Here is the student paper article with the timeline- I see someone already posted this upthread. It appears that the faculty instructed to identify students refused to do so and none were identified this year. I suspect no one will fill out the survey next year or if they do, I suspect they will know there are wrong answers.
All I keep thinking of is the recent thread where everyone was assured college surveys were always confidential, analyzed in summary, never traced back to the survey taker, and anyone who thought otherwise was paranoid. Hmmm, better safe than sorry…
In a post-Edward Snowden world, I would think people would know better than to think everything electronic is not susceptible to tracking. You are forced to choose between not participating or relying upon the ethics of those conducting the survey.
There is a difference between collecting anonymous data to be used in a large database and one that is specifically tied to you. This survey was specifically tied to each student and seems to have made no claims about anonymity.
I was one of those making claims about data collection. I stand by my claim and would never suggest that a survey which will report to you about your own strengths and weaknesses would be anonymous.
They are simply different animals. And if the survey did claim to be anonymous and wasn’t, the person/people/company administering the survey would be in MAJOR trouble.
Right, romani said what I was about to. There is no basis for drawing an inference about one from the other.
Drowned Bunnies: Part 2
Because the president’s statements treat struggling new students with such respect…
I can’t help but feel the board is about to make an ugly situation, much, much worse…
They really need to hire a PR damage control specialist, who’s first recommendation will be for the board to stop making statements.
Wow, none of this is good for the school’s image. Heads are obviously going to roll, but how does the HOTB think it’s going to look when the Dean, Provost or other key faculty are forced out? I predict an uproar among the students, alumni, and other faculty. Neither the President not the HOTB are doing Mount St. Mary’s any favors with their handling of this issue.
On another note, a large group among the school leadership/faculty with the kind animus for the President described by the HOTB is not an indicator of good leadership or a positive President/faculty relationship, something necessary if the board wants to be able to institute change.
Perhaps they should read the recent story of the University of Missouri, where the president managed to antagonize enough constituents and interest groups at the school that it did not take much to cause huge angry protests.
“A lot of posters here are mistaken in believing that the job of a college president is to act in the interest of the students.”
It sure isn’t his job to get the school bad press, and that’s what he’s doing right now.
Maybe this president and the board of trustees saw how being controversially “straight talking” worked to bolster the popularity and poll numbers of one overexposed presidential primary candidate and decided to take a page from him.
It’s also possible Neidermayer from Animal House wasn’t really fragged by his own troops in Vietnam. Instead, he survived to go off to Bain and afterwards, became president of Mount St. Mary’s of MD.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Dy2fo6E_pI
So now the board chair blames a small group of faculty member’s opposed to Newman’s presidency.
Notice what the board chair doesn’t do. He doesn’t deny that Newman intended to use the survey to identify 20-25 students and throw them out a month into their freshman year on the basis of answers to a survey they were told would help them.
He hasn’t offered any defense to the accusations that he’s a soulless bureaucrat who cares nothing for the students nominally in his care, nor for the Catholic principles his institution professes. He is just saying that professors are attacking him for it. As they should.
“One of our hallmarks requires each member of the Mount community to treat others with dignity and respect and with the highest integrity.” Oh yeah? What about the kids you’re planning to admit, then throw out a month into their freshman year? I’m not seeing integrity there.
I’ve sometimes thought that one criterion for choosing a college should be the existence of an INDEPENDENT school newspaper, i.e, one without a faculty advisor and preferably one that isn’t funded by the college itself.
I suspect Mr. Egan, the faculty advisor, will lose his job over this. I think it took real guts to allow the story to be printed after he received that email.
IME, an independent school newspaper is vital.
Mt. St Mary’s students and alumni have a right to know what the administration did, IMO.
IF they got caught.
Which I’m sure they have no intention of doing. Data is valuable; I have no doubt those “anonymous” and “aggregated” surveys are being stolen left and right, and used for purposes other than what was stated.
I mean seriously-that’s exactly what just happened to these kids in the article.
“And if the survey did claim to be anonymous and wasn’t, the person/people/company administering the survey would be in MAJOR trouble.”
Even if they did not say it was anonymous, there needs to be a level of trust between students and college administration. Students should not need to have a lawyer review each email and information request they receive from the college they attend. I think there is a tacit understanding that that information about a specific person is generally to be treated confidentially, and that if a college intends to use the information against individual students, then they need to make that very clear from the onset. In contrast, if they are taking general actions in response to aggregate survey results, then I think that is fine.
A University President’s job in my opinion, is primarily about PR, fund raising, and managing the various stakeholders. I can’t see how what he has done so far has helped any of these.
He’s a management consultant from Bain. He sees his job as firing people (students, in this case) and taking away benefits from retirees. So that’s what he’s doing, because that’s what management consultants do.
This. It’s a sad (IMO) fact of our times that the intense drumbeat to “run X like a business” (where X=colleges, government, charities, basically anything other than a for-profit business) has been taken to heart by a growing number of college boards of trustees—in the case of public institutions often under pressure from sate governments—and that has resulted in precisely what @“Cardinal Fang” describes taking root across academia.
I liked it better when the business metaphors were more like “put lipstick on that pig.” The current case is really awful, and I agree with dfbdfb.
Education can’t be run like a business because you don’t “produce” people the way you produce soup cans, and you can’t treat people the way you treat soup cans, especially young adults.
Some things apply - but not all.
You can’t optimize by cutting the bad products out, the products that “sell poorly” can’t be switched for “better performing” products, etc. Not when you’re a small Catholic college aiming for C+/B- students in a 50-mile suare area that overflows with colleges of all kinds.
Bain isn’t a “normal” business (where you generate wealth by producing wealth, sort of. Sorry for the generalization). Bain destroys wealth for most to produce wealth for a small number. They don’t care about “brand”, or “image”.
They actively disregard people.
Right now, the board of directors said (by omission) that
1° yes we admitted students who weren’t able to succeed and we waited until 3 weeks into the semester to let them know
2° yes we administered a survey under false pretenses
3° yes we want to kick out kids after they’ve paid tuition, fees, room, and board for the semester - we consider that refunding tuition makes any complaint they may have, go away
4° we did intend to do that, and still do, and will punish the whistleblowers
5° we do not intend to respect our mission statement and our “brand” as a nurturing college is a lie.