Who You Calling A Jesse?

Higher education institutions need to make far more clear separations between the core business that occur on a higher education campus. Research and education isn’t the same thing and neither is training. The public seems to blur education and training as do the institutions themselves. Institutions have made changes, smudging the definitions/roles, for funding reasons and higher education has failed the public in not even trying to explain it’s role (or doing such a bad job at it they might as well not have been trying).

Research is about the pursuit of something for the sake of it

Research can be seen as the endless pursuit of something for the sake of the research (generalization yes, but for the love all things we need to talk on more simpler terms in higher education). Research in Higher Education terms is gaining knowledge for the sake of knowledge. Spin off discoveries usually appear and the research projects may iterate many times before it becomes something tangible or it may just stop. Generally it generates revenue over a much longer term. It may develop expertise as well. It can be value-added to education but it is separate, it is expensive, and creating an environment for a wild range of research to occur is the whole reason a higher education institution exists.

Education is about learning how to learn

To an undergrad student in higher education is about learning how to learn. That includes skills like assessing the quality of a source, finding quality sources quickly, and packaging up your argument/research in a way that the target audience can understand it. The truth that no one seems to admit is that, except in special cases, it really doesn’t matter where you get your first four years done. Undergrad is generic, grad school is a different story.

As you move to graduate work you are applying that skill and developing expertise. That is where research plays a huge role in my mind. You can only develop certain type of expertise in a field if you are allowed to dedicated your time researching it. Higher Education has students so that there will be people to utilize the infrastructure and continue to pursue knowledge in a protected environment (what protected means to me – safe from dramatic government, corporate, or economic oversight).

That isn’t for everyone and far fewer students go on to graduate studies then enter the process out of high school. That is good. The skills are transferable to many jobs in the real world and civilization as a whole benefits from having critical, efficient thinkers that can communicate outside of the academic environment. The truly dedicated move on up the rungs of academia and hopefully have the passion that be shared with students in the future. Sadly I think many loose a certain passion and hide in higher education but they are exceptions.

Skills training is for corporations or is it?

Skills training for a specific job is something that I don’t think works well within Higher Education as it is currently designed. In Ontario we had clear division between College and University where one was skills training and the other was essentially academic training. The government and the public fails (or chooses not) to see the difference in practical terms. Pressure mounts on Universities to train students for real jobs and Colleges have lifted their educational profile by teaching academic courses.

I think Colleges have made the transition towards ‘academia light’ better than Universities have towards skills training and largely because the underlying culture conflict. Universities are run by academics that were trained as academics with the belief Higher Education just exists to pursue knowledge and the value to community is assumed, while College is run as a business. I think Higher Education shouldn’t be exclusively about the academics and it should stop trying to mix the two and be honest about what is being offered.

Globally we see specialty schools doing specific skills training for safety, nursing assistants, etc. There is a market for more specific training everyone and generally Higher Education (besides Colleges in Ontario) have not taken a lot of interest in exploited the market. Instead they try to train skills as well as have students explore their education. I think that is not being true to what the experience is supposed to be about and has created some bizarre dependency between Higher Ed and many companies.

Next: How can staff in higher ed help these three areas?

Part of the Higher Education revolution.

Note: This is all based on observations, experiences, thoughts, etc from working in Higher education for 8 years and being a student for another 5 in undergrad at two different schools. I did my Msc and my wife did her grad work through distance education for the last 3 years. My stint as President of the Staff Association at U of Waterloo is over and I find myself all fired up about how Higher Education needs to change. I am also really tired of seeing academics research problems and hiding that research in journals were only other academics will find it.

With the economy slowing (or grinding to a halt) mixed with credit being hard to find, higher education institutions might be facing a perfect storm that could shake poorly run institutions to the ground. Students with parents that have the money to pay for their education might be hard pressed to do so, jobs to pay for tuition might be harder to find, loans outside of state assistance might dry up, money for research might be cut, and public along with private donations will likely be even harder to get. This all spells trouble for organizations that wish to maintain a status quo. For those looking to fix some big issues the climate could be ideal.

