Syndicate and Hague

I spent much of the latter part of last week doing one of the things I do best (and enjoy most): being a thorn in the side of lockstep thinking. Even though I’m too much of a speck to truly change anything in this instance, the least I can do is challenge the assumptions people put forth as “common sense” (or even “commonly agreed upon”).

In my experience, it is very easy in marketing meeting type situations for people to blindly acquire and use the language presented as their baseline. What I mean by this is that, if the people running a meeting use a word like “spin,” the people in the meeting will think in terms of spin. This happens for a variety of reasons: people want to impress those who have more power and therefore don’t question underlying premises of a discussion; people are afraid of losing their jobs so they play along even if they’re annoyed; or people - when faced with contributing to something they disagree with - hold their tongues rather than speak up. The reluctance to speak up is sensible. It’s self-protection, but it’s just as likely a result of the speed with which and the manner in which people construct thoughts and arguments. Some people need to take time to dissect and construct and are marvelous thinkers - but aren’t quick thinkers.

Anyway, the series of discussions was about something of a pretty broad scope. It’s something I consider both potentially incredibly beneficial and dangerous simultaneously and my hunch is that it will be used in both ways, which I can’t do anything about. The most I can do is try to help construct and frame positive uses. But that’s not what I’m talking about here (if I tried to sum up everything I said, we’d be looking at an even more long-winded blog post than usual).

What I want to talk about is how we develop a lexicon and how destructive a lexicon can be once it is assimilated into regular speech. In this instance, the term “spin” came up (as in: how to “spin” the U in a positive light), as did the term “loyalty” (as in: how do we create loyalty to the U - implicitly, how do we create loyalty to the brand of the U?)

Let’s take on the word “spin” first, because it’s easier to deconstruct. In fact, Jon Stewart did it quite well several years ago when he deconstructed what “Spin Alley” (the place the cable news people cut to when discussing a debate) actually means during his infamous Crossfire appearance:

You go to spin alley, the place called spin alley. Now, don’t you think that, for people watching at home, that’s kind of a drag, that you’re literally walking to a place called deception lane?

…

But what I believe is, they’re not making honest arguments. So what they’re doing is, in their mind, the ends justify the means.

Honesty is the core here. In “spin alley” you’re talking about dishonest argument, in “spinning the U” you’re talking about a dishonest presentation of the University. Nothing is inherently positive. No one is going to have exclusively positive interactions with anything ever. So the question is this: are you going to try to artificially force positivity or are you going to spend your time and money creating experiences and opportunities that people actually feel happy to be a part of?

For instance, if I say that the faculty of my PhD program areas of Culture & Teaching and Learning Technologies are freakin awesome, that isn’t spin. That is genuine sentiment based on a positive and ongoing experience. Creating positive experiences and painting positive pictures are very, very different things.

You get the picture. Let’s move on to the concept of loyalty.

In the context of this discussion, we’re essentially talking about getting people affiliated with the U to be loyal to the U. And here is where the problem of the lexicon comes in. If there is a group and those leading a session ask a question that is (paraphrased) “how do we increase people’s loyalty to the U?” then the group’s job is to respond to that without actually questioning the question. You respond with ways in which to increase loyalty, rather than to ask whether loyalty is what we should be working towards.

Since we’re talking broad scope here, we’re talking students, alums, external folks, faculty, staff…can anyone see the issue of using a term like loyalty with all its connotations (faithfulness, obedience, devotion) in regard to people whose economic and professional fates are tied to the institution? Additionally, the notion that we ought to be loyal to an institution rather than committed to a collective purpose strikes me as terribly hollow. If the U is merely a shell or a brand, then commitment is meaningless. It’s the U’s purpose that people are committed to, not a tagline or an institutional brand.

Of course, purpose is a tricky thing: it actually needs to be actively developed and worked at. A brand can coast on its merits and has sale value. A purpose is a moral imperative; veiling that moral imperative in branding language allows people to forget the purpose exists, it allows people to pursue the game of marketing for its own end rather than the higher purpose they are supposed to be serving.

Loyalty, however, if induced - the concept of “raving fans” was discussed - is a blind, emotional, and arbitrary tie. What does it mean to be a fan of the Vikings who paints his/her face purple? Who cares! They come to the game, buy the jersey, drink beer in the stands…they give us money.

