Kim Wilcox: Candidate for UW-Madison Chancellor

PREFACE:

There are four candidates for UW-Madison Chancellor. This week I will profile each of them, contributing information gleaned from "off list" discussions and sleuthing. As I noted in my last couple of blogs, unfortunately that sort of due diligence was not undertaken by the search firm.

I'm doing this in the spirit of sifting and winnowing, with an eye towards helping us identify the candidate who best suits UW-Madison with its many strong traditions-- foremost among them our tradition of shared governance. I hope you will join me in that spirit, refraining from engaging in name-calling or sheer speculation, while sharing any useful information you may have, using the comments function on this blog.

Until December 2012, Kim Wilcox was the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Michigan State University, where he also served as a professor in the Department of Communicative Sciences and Disorders, a member of the MSU Foundation board of directors, and on the board of directors of the Spectrum Health – MSU Alliance Corporation. 

Earlier in his career, Wilcox was dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and vice provost for general education coordination at the University of Kansas. He was born in Michigan, and received his bachelor’s degree in audiology and speech sciences from Michigan State University, and his master’s and doctorate from Purdue University, both in speech and hearing science.

This is not Wilcox's first attempt at a chancellor position. Last year, he was up for the position at the University of Hawaii-Manoa, and according to some sources earlier he was considered for a similar job in Minnesota, in a search he pulled out from. It seems he's been looking to leave his current job for awhile.

While also a public university, Michigan State is a very different academic environment from UW-Madison, most critically with regard to its top-down style of governing. The president and provost hold a great deal of power, and make nearly all campus decisions with the deans--and without consultation with the faculty. This sort of background is not an asset when it comes to preparing for the chancellorship of UW-Madison. 

Some colleagues find Wilcox to be the ultimate technocrat, citing his love of metrics and accountability, and noting that under his leadership faculty governance is an "empty enterprise." Others who are more fond of him seem to generally be students and faculty who've known no other approach to decision-making, and are pretty happy to be "allowed a voice" in decisions.

One of the key issues on which people speak most vehemently about Wilcox is in regards to his efforts to restructure academic departments. Here is a video of Wilcox -- around the 6 minute mark, he announces his suggestion for consolidation of some departments within a college, “reducing the number from 13 to 6.”  These efforts mainly focused on the liberal arts, the Classics in particular-- which he apparently proposed eliminating--but I'm also told he would have eliminated Geology if a big donor hasn't intervened.  Commentary on discussion boards tend to center on these issues-- for example see this message board and this reaction to the Classics decision.

When it comes to student enrollment, it has been said that “under Wilcox's direction, MSU has grown its enrollment to more than 49,000 students while raising the academic credentials of the entering class, increasing the percentage of students from underrepresented groups, decreasing the average time to degree, increasing the graduation rate for undergraduates and decreasing the percentage of students graduating with any accumulated debt” However, while an examination of MSU's data digest (h/t to that helpful grad student, you know who are you!) supports most of these claims, it's also worth noting that during Wilcox's tenure, the racial/ethnic gap in graduation rates widened by 40%. The reliance on adjuncts at the university also increased, as did the concentration of racial/ethnic minorities in that group of faculty. Overall, I find little evidence that Wilcox has systematically worked to address issues of achievement gaps at MSU, a major issue on that campus and ours.

To conclude: while I have little doubt that the search and screen committee found much value in Wilcox's portfolio of materials, I have serious concerns about his ability to adapt and thrive in our campus governance system. I am also quite unsure that he will treat the issues of diversity that we face on this campus with the seriousness of purpose that they deserve. For this reason, at this point he is not my choice for chancellor.

Postscript: Wilcox was up for the position of chancellor at the University of Wyoming and did not get it.

Postscript:

Just received this email about Wilcox from MSU colleagues-- seems important enough to share:

There are quite a few serious "negatives" here that anyone who might be in a position to have influence should know about. One point, for example, is the statement Wilcox made to the NYT Education Life section that appeared on Dec. 29, 2009: "Kim Wilcox, the provost and vice president for academic affairs at Michigan State, notes that universities, his included, used to offer majors in elocution and animal husbandry. In a major re-examination of its curriculum, Michigan State has added a dozen or so new programs, including degrees in global studies and, in response to a growing industry in the state, film studies. At the same time, it is abandoning underperformers like classical studies: in the last four years, only 13 students have declared it their major." As if his condescension weren't bad enough, the statement he made here was simply false. We graduated five to six majors per year with an average of 25-26 majors on the books each of the four years he cites. This, with three regular faculty members. The stated reason for cutting programs, especially in our case, was the budget, but, again, the numbers simply weren't there. There were also serious violations of governance and procedures when Classics was eliminated.