What are the biggest issues facing higher ed both with regards to the organizational structure and the adoption of technology? My list is short (it is hard to keep short):

1. higher education has an identity crisis – a religious battle is going on internally between the ‘leave me alone, things are fine’ crowd and the ‘wow this is messed up, why are we here?’ crowd
2. the culture has created processes that make change slow and ineffective make sure that any change is painful
3. young talent is defeated by a management class that doesn’t know what management is (and I blame academics for that)

I have already posted my thoughts on how to deal with inefficient committees and the fun that surrounds item 2 and some of 3 above. The first is the illness with the following points the symptoms… I think. I want to explore my thoughts as to why we (higher education) are here and what we can do about it (besides better meetings, time on task tracking, etc). This is a series of blog posts as I don’t want to post some rant in big essay form.

Next post: What are research, educational, and training activities in Higher ed?

Quick question. If you have multiple devs working on a few different screens, each monkeying with CSS, it takes very little time to end up with a huge mess of CSS. How do you deal with that? Do you:

1. Delete the CSS and start again defining a common sheet?
2. Try to optimize the CSS.
3. Live with it.
4. Don’t ever let dev’s touch CSS… they are dirty.

I ran into a 6000+ line CSS file for a dozen pages. They each have some heavy js UI going on but 6000 lines? An auto-optimizer cut it to 2200 or so pretty quickly but you can’t work with that file. I decided to start again, clean.

The upside is that I know the site mostly works without CSS and it exposed some odd decisions with some of the HTML (yay for nekkid web sites). The downside is that we may have to deal with browser bugs all over again—but then again we do not support IE 6. Only IE 7+, FF (latest), Safari (latest).

Feature request for Dreamweaver CS5 – something to optimize my CSS!

Karlyn Morissette has set her ’biggest problem in Higher Education’ on the total inefficacy of higher education institution and how that is enshrined in the culture. I agree. From my viewpoint, Staff and Faculty in Higher Education spend far too much time in committees that have no mandate or authority (or even an agenda or a chair). The "building of consensus" for every little thing paralyzes progress and forces what I see as a continuous pursuit towards mediocrity.

Examples given in Karlyn’s post we see every day in higher ed (committees, endless pursuit of a pet project). The problem gets a lot worse when you look at some of the typical decision making processes that have layers of committees that stretch over months with 12 or so people on each of them. In the case of grad admissions or research funding, committees don’t make decisions but instead push an application up to another committee to consider. Finally someone might make a decision but usually that some one is in no position to make a proper decision as they have no idea what they are deciding on. They just sign the paper and move on.

Time is money except in Academia where time builds authority

To me this boils down to a lack of appreciation for people’s time (at least in Canada, specifically Ontario). It is understandable from the academic viewpoint, you have been in school all your life. Getting a phd is a long process and that process works. An academic’s time has little value over simply having their presence on campus as their entire purpose is to think and do research. Their work hours are open, this is their life. Unless the committees get in the way of their research or teaching there is no real cost.

However, staff time is different. At a guess, historically higher ed (being run by academics) hired clerical staff for clerical tasks. They weren’t required to make decisions as the academics were in charge. With 1000 or so students that might have made sense. As institutions grew they hired more professional staff. Professional staff hired more professional staff to help manage the business of the institution. These professionals are often more skilled and necessary to ensure a level of service. However, academics ensured the committee processes remained in place and that they had final say. This does nothing to empower staff and the skilled professionals that couldn’t accept that left higher ed in the 80’s (at Waterloo anyway). Larger, older institutions seemed to simply professionalize phd/academic roles which laid down the academic committee process that leaves decisions with academic chairs and Deans.

Note: The evolution of academia in North America and beyond is a thesis topic methinks… so my abridged assumptions shall end here ;)

The culture was enshrined over the 1990’s and the insane cut backs that higher education had to deal with. New staff didn’t come in, culture took over. I would assume that the reality of ‘it is easier to beg forgiveness’ always has been present but I found when I started working in Higher Ed that it was the only way to get anything new done. Sadly that approach is wrong (most of the time). It is wrong because sure you change things but you don’t have lasting change. You simply embarrass other people and get shut out of any future process. On the rare occasion you succeed in sparking lasting change but you have still marginalized yourself and others to get there. That isn’t a good way to do things.