That is the source of my aggravation. The thing that twists me in knots. If the goal is loyalty - a word chosen in a winnowing process of meeting after meeting after meeting - then it appears we want nothing more than consumers. We’ll provide them as much as the bare minimum they require in order to come back and purchase something another day.

And this is why language is important. If, instead of asking how to create “raving fans,” we asked questions about facilitating and building community, and how to maintain our own authenticity so that the actual experiences people have with us are positive/beneficial (rather than just spun to be so), we would be asking far better questions and getting entirely different answers.

(Now, one could say that my professors/TAs back in undergrad at the U did a pretty damn good job of helping me develop my critical reasoning skills, but none of these discussions are really about quality - just perception - so it’s kind of irrelevant.)

So they did it. The Regents, sans two, voted to destroy the Regents Scholarship. There are not enough expletives in the world to express how I’m feeling right now.

Here’s the thing, though. It’s our own damn fault.

Let me repeat that: it’s our own damn fault.

One of the Regents who voted against the proposal cited phone calls she’d gotten as one reason she would not vote to destroy the scholarship. Public outcry does work and if 2,300 people take classes every year, 4,000 workers should have been at that rally. Do you really think they would have passed it if McNamara plaza had been filled with U employees and the TV reporters who would have followed a crowd like that? I don’t.

Maybe we’ve just gotten so used to getting screwed that we don’t see the point of making an issue of it anymore. Cut pay? Sure. At least I have a job. But what happens when they come for more? How willing are you to have your compensation package sucked dry so that we can keep executive salaries at a “freeze” and not a “cut”?

If you weren’t there and didn’t make phone calls:
You all just took a cut and you didn’t even try to fight it. Those of you who make money and don’t need it let your lowest paid workers take a cut and you didn’t even try to fight it.

Protest works. But it only works when people show up. Sadly, those who proposed anti-employee solutions were able to waltz off with more of our money because we as a whole didn’t bother to try.

And that pisses me off. And depresses me.

So where the hell am I going to find an extra 3 grand a year? Anyone? I guess I’ll start applying for scholarships that could have gone to other students. I was actually not doing that because I felt I didn’t need the money as badly. That’s changed now, though…

For those of you who missed the rally, or want to forward this on, or use the arguments, I’m pasting the text of my speech from this afternoon’s rally below.

I want to start by saying that though the administration often frames dissent like this as us hating the University, they’re wrong. We love the University. I am a graduate of the English department, and when I moved back here from New York I made an effort to get a job at the University of Minnesota. Our faculty and students are wonderful, and it was actually my job here at the University that inspired me to go back to school and work on my PhD.

Everyone has made fantastic arguments about the encouraging the culture of learning at the University and this being a big part of who we are and why we are here, but I’m going to focus on those of us whose degrees or coursework directly pertain to our jobs.

First of all, I will hammer home the fact that this is a pay cut. Not only is it a pay cut, but it is one of the only cuts in our compensation that will almost exclusively affect low- and middle-wage employees.

Whether it’s the first degree or PhD, the people who take these courses are people for whom education will improve their professional lives. Senior-level employees and faculty members, who for the most part make much more than the rest of us, will not feel this cut personally. And I want to thank those faculty and senior employees who support us and know that cutting the Regents scholarship is the wrong thing to do.

Let’s talk about what kind of pay cut this is.

If you are working on your first bachelors degree, taking one four credit course at a time each spring, summer, and fall, you will be paying approximately $390 per year. An employee working towards their first degree makes less money, so based on a salary of $25,000 per year, that is a 1.5% pay cut.

Let’s say you have a Bachelor’s degree and let’s be generous and say you make $37,000 per year. At the 25% rate, taking a spring, summer and fall undergraduate course will cost you about $950 – about a 2.5% pay cut.

Taking a graduate course each semester at $37,000 per year will cost you about $1,900 – about a 5% pay cut.

Who is being asked to sacrifice? Who is taking the pay cut?

