In 2010, “change” will be the word at Kansas University.
As Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little finishes her first semester leading the university, she said she’s looking forward to the changes that the next year will bring.
It’s an important year for KU, Gray-Little said. It’s the last full year before the university applies for National Cancer Institute designation. KU officials also will choose three top academic officers: a new provost, a new dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the first dean of the newly created School of Music.
Also, Gray-Little will continue to focus on her three top goals for the university: to increase student retention and graduation rates, to improve the level of scholarly research and to increase fundraising levels.
Task forces
Beyond the changes in leadership, Gray-Little said she’ll be looking forward to the results of three new task forces: one on student retention, one on admissions standards and one on scholarly research. All three have already been formed, and they will bring forth new recommendations for Gray-Little to consider.
Danny Anderson, KU’s interim provost, said it’s important to think about the limitations of the budget, but to remember that this can be the time to focus on creating new opportunities.
“When I speak with different groups around campus, I often emphasize how we live in a time when you’re looking at a lot of contrast,” he said.
He said that while budget difficulties persist, the task forces that KU is creating in the next year will create a blueprint for the future.
With more leeway to adjust admissions standards granted from the Kansas Board of Regents, KU’s admissions task force will be allowed to move away from the old system, which was the same for all six Regents schools.
“We can look broadly at some of the students who would really bring the best talents to KU from across the country,” Anderson said.
Facing the money
“With all of this going on, of course, there is the budget,” Gray-Little said.
KU Endowment is preparing to launch a major capital campaign in the next year. As the university plans to increase its private funding, however, projections for its public receipts continue to shrink.
Although it’s possible that some goals can be achieved without additional funds, Gray-Little said, the school needs to figure out how will be able to move forward while working within budget constraints.
Anderson said that, with all the cuts to its budget, some things at KU will be done differently. But, he said, that doesn’t necessarily mean the whole school willsuffer significantly.
“We need to find an effective way to explain why KU, even with the cuts, has a lot to offer,” he said.
KU Medical Center
In Kansas City, Kan., where the budget crunch is being felt even more than on the Lawrence campus, Barbara Atkinson, KUMC’s executive vice chancellor, said she’s still working to improve the school in 2010.
Even as it deals with less available funding, KUMC will apply to its accreditation agency to increase the number of students in its School of Medicine in Salina and Wichita, Atkinson said.
“We’re looking for philanthropy to fund at least the first part,” Atkinson said of the expansion, which includes a new curriculum.
The school also will continue its quest to attract new researchers as it continues to build the school’s case to receive National Cancer Institute designation.
Atkinson warned that further cuts to KUMC’s budget would hamper the school’s overall mission.
“We want to make progress,” Atkinson said. “We’re at a stage where so much progress has been made over the past few years, to see it stop or slow down would be a shame for the state of Kansas.”
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anon1958 (anonymous) says…
Things that will not change:
The top KU priority will remain basketball and football.
The athletic director will be able to bully any other unit on campus if he so sees a need.
Mangino still on the payroll to the tune of 3 million.
The KU administration will continue to operate secretively and use bullying tactics against its employees.
Burned out professors will be in charge of many departments and serve in administrative roles that they are emotionally and intellectually unsuited for.
As shown by the Mangino affair no amount of hypocrisy is to big a bite to swallow by the new chancellor.
KU will continue to pay lip service to teaching.
Funds derived from research projects will continue to be diverted to pay disproportionately high administrative salaries.
Obtaining funds from unsound or other wasteful government grants will continue to trump important research that does not line the KU coffers.
Top researchers will continue to bolt from KU to a university that has reasonable pay and a top rate infrastructure.
Students will continue to pay an athletic fee that is no more than a backdoor tax to support a runaway athletic department.
Freshman and sophmores will continue to pay for a college education in biology labs but be taught by their fellow undergraduates. (No, that is not a typo, its an outrage against parents and students that is not well known but very lucrative for KU biology administrators.
The Kansas legislature will fund KU and other schools no higher than the 2006 level unless they can get a waiver to fund at a lower rate and retain their federal stimulus money.
KU will remain as one of the most top heavy universities in terms of administration.
At least one KU football player will rough up a girlfriend.
Athletes will continue their life long indoctrination that they are "special" and their bad behavior will tolerated and or covered up.
KU fraternities will continue a long tradition of promoting illegal and irresponsible drinking.
Several weekend rituals for students will be held on Saturdays during the Fall semester that are designed to reinforce and glorify the importance of consuming large amounts of alcohol.
KU football will still suck.
Most of the above applies to KSU including the sucky football.
januarygirl (anonymous) says…
i just read the article about the cave on
campus, and this article, there seems to be a conflict of issues here.
bailoutnation (anonymous) says…
anon1958 --- Couldn't have said it better my self. Right on the mark.
I will add --- It would be easy for KU to save 2 million dollars a year. Let go of about 10 administrative or other staff members making in the neighborhood of 100K+ per year (100K + Benefits + whatever other special things they get). There are at least that many to spare who seem to have little to no accountability. Riding the gravy train.
rantor (anonymous) says…
anon, I see your New Year's resolution to focus on the positive lasted a long time. Santa didn't bring you waht you wanted?
Why don't you focus on what is needed to make positive changes this year instead of just whining.
Here's an example: Fire Lew Perkins!!!
equalaccessprivacy (anonymous) says…
Anon1958 thank you for shooting so straightly from the hip and showing such good and dry perception and keen insight. Recently have tasted an unfair share of KU administrative bullying of employees, so know what you mean.
ldvander (anonymous) says…
Selling Education is genius! Selling the University experience is super genius! One of the great scams throughout history.
anon1958 (anonymous) says…
rantor (Anonymous) says…
anon, I see your New Year's resolution to focus on the positive lasted a long time. Santa didn't bring you waht you wanted?
