For the North County Times | January 29, 2010
San Diego's 78thDistrict Assemblyman Marty Block claims more students would complete bachelor's degrees if two-year colleges became four-year colleges.
He's drafting legislation to allow California's community colleges to offer baccalaureate degrees. In a recent interview, Block said he'd like to see money shifted out of the California State University system to community colleges to produce a "bigger bang for the taxpayer's buck" in higher education.
The problem Block wants to solve is that four-year degrees are becoming less accessible because of budget cuts forcing California's public universities to turn away thousands of students and raise fees on the students lucky enough to get in. A retired San Diego State University professor, Block sees a simple solution. Community colleges are more affordable, conveniently located and have an open-door admissions policy.
Seventeen states are already offering bachelor's degrees in their community colleges. But would it work here?
California community college full-time faculty salaries are, on average, higher than those in the California State University system. Three out of four community college instructors are lower-paid part-timers who teach classes at several colleges within driving range.
In 2008, the average salary of full-time faculty in California's community colleges was $85,000. MiraCosta College faculty, with an average salary of $116,000, were paid more than any other community college instructors in the state, while the average pay at Palomar College was $92,000. By contrast, the average salary of CSU tenure-track faculty was $78,000. Less than half of CSU instructors are part-timers.
In Washington State, where community colleges have begun offering bachelor's degrees, community college instructors earned an average salary of $51,000 in 2006, while their counterparts at four-year public colleges earned an average of $82,000. There's logic behind the argument that it would cost less to have students remain at a Washington community college for four years.
It will be interesting to see how Assemblyman Block can make the case that taxpayers will get a bigger bang for the buck if the higher-priced work force of California's community colleges is expanded. Unless, of course, the lower-paid part-timers are hired to teach upper division classes in the major, which would raise questions about the quality of the program.
Full disclosure: My 30-year career as a university administrator included eight years in Indiana, where the only community college at the time was improbably named Vincennes University. Both two and four-year degree programs were offered at the state's 14 public university campuses.
Not surprisingly, the state had one of the lowest college participation rates in the nation and one of the highest costs per student in public funding for higher education.
RICHARD J. RIEHL writes from Carlsbad. Contact him at RiehlWorld2@yahoo.com
About Me
- The Riehl World
- I'm a retired university administrator with a second career as a free-lance op-ed columnist for San Diego's North County Times daily newspaper, circulation 94,000. I'm also an in-the-closet folksong picker of guitar, banjo, mandolin and ukulele.
Friday, January 29, 2010
Monday, January 18, 2010
Courage, tolerance and kids
North County Times | Friday, January 15, 2010
Richard J. Riehl writes from Carlsbad, CA.
The same folks who claimed California schools would teach kids to turn gay if Proposition 8 failed at the polls wanted to stop a time-delayed Webcast of the federal court challenge to the new law. It seems some opponents of gay marriage would rather remain in the closet than be outed on YouTube.
The battle over gay marriage continues to rage in this newspaper's opinion pages. In letters to the editor you can find disagreements over Biblical quotations, gay penguins and the proper connections of nuts, bolts and screws.
Some misguided pundits see a conspiracy of secular humanists, liberals and gays advancing a hidden "agenda" to corrupt the young.
As adults wrangle over who should be allowed to hook up with whom, what's been going on in our schools?
Conservative syndicated columnist George Will opines that gay marriage won't be an issue in this country's future because today's school children find being gay about as interesting as being left-handed. But even though children are more open-minded than their parents about such things, left-handers do not face the same threat of being bullied by their peers that gay students do.
According to a 2004 report by the California Safe Schools Coalition and 4H Center for Youth Development at UC Davis, more than 200,000 California students are harassed each year based on either perceived or actual sexual orientation.
Compared with those who are not harassed, gay students who are bullied are three times more likely to bring a weapon to school and twice as likely to seriously consider committing suicide.
