Program Prioritization

Here's my feedback on the draft report of the faculty Joint Task Force on Program Prioritization.

I do encourage comments, both on this blog and, rather more importantly directly to Mike Eichholz, the co-chair of the committee, who is soliciting comments. (Yes, that's the same Mike Eichholz familiar to old-time readers of this blog as the founder of the Faculty for Sensible Negotiations.) SIUC faculty received an email on this on June 2, including the document itself and a call for comments. My opening praise below wasn't meant as just fluff: this is a serious effort at a very difficult task. I am certainly full of trepidation about what 'prioritization' will result in here, but that's not so much because of this report but in spite of it.

-----

Dear Mike,

First, thanks to you and your colleagues for all your hard work on this document. The result is pretty impressive as academic documents go: clearly written, balanced, intelligent. These comments aren't meant to be solely critical; to some extent they are just observations on things I found somewhat striking about the process as you all envisage it.

1. The plan may rank chairs rather than programs.
2. The plan suggests a partial and somewhat muddled vision for SIUC. 
3. The plan prioritizes quality over mission.

 1. The plan may rank chairs rather than programs.

This may be unavoidable given the absence of ready comparative data, but you are obviously putting a huge burden on program heads to produce the equivalent of a self-study. That may be well and good. As a qualitative person, I appreciate the effort to do this rather than to attempt to provide some centralized ranking based solely on data crunching. Program heads will no doubt (despite your hope for objectivity in a footnote) make the best case they can for their programs--I think that's their job, actually. But the downside of this approach is that programs will rise and fall based in some large part on how effectively they make their case. I would expect that deans and provosts will weigh in to correct for known deficiencies in such positions, but there's only so much to expect there. Savvy chairs will enlist help from their more persuasive colleagues, and such colleagues would do well to help their chairs--though of course the latter can be awkward if one of your chair's weaknesses is an overestimate of his or her own persuasiveness.

2. The plan suggests a partial and somewhat muddled vision for SIUC.

The report takes a stab at articulating one partial vision for SIUC: sustainability. I'm fine with that--someone's got to come up with a vision for this place, as our last strategic plan certainly failed to do so (beyond the unavoidable basics: an accessible research university in Southern Illinois). And sustainability is relevant to our location, and clearly important to many faculty across a range of units. But I'm not sure how widely shared that vision is, especially among students, and it gets somewhat muddled, in the rubric, with "community engagement," another good thing, but not necessarily the same thing at all, of course.

3. The plan prioritizes quality over mission.

As part of our larger lack of vision--NOT the task force's fault by any means--there's no effort here to answer the $64k question of: "Does a research university like SIUC need a department of X?" We'd all agree that we need departments/programs in Math and English, for example--and indeed that we need strong programs in both, at least strong from the teaching angle. But were this plan to determine that either of those units is weak (something I do not mean to imply by any means!), then they would presumably be cut, whereas what they may need is more resources, not fewer (at least if their shortcomings are related to resources). And we may, on the other hand, have very fine programs in areas less essential to our core mission as a research university. One could make the argument that such programs may have to be cut, despite their quality, in a desperate fiscal environment.

This sort of thing does get reflected indirectly via credit hours driven by the core curriculum, but I'm not sure how important those hours will end up being, and some room for direct comment on this would be helpful. If you don't work it in here, the process will be more vulnerable such comments later, when there's outrage like that at WIU about elimination of their philosophy program, for example.

Dave Johnson