Why don't you focus on what is needed to make positive changes this year instead of just whining.
Here's an example: Fire Lew Perkins!!!
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Well rantor, sometimes bringing the pain results in a positive action. Also, who the hell is this Santa you are talking about?. I know my mailman, UPS deliveryman and the lady that delivers my bottled water and none of them are named santa. Anyway we are not so near the chinese, ethiopian, mayan or Islamic new year that I have given any consideration to resolutions.
Anyway, the renewal of life is in the springtime, not the middle of winter. Who is so ignorant to celebrate the shortest day of the year when the longest day is likely to be much more pleasant?
It is easy to explain what needs to be done but without the political support and leadership to make changes it is a waste of time. The real problems with higher education are not the problems that the right wing is ranting about and the left wing is equally useless because they will react to any challenge to the status quo of higher education regardless of its merit.
The moderates and/or middle class do not care or cannot be bothered with expending the energy needed to make needed changes in higher education. The only people that are not students or employees of higher education only care about getting their weekly fix of sports crack cocaine.
KU is a textbook case of the major failures and mismanagement of higher education. Speaking from decades of experience:
1) KU administration has been long out of control because they are in charge of a closed system. The administration will just say the silliest things imaginable when they are occaisonally forced ro admit to some egregious stupid act.
The way to solve this problem which is at the core of many other serious issues is very simple. The current regent system should be abolished and replaced by professionals that have the resources and political independence to over ride the administration when needed and report to the legislature and public.
2) If you live in Lawrence and do not know at least five people that hate and loathe KU because of some outrageous bullying or high handedness that they have suffered from then you either need to get out more often or widen your circle of friends.
The positive thing to do is explained above, oversight.
anon1958 (anonymous) says…
3) KU administrators blithley ignore the rules and regulations that are supposed to insure a fair workplace and indeed have some statuary power. However, the administration also knows they can bury anyone because they have essentially unlimited legal resources.
Again, the positive action to take is to institute oversight. University officials and their cowardly faculty will insist that oversight will diminish academic freedom. That is just contemptible bullsheet.
4) A problem that I do not know how to address is the selfishness and craven cowardness of most faculty. The faculty at KU as a group are just about the most wretched spineless collection of employees I have ever observed. There are many outstanding individual faculty but as a group they completely cave into the administration and never challenge or censor their colleagues that do the dirty work for the administration.
Perhaps faculty should be required to perform two years of military service prior to their appointment in order to learn the universe does not stop at the tip of their own nose.
5) Here is a positive idea for you, Rantor. We should end university programs that: enroll students that are not academically prepared for college, promote the illegal consumption of alcohol by design or coincidence, provide students with exceptionally crude men for role models, sacrifice a students physical well being for a goal that does not help the student in any meaningful way. Perhaps we should eliminate programs that are not related to the core mission of the university but occupy and waste a huge amount of the chancellors time. Maybe we should eliminate programs from the university that routinely embarass the legitimate students and educators with bad behavior by the program's students and employees.
How can eliminating these programs be argued against in the context of the mission of KU? I think my suggestion to end these frivolous public entertainment programs is a hugely positive suggestion.
Firing Lew Perkins is not even moving a nanometer in the right direction. KUAC should be abolished. It would not hurt to tear down the fieldhouse and memorial stadium along with the practice field, salt the earth and build a memorial to all the time and resources wasted on the entire enterprise but maybe that is going too far.
anon1958 (anonymous) says…
beobachter (Anonymous) says…
anon1958, amazing how totally clueless and ignorant some can be.
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Interestingly enough it is not clear if you are referring to me personally, or referring to people that are clueless and ignorant about the reality of KU as I know and have experienced it.
toe (anonymous) says…
Anon has a good plan. The lazy, self loathing faculty will never have the courage or ability to change.
Currahee (anonymous) says…
I swear if I hear Change, Hope, or the other Obama slogans reused and recycled excessively I'll end up losing my mind. Have some creativity for heaven's sake....
SFBayhawk (anonymous) says…
The longest journey starts with short steps: Dump Perkins and the rest of the suits. Make them parasitize something besides education.
anon1958 (anonymous) says…
Thing (Anonymous) says…
Interesting to see who is defending KU in these posts. The usual leftist suspects.
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I do not think that my posts can be be misinterpreted as defending KU. The obvious and self-proclaimed far right participants on this forum would certainly judge my opinions as left of center.
The immunity of the KU administration from oversight and from following its own regulations is not a right versus left issue.
The recycled ideas and priorities of the current chancellor are not a right versus left issue either.
Clearly the suits at KU live in some alternate reality that does not cohere with our own.
For example: In regard to the Medical School the following inane and imbecilic remark was made in the above article.
“We want to make progress,” Atkinson said. “We’re at a stage where so much progress has been made over the past few years, to see it stop or slow down would be a shame for the state of Kansas.”
Anyone but a reporter from the Journal World would immediately challenge the preceding remark as absurd. There has been a significant brain drain at KUMED in recent years and it has been reported on in the pages of the journal world.
When KUMED faculty have an increase load of teaching due to funding cuts then the time for their lucrative clinical work declines. This will result in increased class sizes and increased pressure for faculty to leave KUMED.
The latter situation which is easily deduced from the outside and readily confirmed by interviewing KUMED faculty and staff is only one of a hundred or more significant stories that the Journal World is either incompetent or disinterested in investigating.