Ninety-one percent of students reported they had overheard other students making negative comments about sexual orientation. Forty-four percent overheard teachers making similar comments.
Last year the Alameda school board planned to institute a program called Lesson 9 to address the problem of anti-gay school bullying. But, bowing to pressure brought by parents with religious views that do not condone homosexuality, the school district voted to change the program to general lessons against bias.
Here in North County, students themselves are leading the fight against anti-gay bullying. California's Gay-Straight Alliance Network lists affiliated clubs at seven North County high schools: Carlsbad, La Costa Canyon, Poway, Rancho Buena Vista, San Dieguito Academy, Torrey Pines and Vista. Founded in 1998, the GSA Network is a youth leadership organization that connects school-based GSA clubs that fight discrimination, harassment and violence in schools.
Maybe the adults who fear the Webcast of federal court testimony on the constitutionality of Prop. 8 could learn something about courage and tolerance from the kids they say they want to protect from going gay.
Richard J. Riehl writes from Carlsbad, CA.
Confessions of an Ex-Boss: What I Learned from my Staff
This article first appeared in the Summer 2010 edition of College and University, the journal of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers
My name is Richard, and I’m a recovering university administrator.
I’ve been administration-free for six years, but
I continue to have flashbacks to a career that led to this
battle with PASD: Post-Administrative Stress Disorder.
Sharing with you what I learned from my staff during my
30-year career will allow me to confront the ghosts of decisions
past — ghosts that haunt me for the mistakes I made
sitting behind a big desk in a large office, out of earshot of
the buzz arising from the tiny desks in Cubicle Land.
In my past life I worked at three different universities,
all mid-size public institutions. I was responsible, at
various times, for supervising staffs that recruited and admitted
students, evaluated their transfer credit, awarded
them financial aid, registered them, checked them out for
graduation, and organized their commencement ceremonies.
My preparation for this career consisted of a couple
of liberal arts degrees and five years of high school teaching
and coaching.
Western Washington University enrolled 9,000 students
when I was appointed director of admissions. I
was 29 years old, with three whole years as an admissions
counselor under my belt. I had never supervised anyone
over the age of eighteen. I suddenly found myself responsible
for a staff of eight women, all older, wiser, and more
experienced than I, and a male associate director ten years
my senior who had been the other finalist for the job I had
just landed. I remember well the day my new boss, an oldschool
kind of guy, summoned me to his office to tell me I
had the job. I was no longer to be “Dick Riehl, everybody’s
buddy,” he explained; rather, I was “Richard Riehl, Director
of University Admissions.” I understood him to mean
that my new responsibilities would force me to make enemies
because of the difficult decisions I’d have to make.
In hindsight, I think he also meant I had to grow up.
Upon returning to my new, more spacious office, my
first two thoughts were, “Now what do I do?” followed by
the solemn vow, “Never let ’em see you sweat.” I was lucky
to have on my staff a competent, experienced, and wellrespected
office manager who already ran the office. She
told me what to do and how and when to do it, all while
allowing me to think that I was the one in charge. That
represented the beginning of my education by those who
called me “boss.”
I was especially fortunate to have two talented associate
directors, including the one who had competed against
me for the director’s job but who was extraordinarily gracious
in defeat, invariably loyal, and possessed a great sense
of humor. I learned that he also had never met a rule or a
policy that shouldn’t or couldn’t be bent or broken. My
other associate was likewise a respected professional with
a wonderful sense of humor. But unlike the other, he believed that rules were rules and rarely — if ever — should they be bent or broken. The three of us had some spirited conversations during the years we worked together.
What I learned was that both of them could make persuasive arguments. I found myself searching for decisions that, like the porridge of the three bears, were neither too hot nor too cold, but just right for the circumstances.
What I didn’t learn early enough in my career was that sometimes, in the interest of avoiding conflict, I was not as open and honest as I should have been in my decision making. I wanted to be loved by all. I learned, however, that in the long run, avoiding uncomfortable confrontations often led to more trouble for both my staff and me.
