Bucky Fuller used to say that the educational system was designed to specialize the high intelligence people into narrower and narrower fields, leaving the second rate people to run the world. In general, he was correct, except for the little corner of the world in which I've spent a good part of my life - higher educational institutions. Here the really smart people run everything and, of course, because their training has not changed that means that you really need to watch out.
Here at the top of the educational pyramid we have highly educated people running multi-million dollar (and in some cases, multi-billion dollar) enterprises. The problem is, that they are all trained in something else other than running large, complex multi-million dollar enterprises.
This does not deter them however. They've been certified "smart" (they all have Ph.D's in something or other) so as people who have to confidence that only members of the class of winners can have, they are supremely confident that they can push these large social machines into the future with a minimum of trouble and , unfortunately, a maximum of back-biting.
Unless, of course, something unexpected happens. And you may have noticed that something unexpected happened last fall - the bottom dropped out of the economy and, more importantly, the bottom dropped out of the endowments that funded all those well paid educational winners. This resulted in reactions from much handwringing to abject panic as the bubble burst.
Here at the World's Greatest Tech School (WGTS), they have approached the problem in the usual way that engineers do - they have analyzed the problem, prescribed a remedy, and set about to apply it. Since they were in okay shape to begin with, this has involved some, but a minimum of blood on the floor and that blood has been among the people without the letters after they're name. Reports from upriver at the World's Greatest University (WGU) have not been so sanguine, however.
At the WGU things have been cushy for a long, long time. The endowment has been growing by leaps and bounds for years and this has meant that the administrators have been by definition doing a great job, even if they haven't. So, when the worm turned, they took it pretty hard. In fact, we can pretty much say that they decided to do what really smart people generally do when they find themselves with a situation that they can't think they're way out of - really, really stupid things.
Currently there are large holes in the ground in Alston that look like they're going to stay that way for the foreseeable future. Career and student support organizations in the Faculty of Arts and Science have been told to absorb a 25% cut. Organizations like the Extension School (which is a cash cow) have been told that they have to cut their budget because everyone else is. And, I'm sure, this is just the beginning.
Not terribly rational behavior for those devoted to the life of the mind. But then the University only has $25 billion in the bank (down 30% from the level of the GNP of a small country). And, most importantly, no one ever wants The Endowment to shrink on their watch since the growth of The Endowment is the single most important directive of all these administrator's lives. So, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences is planning to cut $220 million over the next two years (19% of their budget) - needs of the staff to pay their mortgages be damned.
And it's a safe bet that the people who have the letters after their names are not going to be the ones that take it in the neck over this situation. You can't expect the distinguished "Daddy and Myrtle Bigbucks Professor of Totally Useless Facts" to see their highly distinguished salary be reduced now can we?What would the other members of the guild say? No, the mismanagement that the "Recession" has exposed will be taken out of the hide of faculty assistants, and steamfitters, and cafeteria workers even if they had no hand in creating it.
In both institutions there's been a lot of Obama-like "we're all in this together" rah-rah talk going on, but like with the Titanic (and the main library at the WGU was built as a memorial to someone who died on the Titanic), there are people who live on the Lido Deck and people who live below the waterline in Steerage. We all may be on the same boat, but some parts sink before others. People who live at the top of the boat tend to forget this.
I suppose the only solace to the had is the fact that, since January, a good percentage of these people have been spending most of their time on the shuttle to Washington to advise the new administration. But I suppose that there are problems with that as well...