At the end of my first year as a faculty member at the University of Utah, I had the honor of acting as the College of Humanities’ standard bearer for convocation. I carried our banner into the Huntsman Center ahead of the platform party of administrators, faculty members, student award winners and other dignitaries. I cheered as students received their degrees.

After the ceremony, our dean asked me how my first year went. I told him that it had been the most fun I could have and legally get paid for it. He was surprised and amused. I was serious: My first year at the U. was exhilarating. I was part of a small program that had very big ambitions. I learned a significant amount from my students. I felt well supported by my colleagues, my chair and my program director. Even though I was across the country from family, I knew I had chosen my job well.

I firmly believed that for nearly two decades.

Now, I am far less sure. Colleagues across the U. and I keep doing the work we love — researching, teaching and serving our communities. But the U.’s administrators seem far more interested in placating political leaders and corporatizing our work than they are in supporting that work. They risk losing faculty members, staff members and students who are increasingly concerned that the tuition and fees they pay fund questionable priorities.

Don’t misunderstand: I’m well aware that higher education across the country is threatened by a combination of national policies and political rhetoric, uninformed legislative mandates, administrative bloat and mismanagement and creeping suspicion of expertise. But the pace of totally unwelcome and unwise changes here at the U. has been especially swift, and the changes have seriously undermined my confidence in the institution’s commitment and quality.

For instance, the U.’s shift to what it used to call “shared services” and now “coordinated services” has led to confusion, consolidation, more administrators and higher administrative salaries in what was supposed to be a drive to efficiency and effectiveness. It appears to be neither effective nor efficient. Sharing staff time and other resources within multi-college “regions” was intended to reduce duplication and fragmentation. But it has instead stretched advisors across departments in ways that impact their abilities to provide specific, expert support for students and to share what they learn from their advisees with departments. And it recently misdirected scholarship awards from my own department — a problem that required additional faculty and staff time to fix.

Academic advisors are now stretched across departments in ways that impact their abilities to provide specific, expert support for students and to share what they learn from their advisees with departments.

And a brand-new bureaucratic layer called the “Colleges of Liberal Arts and Sciences” (LAS) was introduced just over a year ago with a new “senior dean” whose job was initially described to faculty members as a coordinator of the new shared services. But that position has expanded in scope so that now, deans of the actual colleges are reporting to the senior dean. And LAS has other new administrative positions as well. That’s new money.

In the meantime, there is apparently no money to pay higher salaries to faculty members or graduate student instructors, who face higher course enrollments and higher workloads that violate disciplinary standards.

Nearing the end of my 20th year here, I remain very privileged to have the job I have. I get paid to be curious about things, research them and teach about them. I love what I do. So do my colleagues who are far more directly impacted by these bad decisions than I am. But I see each day the profound impacts that administrative overreach and faculty/student cost cutting are having on livelihoods and morale — not just in my department and college, but across the U., as my experience on university-wide committees and on the Academic Senate have shown me.

The excellent and dedicated work my colleagues do is less and less valued, and their concerns are minimized, if not dismissed.

At many universities, summer is a quieter time than the rest of the year. It can be a good chance to slow down and reflect. I imagine some colleagues will take that time to consider whether to stay or go. (Indeed, some are already leaving).

I’d recommend our administrators take the time to consider whether they want to be standard bearers for higher education at a flagship university or managers of an increasingly top-heavy corporation whose mission excludes its employees.

Jay Jordan is a professor and the director of graduate studies in the Department of Writing & Rhetoric Studies at the University of Utah. He has been a department chair and has served on numerous departmental, college, and university committees. His opinions do not reflect his employer’s.

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