After sixteen years of figuring out how to be a good director of admissions at Western, I headed to the Midwest, where “Assistant Vice President” was added to my job title at Indiana State University. I inherited an easy-going boss whose feathers never seemed to get ruffled. Whenever he was warned that morale was low, he’d just smile and say, “Yes, morale always seems to be bad and getting worse, doesn’t it?” He accepted the grumbling of faculty and staff as part of the territory for administrators.
Experience taught me that some unhappy staff members are happiest when those around them are unhappy and can be persuaded that the boss is the source of all their unhappiness. Happy staff members, on the other hand, tend to take responsibility for — and create — their own happiness.
Except for news shows, I don’t watch much TV. But I’m addicted to “The Office,” with Steve Carell as Michael Scott, the boss at a branch office of Dunder-Mifflin Office Paper. In a recent episode, Michael cheerfully declared, “An office is a place where dreams come true.” He was blithely unaware that his overblown ego and self-pity made him the office’s chief dream-crusher. In one of his lower moments, Michael reflected that he had become a boss because the word had once meant something good, like, “Wow, that’s a boss sweater you’re wearing today!” It was sad for him to learn that the word had come to mean “the jerk in charge.”
I must admit that I recognize a little of Michael Scott in myself. Bosses love to be loved, and sometimes they do the stupidest things to try to gain that love from their staff. If the worker bees are unhappy, it becomes time for a party or a Wear-Your-Pajamas-to-Work Day. Some people love office parties and silly games; others find them annoying. Some believe it’s important for everyone to feel he is part of one big, happy family; others prefer to be left alone to do their work.
Now that I am entering my “golden years,” I understand that big, happy families that get along without occasional falling outs engendered by too much togetherness and too few compatible personalities are mostly the creation of fiction writers. Expecting a collection of individuals hired for their technical expertise to perform a variety of different jobs and working together in a confined space to love one another unconditionally is a fantasy. No amount of partying and game playing can make it reality.
Team building, however, is a different matter. I wish I had been more honest in explaining to each staff member what unique qualities she brought to the team. For example, some people flourish in groups; others are hermits. Some can’t see the forest for the trees; some can’t see the trees for the forest. Some are confrontationally honest; others are fragile flowers whose self-esteem needs constant tending. Some are well-organized; others are scatterbrained creative geniuses. It is the boss’s job to help each staff member understand how her unique qualities can enhance the team. That can be a challenge when so many egos are involved.
It was as a high school basketball coach that I learned the meaning of “role players.” One team member spent more time on the bench than on the court because he was somewhat athletically challenged. But Dennis could do one thing better than anybody else on the team: He could keep our opponents guessing. Because Dennis was slightly cross-eyed, it was impossible for the defense to know where he might pass the ball next. So whenever our team was challenged by a full court press, I sent Denny into the game to save us. On those occasions, our bench warmer became our star player. Unfortunately, I didn’t always apply as an administrator what I had learned as a coach about role players.
In my later days as a boss, I began to realize the power staff members have to make their boss a success or a failure. A boss can make his staff better by telling them the truth rather than what he thinks they want to hear. As a rookie boss, I had the advantage of having a staff who knew more than I did; who knew that they knew; and who took pity on me. They prevented me from making serious blunders by telling me when they thought I was wrong.
In my second administrative position, I was the oldest and most experienced in the office. My staff tried hard to find out what I wanted them to say so they could show me how smart they were. It felt good to be so highly respected, but it didn’t feel so good when things went wrong and I realized nobody had been brave enough to tell me what I didn’t want to hear.