         

Asking More from Our Next Chancellor

Over at the Nation, Scott Sherman makes an excellent case that we are obligated to sift and winnow for a college president or chancellor who will address the real social and economic issues confronting public higher education-- rather than merely "adapting" to the new normal.

Sherman writes, "Why should we fret about the presidents of our colleges and universities? Because American higher education is plagued by severe difficulties on many fronts—from soaring tuition and runaway student debt to the loss of public funding, the endemic corruption in college athletics and the erosion of the liberal arts—and the presidents won’t resolve those issues by kibitzing in the gilded suites of Wall Street. The time has come to demand more from them, and to hold them to more elevated standards. The finest presidents of the past—Conant, Robert Hutchins, Kingman Brewster, Clark Kerr—were not perfect men, but they exercised potent leadership, and sometimes they were quite courageous."

As we move through this chancellor search process, I concur with Sherman that we should seek a man or woman with courage.  We must avoid technocrats, those "agile climbers who reach the top without making too many enemies or mistakes."  It seems to me that we have at least one in the current pool (more on that later).  On this point, like Sherman, I think folks like William Bowen are entirely wrong to advise presidents to speak rarely and carefully on matters of public policy.  I agree firmly with Jonathan Cole of Columbia, whom Sherman quotes as stating the following:

“Presidents have done a very, very poor job of using the bully pulpit for higher education...They have done particularly poorly at educating the American people about the value of the university—its centrality to the future welfare of this country. They have done abysmally on the humanities, failing to educate the public about why the humanities are central to the university, and why they are even central to the sciences in the future.” For Cole, it comes down to guns or butter. Presidents “have failed to explain why the public ought to be supporting the universities as a nondiscretionary item in the budget. You can train three or four students at Berkeley for what it costs to incarcerate a prisoner in California.”

Cole told Sherman that "there aren’t many presidents who are fighting against the powers that be.”
Well, that's tragic, and so so sad indeed.  We absolutely must look for the possibilities of one in the candidates coming soon to visit our campus.  Perhaps s/he can grow into such a leader.

Due Diligence: When it Comes to Madison's Next Chancellor Now Is the Time

There's hardly ever been a more difficult and auspicious time to lead a public flagship university. Yet at the same time, I believe it's among the greatest opportunities, and anyone would be beyond lucky to have the job.

The last chancellor of UW-Madison nearly undid our relationship with our state. In my opinion, then and now, she was nothing short of disastrous.  And, we have learned since her departure that her employment could have been avoided if only the search had involved a genuine due diligence process before she was brought in for interviews. For example, had due diligence occurred, we would have known-- before she came to woo the campus with her charisma-- that as long as Biddy's around, no one needs to have good ideas, for she has them all. In a setting like ours, where shared governance prevails, and we know that good ideas come from all sorts of places, she clearly wouldn't have fit.

Due diligence is a must when hiring any leader. And it's incredibly important that it happen before people come for in-person interviews on campuses and in communities-- since at that point there's no going back. In fact, in processes like ours, the naming of candidates for interviews is really the end of the "search and screen" process- the faculty, staff, and students have done their jobs.  In this case, the search and screen was asked to proffer 5 candidates-- and it offered 4.  Clearly, its members have been working hard. But now their jobs are essentially done, and the decision is up to UW System President Kevin Reilly and a team of Regents: Charles Pruitt, Regina Millner, Brent Smith, David Walsh, and Student Regent Katherine Pointer.

Since I was curious, I asked Search Chair David McDonald about the process for vetting candidates, and learned that until this point the four candidates have only been vetted using print and online sources, and their "on-list" references (e.g. the people they said to call).  Apparently, no additional investigation into their backgrounds has occurred. This is very disappointing.  We just saw the effects of similar mistakes with the search for a new superintendent of Madison public schools-- and here we are again.