I am a technology professional in the civil service/bargaining unit here at the University. I am also a PhD student in Curriculum and Instruction. Part of my focus is on Learning Technologies. My PhD program directly benefits my boss and my department and my school. I am not unique. The University of Minnesota staff in my courses bring inspiration and new knowledge back to our departments so that we create improve the output of the University.

This pay cut effectively renders the education that is part of our compensation package unaffordable. It will lead to decreased inspiration, innovation, and that will affect the strategic positioning of the University and the quality we currently provide.

This pay cut will affect staff recruitment and retention. Once the economy recovers, the University of Minnesota’s ability to recruit talented staff will decrease, as will our ability to retain staff. Other schools offer dependent and spousal tuition support at varying levels, we offer none. Decreasing a part of our compensation that doesn’t stand up to what other schools currently offer is misguided.

This pay cut is not about the myth of 10% annual increase: the Regents Scholarship increases in cost on average 10% a year. So does tuition. The program itself isn’t getting too expensive, tuition is.

Using short-term tax incentives to market a pay cut that affects long-term policy decisions is fraudulent. Destroying the Regents Scholarship and justifying it with temporary tax incentives that only a small part of our population can even use is disingenuous at best.

The Regents Scholarship didn’t become a perk until the administration wanted to decimate it. Prior to that, it was part of the compensation package that HR reminds us of on an annual basis.

This is a pay cut.

We are better employees because of our classes. We have new ideas, fresh ideas, current ideas. We make the University a better place, we make the education better, and we keep morale strong.

When I moved back to Minnesota, I had my eyes on the University. I wanted a job at the U for a few reasons: I’m committed to education and enhancing education, I think the University itself is a great school overall, and I knew (despite my protestations to the contrary) that I was shopping for a PhD and a way to pay for it.

The University of Minnesota, like many other universities, provides free tuition to its staff. It’s a fundamental element of an educational organization - encouraging your workforce to be educated helps your organization and drawing smart, ambitious people into your workplace by offering free tuition also helps your organization.

So when faced with the budget problem, what does the University do? The one solid proposal that Bruininks put forth via email on Monday was to cut the tuition benefit to 75%. Other parts of the proposal were not firm and kind of wishy washy (likely a pay freeze, but they have to talk to the unions; maybe closing the U over holidays, but they’re not sure).

Some have said that we as employees shouldn’t feel so entitled to the free tuition, but when I’ve gotten that glossy, 4-color brochure from HR that tells me how much the University actually pays me because of things like tuition reimbursement and therefore justifies them paying us less than market rate for our jobs, I’m expected to view the tuition-reimbursement as compensation.

Now it’s a “gift”? Sorry. No.

The other part of that letter from Bruininks is there was no end-date on that 75%. Which means that there’s no deadline, which means if it passes the Regents, it will stay.

So you have smart, ambitious staff who are stuck (momentarily) due to the market. But I can’t imagine that people who could make more elsewhere will stay as the non-salary aspects of our compensation are stripped away. It’s a bad long-term move.

Additionally, nowhere in that email did Bruininks talk about pay equity. There are a larger number of faculty and administrators at the University who make between $150k-500k than you realize (and a few who make more). These are people who have benefited greatly from the boom times, and they are the ones who should sacrifice now. Cutting the pay of someone who makes that much money will not impact them in the same way that it impacts someone making $30K. And changing the tuition reimbursement is a pay cut that will disproportionately impact people lower on the economic ladder.

Call me a socialist if you want, but I don’t believe that the budget should be balanced on the backs of the lower and middle classes. It doesn’t need to be and it shouldn’t be.

I get so angry at the University sometimes. I see our follies and our waste and our disparities and I really don’t understand why other people don’t call out when the U is visibly acting contrary to its mission and obligations. People are always getting caught up in fear of being honest about things, and I think that does us a disservice. I did post-secondary option at the U, I got my BA from CLA, I taught as an adjunct here, and I’m both a staff member and a graduate student now. My parents and my brother are U alums too. I’ve worked at and studied at other schools (New York University, Brooklyn College) and there are things that the U does better than either, hands down. However, there are also things we do worse.

What I’m saying is that you don’t have to drink the kool aid to be a fierce advocate for the University. I think real advocates for the U are the people who are willing to challenge administrative decisions and who want the U to improve and serve as a model university.