Shortly after my arrival at Indiana State, my new, young staff told me that recruitment information nights were held at motels throughout the state. When I learned how expensive it was to rent conference rooms, I suggested that we could save money and promote community spirit by holding the events in public libraries. I did so with such enthusiasm that nobody warned me about the drawbacks. I didn’t know it would be so hard for families to find their local public libraries. I didn’t know that some libraries closed their doors as early as 8 pm, which meant that our guests sometimes had to leave before we could answer all their questions. Despite the poor turnouts and inconveniences, we marched on until one evening, when our dean of housing, five academic advisors, and two admissions counselors accompanied me to an information night event where we were greeted only by a lone prospective student, his parents, and his little sister. Our next recruitment event was held at a Holiday Inn.
Another lesson I learned from my staff is that a boss can make erroneous assumptions based on one unhappy staff member, subjecting the rest to desperate attempts to make that one person happy. I should have learned better from an experience I had had as a high school English teacher: A student teacher I was supervising was quite bright and articulate and had the attention of all but one of her students. Unfortunately, he was the brightest and most arrogant student in the class. His sarcastic wit made her feel like a failure. I saw 29 attentive students who liked her; she saw the one who didn’t and thought the rest hated her. As a boss, I sometimes found myself spending more time worrying about one disgruntled staff member than about the productivity of the rest of the staff.
One of my favorite authors is Malcolm Gladwell, an economist and staff writer for the New Yorker. In his latest bestseller, Outliers: The Story of Success, Gladwell researched the cause of airplane crashes and discovered that many of them were caused not by catastrophic technical failures, violent weather, or incompetent pilots; rather, they were caused by “mitigated speech” in the cockpit — that is, speech used by a lower-level co-pilot who doesn’t want to appear to be questioning the pilot’s judgment. Rather than warning “This is an emergency. We have to land now,” the first officer might observe, “Captain, we seem to be running out of fuel.” It made me wonder how many times my own “co-pilots” told this “pilot” what I wanted to hear rather than what I needed to hear in order to avoid crashing and burning.
You can improve your boss’s performance as a supervisor and make your own office life happier if, when evaluation time comes around, you tell your boss what you consider to be your own special talents and how they can contribute to the office’s success. Ask if your boss agrees with your self-assessment. There is no need to confess your shortcomings! Ask, instead, how you can leverage your skills to improve your own job performance. This is also your opportunity to tell your boss what he can do to help bring out the best in you.
I wish I had given my superiors more honest feedback about their job performance. Had my staff done that for me, their work lives might have been happier, and these confessions of an ex-boss might have been unnecessary. Indeed, the ghosts of decisions past might not be haunting me today.
About the Author
Richard J. Riehl is a freelance op-ed columnist for San Diego’s North County Times. Throughout his 33-year career in higher education administration he was an active member of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, including service on the College and University Journal's Editorial Board.
My name is Richard, and I’m a recovering university administrator.
I’ve been administration-free for six years, but
I continue to have flashbacks to a career that led to this
battle with PASD: Post-Administrative Stress Disorder.
Sharing with you what I learned from my staff during my
30-year career will allow me to confront the ghosts of decisions
past — ghosts that haunt me for the mistakes I made
sitting behind a big desk in a large office, out of earshot of
the buzz arising from the tiny desks in Cubicle Land.
In my past life I worked at three different universities,
all mid-size public institutions. I was responsible, at
various times, for supervising staffs that recruited and admitted
students, evaluated their transfer credit, awarded
them financial aid, registered them, checked them out for
graduation, and organized their commencement ceremonies.
My preparation for this career consisted of a couple
of liberal arts degrees and five years of high school teaching
and coaching.
Western Washington University enrolled 9,000 students
when I was appointed director of admissions. I
was 29 years old, with three whole years as an admissions
counselor under my belt. I had never supervised anyone
over the age of eighteen. I suddenly found myself responsible
for a staff of eight women, all older, wiser, and more
experienced than I, and a male associate director ten years
my senior who had been the other finalist for the job I had
just landed. I remember well the day my new boss, an oldschool
kind of guy, summoned me to his office to tell me I
had the job. I was no longer to be “Dick Riehl, everybody’s
buddy,” he explained; rather, I was “Richard Riehl, Director
of University Admissions.” I understood him to mean
that my new responsibilities would force me to make enemies
because of the difficult decisions I’d have to make.
