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Fewer administrators, more choral directors

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“And while the proportion of tenure-track teaching faculty has dwindled, the number of managers has skyrocketed in both relative and absolute terms. If current trends continue, the Department of Education estimates that by 2014 there will be more administrators than instructors at American four-year nonprofit colleges. A bigger administration also consumes a larger portion of available funds, so it’s unsurprising that budget shares for instruction and student services have dipped over the past fifteen years.” 
So I say – fire the administration! Hire more choral directors.

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  1. Guys,
     
    My point in this is twofold:
     
    1.  highlight the fact that the trend is hiring more administrators than faculty
    2.  say it is wrong to have more administrators than teachers at a college
     
    Happy summer!

  2. Sorry, guys, but I have a contrarian take on this.  While it is very attractive to say “fire the administrators – hire more directors” someone’s got to run the program and take the stuff out of the directors’ direct ken – otherwise, guess what, guys?  You end up running the admin AND the choral program.  Sounds attractive?  Okay, get twenty cats in a room and one can of cat food – guess what happens with the food, the cats, and the state of the room.  Perhaps the better answer is to ask the directors what is and isn’t necessary but “nice to have,” and THEN you can start talking about the numbers of people you need to do that.  However, until you do, and until the college music directors figure out what they want to have and do, don’t start blaming the administrators because things don’t work so well.  After twenty years in the Army as a staff officer (the equivalent to an administrator) what we’d see often was that it was easy to blame the staffers for things not going so well – until someone pointed out that it was the commanders’ frequently unthought out and unreasonable requests and expectations for things that made the staff officers 1) go crazy and 2) be less effective because more things kept coming their way than they had the resources available to handle.  Do the jobs expand to fill the available demands?  Of course; that’s the nature of most human endeavor.  Jobs expand to fill the time available; traffic expands to fill the number of lanes available.  So with that, so with any administrative vs. action field.  Remember, when you point a finger at someone, three are pointing back at you.  So, directors, if the number of you guys and gals is inadequate or should be expanded, what will justify such actions?  What are you willing to do without if you have fewer administrators?  What have you done to make it unnecessary to have five as opposed to three administrators?  Don’t have answers to those questions?  Don’t blame anyone else until you’ve got solid answers to those questions.
     
    Ron

  3. Hey, I have never trusted anyone with a degree in “Higher Education Administration” to understand what we need down in the trenches.  They are parasites who live off the real workers, and exist only to wine and dine politicians and give poorly-written speeches.  But burocracies are living predators that exist only to spawn and increase their numbers and use of resources–until someone with a bigger baseball bat comes along and knocks some sense into them.  And there are precious few of those.
     
    On the other hand I would never WANT their job, and don’t understand anyone who does.
     
    John

  4. I know this is a bit off-topic, but since you brought it up, private sector jobs in the U.S. have increased over the last year by 1.7 million while the government at all levels has laid off 404,000. Furthermore, almost all teachers and administrators are “government employees”, including the majority of ACDA members. Diss them at your peril.

  5. Philip, if only it were that easy! Is this not reflective of life in the USA today?
    “And while the number of Traditional Church Choirs has dwindled, the number of Praise Teams has skyrocketed.”
    “And while the number of jobs in the “Real World” has dwindled, the number of Government employees is….”limitless?”
    Etc., etc., etc……………
    Thankful for Song,
     
    EP
     
     

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