, developing new and flexible forms of teaching that meet student needs. In other words, there is a whole bunch of stuff that we can and we should do to improve teaching ... why not start doing it. SETs and some mode of thinking about those might be useful but there is so much more that we can do to encourage student voices, provide fora for them so they can be heard, and get encourage improvements in the quality of education. Yet, if we spend all our time discussing SETs and their accuracy and whether or not a dean should look at them ... well, none of the rest of this stuff -- from student voices to something else -- gets done. 

I might blog more on this in the future but one last thing ... there is a role for deans in this and I honestly don't understand why it is not being done right now. Why not encourage good teaching? Why not go to workshops and teaching conferences? Why not check in with faculty as the term goes along? One of the big problems with using SETs to evaluate teaching is this. Imagine, for instance, and for the sake of argument, that it works and it does help us separate a good teacher from a bad one. If that were true ... it does that only after the fact. In other words, and assuming the accuracy of SETs, we discover that Professor X (who got a bad evaluation) was not educating his students only after the course was done. By this time, the prof -- allowing a bad prof -- might have cost students their scholarship, or forced them to have to repeat courses, or even driven them from the subject because he was so bad. SETs, in other words, have a built in flaw: they are re-active. We need to be pro-active in developing good teaching. And, I might say, I am on board for anyone who wants to find ways of doing that. 

University Strikes

Living Through a Labour Action

Labour actions -- strikes and/or lockouts -- are tough on everyone. There, I have offered the standard sympathetic statement to open this blog. Sure, labour actions are difficult, particularly at places like the one where I work: Mount Allison University. But, stating that they are difficult does not really get to the heart of the matter. There are deeper, more important questions that need to be asked if a labour action is to have some meaning. Strikes, or lockouts, I hear people say are last resorts. They occur if -- and only when -- the two sides (employers and employees) disagreements about potentially a whole host of matters are irreconcilable. A labour action is part of a process. It signals that discussion and negotiation has moved to a more overt and determined form of conflict. This creates the impression that labour actions are unusual circumstances, unfortunate events that mar an otherwise smoothly functioning workplace. The goal of this blog is to articulate the opposite perspective. I will argue that right now, the workplace I know -- Mount Allison University -- is not functioning smoothly. Before anyone says "hey, this guy is a prof who has been on strike and he's going to bitch at the admin" let me say both "yes" and "no". The issue of smooth functioning is complicated -- in both a yes/no way -- and this is not inherently the fault of administrators. Certain approaches to university administration can mediate conflict or augment it. My goal is, then, to argue:

• Conflicts between faculty and university administrators have a number of causes. We need to examine these causes in a clear-sighted way so that we can make some provision for the future by beginning a difficult type of conversation about them.
• We need to avoid -- at least at first -- personalizing labour conflicts because that is a bit of an intellectual cop out. Stating "hey, this is the other guy's fault. I am just in here trying to do a good job at my job" really does not get us anywhere because … the other guy can do exactly the same thing. In other words, it is a non-starters as a conversation (leading only to polarization and silly accusations) and it studiously avoids considering the issues that created the labour action in the first place.

I state over and over again in this blog that I have biases and that addressing our biases are not simply a matter of will. (Will can be important, a willingness to see things from other perspectives as opposed to "sticking to your guns".) To repeat the line that a friend of mine uses: bias is something we all think other person has. I tell my students: the most troubling biases (in terms of analysis) are those we do not know we have. So … of course I am biased. I was on strike. I have some fundamental disagreements with a number of the policies that university tried to get my union to accept. The fact that one has biases, however, should not preclude being part of a wider conversation about the future of the university. I offer this blog as a contribution to that conversation.

Two things obscure our understanding of the root cause of strikes: personification and path dependency. In strikes or lockouts, the issues involved "get personal" but in more than one way. Striking workers, for instance, often associate specific university policies -- drawing on the place where I work for examples -- with individual administrators. This might be true or it might not be in the sense that it is often difficult to figure out who is responsible for specific policies in any workplace. The important thing is that the individual administrator -- for the striking faculty -- becomes a symbol of what they do not like. Likewise, administrators do the same thing. Specific faculty, for instance, are cast as troublemakers or administrators imagine that the faculty union does not have a lot of support and blame the union executive for being too "radical" or "financially irresponsible," etc. The problem with personification is that it disguises the issues at hand and which stand at the root of labour actions. I have never met the group of workers -- in a university or otherwise -- who are sheep blinding following a radical and irresponsible leadership. Particularly when it comes to faculty who work at universities, we are dealing with articulate people who conduct their own research. Likewise, specific policies may be championed by specific administrators (and, in that sense, changing administrators can change the direction of university policy) but anyone who has been involved in labour negotiations at a university knows that policies have a life cycle that often goes far beyond that of individual administrators. What is at issue, then, is not individual personalities but policy options; the focus on personalities obscures the important issues that are actually under consideration.