In hindsight, I think he also meant I had to grow up.
Upon returning to my new, more spacious office, my
first two thoughts were, “Now what do I do?” followed by
the solemn vow, “Never let ’em see you sweat.” I was lucky
to have on my staff a competent, experienced, and wellrespected
office manager who already ran the office. She
told me what to do and how and when to do it, all while
allowing me to think that I was the one in charge. That
represented the beginning of my education by those who
called me “boss.”
I was especially fortunate to have two talented associate
directors, including the one who had competed against
me for the director’s job but who was extraordinarily gracious
in defeat, invariably loyal, and possessed a great sense
of humor. I learned that he also had never met a rule or a
policy that shouldn’t or couldn’t be bent or broken. My
other associate was likewise a respected professional with
a wonderful sense of humor. But unlike the other, he believed that rules were rules and rarely — if ever — should they be bent or broken. The three of us had some spirited conversations during the years we worked together.
What I learned was that both of them could make persuasive arguments. I found myself searching for decisions that, like the porridge of the three bears, were neither too hot nor too cold, but just right for the circumstances.
What I didn’t learn early enough in my career was that sometimes, in the interest of avoiding conflict, I was not as open and honest as I should have been in my decision making. I wanted to be loved by all. I learned, however, that in the long run, avoiding uncomfortable confrontations often led to more trouble for both my staff and me.
After sixteen years of figuring out how to be a good director of admissions at Western, I headed to the Midwest, where “Assistant Vice President” was added to my job title at Indiana State University. I inherited an easy-going boss whose feathers never seemed to get ruffled. Whenever he was warned that morale was low, he’d just smile and say, “Yes, morale always seems to be bad and getting worse, doesn’t it?” He accepted the grumbling of faculty and staff as part of the territory for administrators.
Experience taught me that some unhappy staff members are happiest when those around them are unhappy and can be persuaded that the boss is the source of all their unhappiness. Happy staff members, on the other hand, tend to take responsibility for — and create — their own happiness.
Except for news shows, I don’t watch much TV. But I’m addicted to “The Office,” with Steve Carell as Michael Scott, the boss at a branch office of Dunder-Mifflin Office Paper. In a recent episode, Michael cheerfully declared, “An office is a place where dreams come true.” He was blithely unaware that his overblown ego and self-pity made him the office’s chief dream-crusher. In one of his lower moments, Michael reflected that he had become a boss because the word had once meant something good, like, “Wow, that’s a boss sweater you’re wearing today!” It was sad for him to learn that the word had come to mean “the jerk in charge.”
I must admit that I recognize a little of Michael Scott in myself. Bosses love to be loved, and sometimes they do the stupidest things to try to gain that love from their staff. If the worker bees are unhappy, it becomes time for a party or a Wear-Your-Pajamas-to-Work Day. Some people love office parties and silly games; others find them annoying. Some believe it’s important for everyone to feel he is part of one big, happy family; others prefer to be left alone to do their work.
Now that I am entering my “golden years,” I understand that big, happy families that get along without occasional falling outs engendered by too much togetherness and too few compatible personalities are mostly the creation of fiction writers. Expecting a collection of individuals hired for their technical expertise to perform a variety of different jobs and working together in a confined space to love one another unconditionally is a fantasy. No amount of partying and game playing can make it reality.
Team building, however, is a different matter. I wish I had been more honest in explaining to each staff member what unique qualities she brought to the team. For example, some people flourish in groups; others are hermits. Some can’t see the forest for the trees; some can’t see the trees for the forest. Some are confrontationally honest; others are fragile flowers whose self-esteem needs constant tending. Some are well-organized; others are scatterbrained creative geniuses. It is the boss’s job to help each staff member understand how her unique qualities can enhance the team. That can be a challenge when so many egos are involved.
