Forbes College Rankings

Last week, Forbes published their 2009 college rankings.

The article about the rankings is at http://www.forbes.com/2009/08/02/colleges-university-ratings-opinions-colleges-09-intro.html.

The rankings themselves are at http://www.forbes.com/lists/2009/94/colleges-09_Americas-Best-Colleges_Rank.html.

A discussion of the methodology can be found at http://www.forbes.com/2009/08/02/best-colleges-methodology-opinions-ccap.html.

It's interesting to see the results, and I'm glad that the two schools that gave me degrees made the top 20, but I'm not sure that it really means anything. For one thing, the major sources of data include RateMyProfessor.com andPayScale.com, which are not scientific samples. Moreover, the rankings are based on formulas made up by the people doing the analysis. For example, the RateMyProfessor.com data counts for 25%. Who's to say exactly what weight each variable has in making something best? It's just something made up subjectively by humans, but because they make it into a formula, it's supposed to pass for objective and scientific.

"Best" is not something that can be precisely measured. Yes, there are some colleges that are clearly better than some others on certain variables, but it's not like there is one "best" college that will be best for all students. Different students want different things.

I enjoy working with quantitative data. I just don't like it when people think that quantifying something unquantifiable makes it more scientific.

How to be a good administrator

I work under some excellent people who serve as role models for the kind of administrator I'd like to be (including our department head, associate dean, and dean). Specifically, some things I want to keep in mind are:

• Before making a decision, talk to all affected parties. Tell them what you are thinking about doing and ask for their input.
• Before making a decree about how people should change what they do, first understand why they do things the way they do. Usually people do things the way they do because it serves their mission and is effective and efficient. Their reasons for doing what they do will continue to exist after your decree, so if you don't take those reasons into account, people will just try to subvert your decree in order to do what they believe is best.
• Requiring signatures from more people doesn't mean more people will engage in decision-making. It means people will just sign without paying attention to what they are signing, or will ask their secretaries to sign for them. It means that the people who have to obtain the signatures will be annoyed by all the bureaucratic hurdles that get in the way of what they are supposed to be doing: getting an education in the case of students, giving an education in the case of faculty, or serving students in the case of staff.
• Don't be so dazzled by your own brilliance that you can't hear what anyone else says.
• Listen to the views of your people. Don't just assume they are wrong. Engage with their ideas. Then make your own decision about how to proceed, and explain the reasons for your decision. Say you are sorry you can't adopt all their ideas.
• Assume the best of your people. For example, if someone seems to be doing something wrong, when you ask them about it, you might ask, "Am I missing something?"
• If someone seems to be doing something wrong, do ask them about it. Don't just turn away from it.
• Continually seek feedback about how things are going. Let your people tell you what does and doesn't work well, what they do and don't like, so you can figure out ways to improve the systems.
• Take responsibility for your decisions. While you may have been influenced by the input of others, in the end, it was your decision. Don't let those who disagree cast their blame on the people under you.
• When someone sends you an e-mail, assume that the person did not want that e-mail to go to anyone other than the people to whom they sent it. Therefore, do not cc additional people in your reply. Or if you cc additional people, only include your own reply, don't include the text of the other person's message.
• In general, you should trust that the people doing their jobs are the ones who best know how to do their jobs. However, don't use that as an excuse to ignore them. You need to understand what they do. You need to know their problems and concerns so that you can address them. You need to know how hard they work and what skill they use so that you can give them the recognition they deserve.
• Someone used the phrase, "Management by walking around." The idea is that when you walk around the workplace and chat with your people, you get to know what they do and what their concerns are. They get used to talking to you, so they are more likely to share with you when something comes up. When you must be in your office rather than walking around, keep your door open as much as possible. Let people know they can drop in. If someone has what they consider a small concern, they won't bring it to you unless you keep channels open in this way.
• Think things through carefully.
• Always be gracious and calm when interacting with others.

Advising

I think some of the common practices in the advising profession may not be ideal. Specifically:

1. It's not ideal if an advisor has so many advisees that they don't know who they all are. Students are less comfortable approaching an advisor if they have to explain who they are.
   
2. It's not ideal if advising is the only thing that the student sees the advisor for. It's better if the advisor and advisee know each other in another context, such as if the advisor is the student's instructor or research supervisor. I think that students don't want to go see an advisor who doesn't know them. I think it's hard for advisors to know how to advise a student when they don't know the student.
   
3. It's not ideal when the student has to go meet the advisor in the advisor's office in an unfamiliar building. The formality and unfamiliarity of the setting will make it harder for the student to feel comfortable talking to the advisor.
4. It's not ideal when students have to make an appointment with an advisor. Appointments should be an option, but students also find it convenient to be able to drop in any time, especially if they feel they have a quick question which is not substantial enough to warrant their requesting an appointment.

I am glad that I can avoid many of these traps in my job. I pretty much know all the graduate students in my deparmtnet. I interact with them in a variety of contexts. Students can drop in any time. For some of the students, I'm in a building that they go to for other reasons, so they can drop in whenever they happen to be in the neighborhood.

If I ever find myself in a more traditional advising job, I think I would want to overcome the shortcomings by doing things like:

1. Making sure my advisees know who I am, for example, by speaking to them as a group at an orientation, and trying to learn who they are.
   
2. Getting involved in activities or committees where I would interact with students.
3. Holding drop-in hours at an accessible location such as student union at a convenient time.
   

Too much bureaucracy

Students I tried to help yesterday included:

1. An undergrad who in order to be allowed to take a graduate level course had to get signatures from four diffferent people.
2. A PhD student in his final semester trying to register in absentia. In order to do so, he needed three forms. Two are signed by two people, and the other is signed by six people. There was also a 4th form requested, but I got him out of that one in the following way: I emailed person 1, who told me to email person 2. I e-mailed person 2 who sent a message back to me and person 1. Based on this, person 1 then sent me an email saying he approved. I then forwarded the email from person 1 to persons 3 and 4.
   

Of all the signatures needed, none are mine. I am the person who makes it my job to know the rules, but I'm no longer allowed to sign anything because I'm not a faculty member. The people who do sign may not know all the rules, so sometimes a form goes through that doesn't meet all the requirements, and the form gets rejected. If that happens, then, after collecting all those signatures, the student has to do the form over again and collect all the signatures again. Also, faculty sometimes go to conferences in other countries, so if the person whose signature is needed is away, the student is out of luck.

Students are here to learn, not to run around collecting signatures. There are times when it is good to have someone check that what a student is doing fulfills the requirements, but there's no use in getting signatures from people who don't really check what they're signing. Sometimes it seems like the administrators spend their time thinking up more hoops for students, staff, and faculty to jump through, taking more and more time away from what we are here for, which in my opinion ought to be educating students. My job is to help students with paperwork, and I like doing it, but I things are getting out of hand.