Suffering Accreditation

So yes, I am alive. Two accreditations - one to deliver documents and numbers for, and one to suffer visitation - is exceedingly trying. Yes, it is good that we are forced to gather all this stuff in one place on dead trees. But even for the new program - the numbers aren't worth the paper they are printed on!

The number of professors we had in August is not the same as January. One left, we had a number of new hires, and a guest professor. The financial planning has been turned around numerous times. Teachers, responsibilities, rooms - all in flux. It is, after all, a new program.

Sure, it would be wonderful if the school first hired teachers, who carefully created module descriptions that are nicely balanced and nicely built on top of each other. Then these teachers would work out the curricula and hire and train tutors and sort out the room situation and get it all set to go before starting a great advertising campaign and accompanying the program with all sorts of research about the students.

Welcome to Reality 101. No extra money until we demonstrate interest. No interest until we set up the program and it looks good. Chicken and egg. So we build up something out of nothing, bootstrap up, and manage to get students in, hiring process pushed forward, tutors lined up for when financing is available (well, I can spend 75% of last year's budget, which was 0...).

We picked up a lot of flak for things we have no control over. I accept getting beat for things I did myself. But for things I tried to fix but where beyond my control - I don't like that. Yes, I should have thought of this and that and anticipated whatever. I was also busy with a major move and incidentals such as teaching.

And the school could have bought a lot of stuff for the students with the money we sank in the accreditation.

I'm crossing my fingers that we at least get accreditation with conditions that we can fulfill.

The Accreditation Blues

I've got the accreditation blues at the moment. I'm acting head of a study program that is up for accreditation - next week the accreditation team will come for our inspection. But Monday the documentation is due in-house for the accreditation of the program I teach in.

I am *swamped* with digging out information, emailing colleagues pleading for input, writing stuff, getting tables and chairs organized in a room for the committee, etc. etc. And then there is a bad case of organizational infighting going on, and I'm specifying hallway furniture for the school, and there is a report on what happened in the faculty last year due. Soon. Oh, and I am teaching 16 hours a week this semester. Did I mention that I'm associate dean? I get 4 hours off my 18 for this, but rules prevented us from hiring a qualified teacher to teach an entire course by himself, so I jumped in and took over the additional 2 hours.

Sure, it's great that we are updating all our data, writing down for posterity all the cool things we are doing. But without the two people we have hired to do the actual writing and formatting of these two reports, there would be no possibility for us to get it done. Our days only have 24 hours in them, just like most everyone else.

The amount of teaching that we do must be decreased. We desperately need people who can read and write and maybe even do research who work with us in the departments. We need far fewer rules regulating what we can and cannot do.

The current system only works because we all wort far too much for far too little money. We are creative in making ends meets. But the system is starting to come apart at the seams. Adding "quality assurance" to the toxic mix will not necessarily neutralize anything.

Teaching is not about counts of people and classes. It's about content, creativity, communication and caring. But since we can't measure that, we declare what we can measure - even if it is beyond our control - and declare that quality.

Sure - people needing longer than 6 semesters to finish can be an indication that we have screwed up the organization. But it can also be an indicator that people preferred to have more money on hand and worked in parallel to studying. Or it can be an indicator that they spent time studying additional subjects. Or just that they wanted to have an additional semester of the student bus ticket.

A German educational organization had requested that their members no longer participate in this system, something I heartily agree with, even though I am not a member of the organization. But I'm afraid that the pressure from the money-giving bureaucracy will force people to participate.

I have decided that I won't participate in auditing other schools - mostly because I don't have time. Now, back to my to-do list of number collecting.