What Bruininks is proposing right now? Not okay. Maybe it’s time for the Minnesota Daily to report on salary information like they have in the past. It’s public data, you know…it might put these decisions in perspective.

I was already a little twisted over the article that ran in the Star Tribune about U of MN’s president Bob Bruininks this weekend. Then I looked at my student account for the coming school year and nearly had a heart attack. Tuition went up $353/semester ($706 a year) for graduate students, making annual tuition alone over $10,000 per year. Tuition for undergraduates went up to $550/year and is pushing $10,000 per year.

I know I’ve talked about this before, but the sticker shock of my upcoming degree combined with an uncomfortably cheerleading Strib article and the sadness I have looking at my undergraduate alma mater (and employer and place where I’m getting my PhD) become further and further out of reach for average Minnesotans is pretty profound.

The article was already sour to me when it stated that “Bruininks also would not back down when clerical workers walked off the job a year ago, and the strike fell apart.” Summing up what happened last year in those few words that favored the administration was inaccurate at best. The pay scales at the University as we strive ever further towards that “top three” designation are, as in corporate America, increasingly skewed. Faculty in certain schools make incredible salaries. Whether or not the salaries are deserved/necessary is a point of ambivalence for me–I see both the pros and cons–but to essentially put the workers at the University “in their place” while lavishing senior administrators and plenty of faculty with six figure incomes and assorted perks is, in my opinion, simply immoral.

Anyone who works in academia long enough knows that the quest for “top three” status isn’t about the University’s undergraduate education. It’s about securing grants, having top notch graduate programs, doing groundbreaking research…and all of those are good things, in my opinion. However, there is that pesky reality that we are also supposed to educate thousands of new undergraduate students every year.

The naive undergrads who commented on the Strib article think this quest for glory has been done for them, but that’s just not in evidence. We still rely heavily on graduate students and adjuncts to handle undergraduate courses and I don’t see that changing.

As for the idea that the U should be an elite institution and the people who cannot get in (nevermind that the article didn’t exactly address students who can get in, but cannot see how to finance such a hefty price tag), I’m again ambivalent. If you want the U to be the “pinnacle” of public university education in Minnesota, I’m not necessarily opposed to that. But we’d better damn well get our priorities straight. The U can be a fantastic school and an affordable school, if we decide that it should be.

While I whine a bit about the amount I’m going to have to put in for my graduate degree, I’m not actually very broken up about graduate tuition rates. Graduate school is nice, it certainly gets you places a BA/BS doesn’t, it tends to bump your pay up, but it’s just not necessary that masses of Minnesotans get masters degrees and PhDs.

However, pinnacle or not, the kids of Minnesota should have access to the U. They shouldn’t be priced out of an education here. The people of this state have a vested interest in an educated workforce and our student populations should have affordable access to everything from the community colleges to the state universities to the University. It’s really that simple.

This is a very quick hit on the first part of a two part series in the Minnesota Daily on the survey of what students value and what they perceive the University as valuing and the difference between them.

Students at the University of Minnesota currently pay $3,750 per semester in tuition, $324.10 in student fees, and a $500 “University fee.” This brings the grand total of one semester of education at a land grant, state-funded university to a whopping $4574.10 per semester.

That is $9,148.20 per year before books and course-related expenses.

As a Minnesotan, I find this abhorrent. Tuition has nearly doubled since I graduated in 1999 and, as I’m sure you all know, incomes have not.

Strategic planning or not, big grant funding for research or not, it is the responsibility of the University to provide quality undergraduate education to our students and there is a pervasive problem at all institutions of higher education where intelligent, fantastic researchers are expected to teach courses but not expected to develop competency (to say nothing of expertise) in pedagogy (teaching).

This is a long-running problem. Teaching doesn’t bring in money, research does. The University needs money……and thus the cycle continues. Research gets priority over teaching.

The administration can spin things however they want. I went to the University as an undergraduate, so did many of my friends, we have all come to the same conclusions the undergraduates who were surveyed did.

The little web conference that could (MinneWebCon) has really taken off. We just made the University of Minnesota homepage. (At the bottom)

I’ve never had anything I was in leadership on have such a high profile and it’s really exciting. Yay me!!