It was as a high school basketball coach that I learned the meaning of “role players.” One team member spent more time on the bench than on the court because he was somewhat athletically challenged. But Dennis could do one thing better than anybody else on the team: He could keep our opponents guessing. Because Dennis was slightly cross-eyed, it was impossible for the defense to know where he might pass the ball next. So whenever our team was challenged by a full court press, I sent Denny into the game to save us. On those occasions, our bench warmer became our star player. Unfortunately, I didn’t always apply as an administrator what I had learned as a coach about role players.
In my later days as a boss, I began to realize the power staff members have to make their boss a success or a failure. A boss can make his staff better by telling them the truth rather than what he thinks they want to hear. As a rookie boss, I had the advantage of having a staff who knew more than I did; who knew that they knew; and who took pity on me. They prevented me from making serious blunders by telling me when they thought I was wrong.
In my second administrative position, I was the oldest and most experienced in the office. My staff tried hard to find out what I wanted them to say so they could show me how smart they were. It felt good to be so highly respected, but it didn’t feel so good when things went wrong and I realized nobody had been brave enough to tell me what I didn’t want to hear.
Shortly after my arrival at Indiana State, my new, young staff told me that recruitment information nights were held at motels throughout the state. When I learned how expensive it was to rent conference rooms, I suggested that we could save money and promote community spirit by holding the events in public libraries. I did so with such enthusiasm that nobody warned me about the drawbacks. I didn’t know it would be so hard for families to find their local public libraries. I didn’t know that some libraries closed their doors as early as 8 pm, which meant that our guests sometimes had to leave before we could answer all their questions. Despite the poor turnouts and inconveniences, we marched on until one evening, when our dean of housing, five academic advisors, and two admissions counselors accompanied me to an information night event where we were greeted only by a lone prospective student, his parents, and his little sister. Our next recruitment event was held at a Holiday Inn.
Another lesson I learned from my staff is that a boss can make erroneous assumptions based on one unhappy staff member, subjecting the rest to desperate attempts to make that one person happy. I should have learned better from an experience I had had as a high school English teacher: A student teacher I was supervising was quite bright and articulate and had the attention of all but one of her students. Unfortunately, he was the brightest and most arrogant student in the class. His sarcastic wit made her feel like a failure. I saw 29 attentive students who liked her; she saw the one who didn’t and thought the rest hated her. As a boss, I sometimes found myself spending more time worrying about one disgruntled staff member than about the productivity of the rest of the staff.
One of my favorite authors is Malcolm Gladwell, an economist and staff writer for the New Yorker. In his latest bestseller, Outliers: The Story of Success, Gladwell researched the cause of airplane crashes and discovered that many of them were caused not by catastrophic technical failures, violent weather, or incompetent pilots; rather, they were caused by “mitigated speech” in the cockpit — that is, speech used by a lower-level co-pilot who doesn’t want to appear to be questioning the pilot’s judgment. Rather than warning “This is an emergency. We have to land now,” the first officer might observe, “Captain, we seem to be running out of fuel.” It made me wonder how many times my own “co-pilots” told this “pilot” what I wanted to hear rather than what I needed to hear in order to avoid crashing and burning.
You can improve your boss’s performance as a supervisor and make your own office life happier if, when evaluation time comes around, you tell your boss what you consider to be your own special talents and how they can contribute to the office’s success. Ask if your boss agrees with your self-assessment. There is no need to confess your shortcomings! Ask, instead, how you can leverage your skills to improve your own job performance. This is also your opportunity to tell your boss what he can do to help bring out the best in you.
I wish I had given my superiors more honest feedback about their job performance. Had my staff done that for me, their work lives might have been happier, and these confessions of an ex-boss might have been unnecessary. Indeed, the ghosts of decisions past might not be haunting me today.
About the Author
Richard J. Riehl is a freelance op-ed columnist for San Diego’s North County Times. Throughout his 33-year career in higher education administration he was an active member of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, including service on the College and University Journal's Editorial Board.
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