Identify value, document process, and stop doing things that don’t need to get done

In order to have lasting change you need to participate in the process, ask questions, understand why people fear change, and give them a big nudge in the right direction. Lead by example, act professional, and be kind to those that will attack you for what you doing. It isn’t easy but in the medium term you will see change. After 8 years working in Higher Education I am convinced that no amount of positive change is worth treating people poorly. If someone makes it impossible to do anything then bulldoze them but I doubt you will have to fight the bully if you build support by other means.

There are a few simple things you can do that borrow from the world of Project Management, Drucker, Roberts Rules, and others:

• Ensure a committee meeting always has an agenda
• Identify the Chair, support the Chair in keeping the meeting on track
• Identify who makes decisions and what is required in order to have a decision made
• Identify who will carry out the decisions
• Do not take things personally even in the face of obvious personal attacks
• Track your time on task, report it to your manager on a weekly basis
• If you are working on a project, get agreement on what ‘finished’ means (open ended projects are probably the worst specific waste in higher ed)
• Identify what you expect to get out of the project
• Figure out what doesn’t need to get done and stop doing it

All these things help identify value in what you are others that are working with you are doing. That value will help make people feel better. If they feel better about what they are doing they are more likely to take risks on the current project or one in the future.

Organizational waste, inefficiencies, etc will not be fixed over night in higher education. But making an effort now (especially in the face of cuts) will help in the future.

Following what was an interesting 2007, 2008 proved to be one of personal and professional growth. Here is my reflection/projection post for the year.

Personally:

Probably the oddest thing about the last year was that it felt like I got very little done. I just didn’t feel productive in my work life nor did I feel like I was using my own time very well. Sure I got to spend a lot of time with my son and accomplished a lot at work but I think a lack of sleep just left me feeling a bit drowned in tasks for 2008. An overall goal for 2009 is manage my time better and enjoy myself more.

I also need to use more time for a hobby or two that isn’t web tech related. It may be time to re-invest into hockey equipment and/or my bike. At the very least I am going to bring my son fishing and try to get up north more often.

That said, things I feel good about personally:

• I finished my Msc (and my wife finished hers)
• Led the UW Staff Association as it doubled its operating budget, hired an Executive Manager, changed some key policies, and after 40 years the organization signed a formal Memorandum of Agreement with the University of Waterloo.
• Drove to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina
• Besides Myrtle Beach I visited Las Vegas, Orlando, Wilmington, Clarksberg, Georgetown. All except Orlando were family trips!
  
• Spent a lot of time with Addison
• Welcomed an amazing baby girl into our family

Professionally

Working at the University of Waterloo has advantages and drawbacks. The drawbacks are largely the politics of the environment – a culture that suppresses creative problem solving has been set in for some time. I can honestly say that in 2008 I finally figured out how to get things done properly in such a place without becoming part of the existing culture. The organizational culture must (and will) change over time. Not sure if I will be around UW long enough to see it but who knows.

The past year was about being front and centre in campus wide politics. This coming year is going to be about building some pretty cool front ends, learning to really love (and hate) AJAX, AIR, MS servers, and design. I will be more behind the scenes on campus politics hopefully and I just focus on some good geekery for 2009.

I would also like to make a few more conferences this year. The creative spark that I get from conferences went missing last year. I need that back.

Community

This past year saw what I think was a huge success in the growth of a local tech/entreprenuer community outside of traditional channels. StartupCampWaterloo and BarCampWaterloo really started to take off. DemoCampGuelph contributed as well to what is a pretty interesting unconference community. It isn’t a huge community by any stretch but it is a very intelligent group of creative entrepreneurs. I am excited to see what 2009 will bring.

There is of course the other groups locally that add depth to the community. DevHouseWaterloo (hosted at AideRSS), local Twitter groups, Flickr groups, etc are all enriching and broadening community.

This year I want to get a local Adobe User Group off the ground. The region has a lot of Adobe users and I think they could all benefit from having a group that shares their experiences using software from Adobe. Being an Adobe Community Expert I should really get on that ;)

Bring on 2009!