So given this state of affairs, I urge people across Wisconsin, and our alumni, to go out and help us learn all we can about the candidates order to help ensure we get a chancellor that will lead this great institution forward in ways that respect our history, our context, our mission, and all of the families of Wisconsin.

Of course, I've been doing my homework as well, and in the coming days I will begin to blog about my assessments of each candidate. I am doing this publicly, and independently, as a concerned citizen and long-time employee of this university. My opinions are just that-- mine.  I will not pretend that sharing them matters at all, especially to the Regents. But this time around, I think it's best that all cards are on the table-- even if we don't get the chancellor we want, we need to know whom we're really dealing with.

The comment box is open, and my email is srab@education.wisc.edu .  Tell us, what do you know about Michael Schill of the University of Chicago, Kim Wilcox of Michigan State University, Nick Jones of Johns Hopkins, and Rebecca Blank of Commerce?

Predatory Privatization: Exploiting Economic Woes to "Transform" Higher Education

Milton Friedman must be dancing in his grave at the moment.  In every economic crisis there's an opportunity to impose change, he professed, and no smart leader let such an opportunity pass by. Especially when it comes to undermining public goods.

Leaders of MOOC movements across the nation, including here at home in UW-Madison, are telling us that this is simply the right time to take the leap into a transformed space in higher education, one enabled by technology.  I have absolutely no doubt that they sincerely believe this.  And I have equally little doubt that most are entirely unaware of their place in history, and the degree to which they are acting out a narrative written many decades earlier.

MOOCs are not primarily or even secondarily about bringing open, no-cost education to the masses. Instead, these efforts created by private elite institutions and for-profit businesses squarely aim to outsource traditional governmental functions in education, and divert taxpayer dollars from the building of public assets and institutions to create long-term revenue streams and profit for corporations.  That's privatization, period.

If MOOCs were simply the meeting of technological triumphs and the demand of students around the world, they would have been embraced in a very different way, and developed in a much more democratic manner.  There is a third factor guiding their growth, and it reveals their true meaning.  As described in this document circulated by the "Committee on Institutional Cooperation," a consortium of the Big Ten universities plus the University of Chicago, it is the meeting of these two pressures plus economic pressures regarding debt and tuition that make this the moment for MOOCs.   Not only does traditional higher education face additional threats from regulation, say the leaders of MOOCs, but heck, you're fast becoming "irrelevant" too. Through disruptions from all over, we will be squeezed into submission.

Very little good has ever come from decisions made through austerity politics.

*****

Do you feel tired when hearing the word "innovation" because it's been so often in the news? Are you now just waiting for your university to do something about it? Did it ever occur to you that this is due to a coordinated push by business-minded authors and foundations to deliver the compelling message that "traditional higher education" is outdated because...

• Uncontrolled cost increases
• Graduates lack critical skills
• Resistance to pedagogical innovation
• Irrelevant scholarship
• Tenure protects faculty from accountability
• Undergraduate tuition is subsidizing  faculty research
• Traditional universities are captive to the  prestige arms race—real change will  come from radical, low cost models

What's coming next? The Executive Advisory Board has a glimpse of the future for faculty...

After being shown by "innovators" that our beliefs are "traditional' and "outdated" we will next begin the pathway to salvation-- the 'gamification of education.'

The pathway is so clear, the future so bright, that there will be, according to this model-- "NO EXCUSES" for resisting transformation.  We will enter the new world of 'high capacity' instruction, which focuses on new hires-- not those old "experienced" teachers.

Recall the claims in New Orleans, when school reformers arrived, that "teacher experience" was overrated?

Sound far-fetched? Why would anyone bother to push this agenda so hard?  Oh, wait for it-- because the new education is entirely in service of the business sector.  'Cause of course, this transformation is all about the improving the economy, stupid!

Forget Liberal Arts, folks, now we will have Liberal Arts 2.0!

And for all of you researchers, no more need for "disciplines"- according to the report, those are going the way of the typewriter.

Finally, glory glory hallelujah we will reach the punchline:  more dollars reaching the private sector.

Scared yet? Wait for it...

Don't you see how inevitable it is? Stop clicking your heels together, Dorothy.. after all...

So, what to look for next?  PRIVATE rather than PUBLIC votes.  "Paperless" budgeting. And oh, so much more...