The other thing that disguises an understanding of labour actions is path dependency in the media. For a variety of reasons -- and I don't think bias in favour of one side or another in a labour action is one of them … most of the time -- reporting on strikes works from a standard script. Workers (in this case faculty) are asking for more money. Employers claim to not have the money. You've all seen the headlines "wages are the main issue". In the case of the labour action at Mount Allison (the one I am currently living through), money issues are important. I don't think anyone would deny that on either "side." But, in this case (I cannot speak for others) money in terms of wage increases in actually a very small issue in the realm of everything that is being negotiated. There are, to be sure, monetary implications to most issues. We live in a market based society and so things cost money (neither you nor I made this rule; we live by it whether we happen to like it or not). To say that one side is interested in money (say, "greedy profs") and the other side is not is, then, to fundamentally misconstrue the nature of a market economy. (A quick example: I will drive my daughter to the opening game of a basketball tournament this evening. That trip will be conducted for a variety of reasons: family time, athletics, fellowship. But, it has monetary implications. For instance, I need to buy gas (Irving does not give the stuff away) to get to the tournament; there are registration fees for the tournament (used to pay referees and timekeepers, etc.). To state, then, that there are monetary implications to contract negotiations is simply to state the obvious. It can be no other way. But, there is a different between monetary implications and people asking for a raise. For instance, one of my union's positions is that faculty who leave the university should be replaced in order to maintain a certain faculty to student ratio and provide for effective instruction. There are monetary implications to that but it is not asking for a raise. For one reason or another, reporters have a hard time exploring and describing these issues and default to a "wages are the main issue" position.  This serves the same effect as personification: it disguises the issues that are actually under consideration. (I don't, btw, fault or blame reporters for this, perhaps in another blog we can explore the reasons why default positions pop up so frequently in the media. The reporters that I have encountered during the current Mount Allison labour action seem, by and large, like good people who are interested in doing a professional and effective job with their craft.)

If university-based labour actions are not, therefore, the product of either wage demands (though, clearly they can be) or individuals (who do play a role), what causes them? Where do they come from? There might be an endless series of answers to these questions. Let us focus on just one to simplify things. Others can chime in with issues that I have missed or with different perspectives.

From what I can tell, there is a disjuncture between the ways in which the faculty and administrators view the university. Part of this disjuncture is a change in the way universities are administered. This change has been a long time coming and proceeded unevenly at different places in the country. In some places, the change is not complete. Smaller religiously based universities, for instance, have developed in different ways. The change can be described as the development of a professional managerial set of administrators. In the past, one became an administrator at any particular university by "working one's way up through the system." Faculty became heads who became deans who became presidents or vice presidents. This was a far from perfect system. It could breed an insular perspective in which the broader currents of scholarship and education were neglected in favour of traditional approaches to matters. (Whether or not this was really a bad thing is something that would need to be empirically assessed; one should not assume that one is insular because one worked one's way up the ladder at a particular university. I am just highlighting a potential problem.) There were other problems that insularity could create but in the service of keeping this blog at least reasonably short, I'll pass over them for now. On the other hand, the strength of this system was that it breed a community of interest. Administrators had a lot of experience with particular institutions: they understood how things worked, strengths and weaknesses of various faculty, valued the traditions of particular institutions, and knew the people with whom they worked. Some might have been nice; some might have been jerks but they had a close connection to the institution and its values.

The development of a professional managerial group of administrators changes this. Again, let's not personify: some might be good; some might be bad. The point is that professional managers are not tied to the values of particular institutions but rather bring a set of values in with them that are alien to the institution. This difference is further augmented by a host of new professional services that train university administrators. Because I run an academic programme I periodically run into these training options and I can say that they are generic. They ascribe a set of policies that should be in place regardless of the institution. I'll give you an example: increase the amount of grants that faculty apply for. Everyone likes grants but students frequently complain that faculty are more interested in their research than in teaching. Indeed, the Mount Allison Student Union is asking for new policies to make faculty more accountable for their in-class teaching. But, what happens to the focus of faculty is the administration starts to say that your future at this institution depends on grants. Grants are not at all a bad thing. No one I know believes they are but the question that needs to be asked is about balance. Should an institution like Mount Allison follow a generic approach to grants that is designed for a larger multiversity? What effect will that have on teaching? Grants take a long, long time to apply for; that time has to come from somewhere. We can focus on grants, to be sure, but that focus will come at the expense of in-class instruction. Moreover … I will ask this rhetorically but really I mean is "consider this and tell me how you would respond" … what would you do. If someone said "you will be judged on your grants and your salary will be tied to that" … what would you do? How would you balance the equation? Whether you liked it or not, you'd shift resources. This is what any business person does so we should not be surprised if faculty would do it. A business person may like selling certain products but if there is no market for that product, they will shift resources to a product for which there is a market. Capitalist societies laud this; they call it good business sense. The same thing will happen with faculty.

The disjuncture between administrators and faculty, then, creates conflict. This is a conflict of values; it is a conflict that is about the future. How do we balance the equation? Leave Mount A out of it for the sake of discussion. What faculty are saying to university administrators with strikes is "we do not share your conception of the way the future should unfold at this institution." When administrators decide that they will accept a strike -- or, keep issues on the table that they know will force a strike -- they are saying to faculty "we do not share your conception of the way the future should unfold at this institution." Each side, of course, thinks they are right. Let's grant that. But, what we need to do is to find a way to mediate between them. The spate of labour actions at various universities indicates that we are not doing a good job of this. It indicates that a different approach is needed. Once the labour action at Mount Allison is done … I'd like to see some reaching out in order to find that new approach.