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Boring us to submission

The University of Wisconsin-Madison has embarked on a big human resources redesign. I think the university administration has devised the ideal strategy to ensure little faculty input in the process: they’ve made it so dreadfully dull and full of business speak that we can’t bear to read through the material or show up to one of the many “engagement sessions”.

What reasonable faculty member would seek to attend an “engagement session”?

And then there are diagrams like this:

And stuff like this:

When they talk about market-based blah blah blah, my eyes glaze over and I want to take a nap.

There was a great deal of discussion of this stuff at the faculty senate meeting today.

Noah Feinstein asked an important question: on what evidence are the various recommendations based? I’m pretty sure it involves a lot of exploding pie charts.

Sara Goldrick-Rab made the most interesting point of the meeting: the market doesn’t reward good teaching. She has much more to say at her blog.

That I’ve been introduced to Sara’s blog may be viewed as an early positive outcome of the process.