Still feel like sitting still and letting others make decisions for you, you "traditionalists? "


Postscript:
Some readers have suggested this blog is insightful while others claim it's a conspiracy theory. For both groups, I suggest you take a look at this new piece by Andrew Leonard.  Leonard, a journalist, began as roundly skeptical of claims like mine, but has evolved his thinking.  In this piece, he writes "But what if MOOCs actually turned out to be part of a right-wing plot? After some reflection, it’s become clear to me that there is a crucial difference in how the Internet’s remaking of higher education is qualitatively different than what we’ve seen with recorded music and newspapers. There’s a political context to the transformation. Higher education is in crisis because costs are rising at the same time that public funding support is falling. That decline in public support is no accident. Conservatives don’t like big government and they don’t like taxes, and increasingly, they don’t even like the entire way that the humanities are taught in the United States.It’s absolutely no accident that in Texas, Florida and Wisconsin, three of the most conservative governors in the country are leading the push to incorporate MOOCs in university curricula. And it seems well worth asking whether the apostles of disruption who have been warning academics that everything is about to change have paid enough attention to how the intersection of politics and MOOCs is affecting the speed and intensity of that change. Imagine if Napster had had the backing of the Heritage Foundation and House Republicans? It’s hard enough to survive chaotic disruption when it is a pure consequence of technological change. But when technological change suits the purposes of enemies looking to put a knife in your back, it’s almost impossible."

Exactly.

Performance Funding, MOOCs, and Public/ Private Distinctions

The discourse around higher education on two key topics-- MOOCs and performance funding-- is unfortunately trending toward a generic approach to institutions.  Lumping public and private universities together is always unwise, because not only do their funding sources differ, but so do their missions and masters.

Public institutions still lean heavily on taxpayer support to provide undergraduate education, and that funding is subject to rules developed by externally, democratically controlled governance units.  They are explicitly responsible for expanding access, growing the proportion of the public that is educated at the postsecondary level.  These conditions represent both benefits and constraints to public colleges and universities.

In contrast, at private instituions tuition and endowments provide most of the resources for undergraduate education, and rules for that funding and spending are mainly developed internally.  Their missions vary widely and are internally determined.  These conditions also come with benefits and consequences, but quite different ones than those faced by public schools.

Given these differences, let's consider the following questions:

(1) What are the effects of holding both sets of institutions to the same metrics/outcomes?  They are not equally in control of the inputs critical to achieving outcomes. Also,  the impacts of achieving an outcome like graduation comes as a cost for other outcomes --such as access- for which public institutions alone are truly held responsible.

(2) What are the differential effects of implementing MOOCs in public and private schools?  They fit within institutional mission and resources in very different ways in these spaces.  Private institutions can decide to devote resources to outreach and brand recognition, but public institutions must first excel at their core efforts-- expanding access and providing high quality education at a low price point.  Private institutions must answer to their boards for such activities, while public institutions must answer to taxpayers.   As my colleague Chuck Rybak at UW-Green Bay recently asked via Twitter, "Is someone going to ask if it's ethical for state schools to offer MOOCs/coursework to non-Wisconsin taxpayers for free?"  I bet they are now...

Too often those inside higher education focus on the activities of their elite, private "peers" without acknowledging that these aren't our peers at all.  It reminds me of high school. Why are the really smart, devoted, activist kids who are great at so many things but don't invest time putting on make-up trying to pander to the whims of the homecoming kings and queens who invest in dating and shopping for cars?  Why are those capable of changing the world by helping the truly disadvantaged gain their footing instead spending their time chasing technological innovations that eventually will mainly serve to line the pockets of the already-wealthy?  And when will we stop them from imposing their technocratic "rules" on our hard work?

The Illusory Appeal of the UW-Madison MOOCs

It was only a matter of time.  The anticipation was palpable when a group of about 50 concerned faculty, students, and staff from around UW-Madison gathered last summer to talk about the governance crisis at UVA.  The president of that flagship university had just been ousted for failing to quickly embrace MOOCs-- a sign some UVA board members thought meant that she was failing to embrace the "disruptive innovation" that will purportedly transform higher education.  While President Teresa Sullivan was reinstated some weeks later, after a period of alumni outrage, the writing was on the wall.  MOOCs were established as an especially hot new trend with broad appeal among the powerful who find "shock and awe" scenarios the best way to promote change-- and it wouldn't be long before UW-Madison lept into the quicksand.

