I quit

The article was written to describe the difficulties an individual would have moving from an academic environment to a non-academic job.

Well, pondering the author's POV I considered my position of a number of years working in a non-academic world and being exposed to the "academy". Being an adjunct is one thing but being in the machine, well...

First, I enjoy teaching and having a classroom, F2F or online and working with students, even the obnoxious ones. I have knowledge and experience I want to share.    As well, I have worked in the real world. I have worked in organizations that are profit driven, even non-profits have a bottom line.  Not only real world but in real time.

I guess an example that is real time is that of a police officer shooting a suspect. It is the academicians that come forward and ask, "Why didn't you ask or have a conversation with the perp? You could have offered him or her a cookie."

Seriously, the environment of the institution is one that wants to turn over every stone and piece of paper, talk to everyone and then gather around the no-flame fire pit and sing kumbaya. Then maybe we can make a decision or a plan.

In a profit center you do not horse around trying to decide how many copies are too many copies and take 10+ years to solve the problem. Constraint theory is one tool that is used in various industries. But the bottle neck of indecision, except when it comes to a student's grade, takes for ever. "Geesh, our enrollments are down. Let's form a committee."

Committees - just like team work without the work. I have been on a committee that for 3.5 years has accomplished one thing. Pullease.   In some companies there are project management teams. Or another that has process action teams. And there are some standard committees.  But committees for committee sake?

I worked in an industry where we needed to make a decision soon or we would lose satellite acquisition. That was money. Or evaluating aircraft movement and flight ops. That affected the bottom line.

Could you imagine if there was a bird strike and needing to know the type of bird and migratory patterns to include feeding and the boss said," let's form a committee with 3 subcommittees to discuss this problem. Here is a cookie."  I was tasked with identifying the bird, dissecting the gizzard, and making a report in a short time. 

Or how about going out to a job site and climbing a 500 ft antenna, finding the problem and then fixing it. Done.  But  in an academic administration function you climb the antenna, find the problem, you report back, a committee is formed with a number of subcommittees, who in turn discuss the problem - provided they assessed the problem correctly. Up the ladder, look at the problem, maybe take pictures, and bring back to the committee and the sub committees. This goes on for 3 years. But the problem has not been corrected and even though you have been up on there in the breeze, sun, ice and you know what will fix it.

The boss comes in and rates your performance based on the fact the job has not been done. Hands tied. "Bring cookies, they like cookies. Because they do not like you, you should bring cookies." Just put me in charge. "Can't because of campus governance this has to be performed by committee."

The numbers are down. I have an idea what is driving that train. I have some ideas and some short term fixes. But what did the committee decide? They decided to table increasing retention and focus on the cookies that will be served at the next meeting.  But here is the problem. "Why didn't you tell the committee members that they should focus on retention?" They are not in my chain.  I have no authority over them.

We teach in our classes the subjects of economics and the bottom line, we instruct and create scenarios in the arena of constraint management. But we are in a 15 week box and what is expected in a week in the real world we will play out the event over and over for 4 years. 

Let me ramp this up – we rode the gravy train too long.  We have demanded the government to take control of the for-profit institutions, but that dog came back to bite the open institution.  Along with that we are seeing a down turn in student enrollments.  Economists predicted that, and history shows when there is a slight improvement in the economic enrollments will go down.  We also know that each generation has a different view of education – in the world of McDonalds and Sesame Street we know there is a need to get what we want now.  And in a format that works within our frameset. 

We can no longer teach with Big Chief tablets and yellowed acetates.  We need to scrap the committee mind set and take a good hard look at the real world.  Once you figure out what will work and make it happen, you can have a cookie.