This morning UW-Madison is going public with the news that we're joining with Coursera to offer four pilot MOOCs.  Our administrators have apparently decided MOOCs are "compelling"enough to jump on the bandwagon.

This is a pretty remarkable turn of events, for several reasons. Let's set aside for a moment that relatively little open, public discussion of MOOCs has occurred on campus, especially discussion involving faculty and students.  But frankly, I can't even pretend surprise about that anymore. As usual, the University Committee and "numerous" faculty were engaged in discussions with administrators, but obviously that's small potatoes on a campus of 2,000+ professors.  If surveyed, I'm willing to bet that 50% or more of the professors at Madison don't know what a MOOC is, despite the presence of this "thought piece" crafted "for considering if MOOCs are right for UW-Madison at this point in time" and placed on a website most faculty don't know about.

Instead, I'm a little more surprised at the apparent willingness of the Madison administration to engage in the illusions/delusions of grandeur posed by the MOOC movement. Sure, this is just four courses, a small step forward, and it's framed as a pilot effort to "learn by doing."  It's not as if the entire campus has gone for MOOC madness.  But "learning by doing" is often akin to a gateway drug--once you've done a little, you might as well do more-- after all, you've already make the investment.  Furthermore, if you're really learning by doing, you build in continuous assessment of both intended and unintended consequences-- and the administration's documents don't mention of this sort of work at all. (Fingers crossed that the evaluation plan is among a detailed set of documents we'll soon get to see.)

The rhetorical flourishes of MOOCs abound, with talk of great public service and institutional branding. But in some key areas, the reality seems far grimmer.  Consider this:

1. MOOCs cost money and apparently generate little in return. We are constantly told that financial resources are scarce on campus, and hard to come by.  But as Madison's administrators know very well, MOOCs "require upfront investment without directly generating new revenue."  The business model for MOOCs is simply unclear.  What even the administration suspects is that it likely threatens the employment of our teaching assistants.

2. MOOCs take faculty time. There's rampant complaints of "overwork" among Madison faculty and yet at the same time demand by our students for access to more courses with us.  MOOCs require time to develop and teach.  If course releases are provided to do this, it pretty much has to come at a cost to UW-Madison students-- or involve further overloading the faculty.  This leads me to wonder, why would we release our professors,  paid with state appropriations and student tuition, to teach students elsewhere?  While it's grand and laudable, expanding their influence and potentially improving our rankings, how is this any different than funding a course release for a professor who flies off to teach at Harvard or in Shanghai?  We don't do that, so why do this?  Professors can and do engage in such things on their own, but they aren't paid by us for it. Why should this be different?

3. MOOCs don't address the core problems we face as a state institution.  MOOCs will neither strengthen our relationships with the Wisconsin legislature or rural communities or help us deliver greater economic development returns to the state.  While these are not all we are tasked with doing, or have the ambition to do, by investing energy in MOOCs rather than those other activities, we are revealing our priorities.  There are opportunity costs to every effort, and this one is occupying our time.

4. Despite their name, there is little chance that MOOCs will serve the masses truly in need of free educational opportunities. The Madison document suggests that MOOCs will "improve lives" and increase "access to education" and thus help fulfill the Wisconsin Idea. This is the grandest claim of all, and yet it's the most far-fetched.  There's no evidence to suggest that the people taking advantage of learning from MOOCs are the under-educated-- but rather they are the highly-educated seeking to learn a bit more in the process of lifelong learning. An assessment of one of Duke's MOOCs found that just 11% of the MOOC enrollment came from students who hadn't attended college-- and the tiny percent of course completers usually held a BA or higher.  MOOCs aren't a substitute for postsecondary education; they are a continuation of it.  They represent not our core mission but the "extras" that we hope to provide at Madison-- if only we can afford to do so.

So let me conclude with this. I love UW-Madison and I love it when we try new things as a university.  Pushing the envelope is a sign of bravery, and our faculty are nothing if not fearless.  But jumping onto an already-moving train just because our peers are onboard, at a time when we have scarce resources and much to lose, well, it looks a bit insane.  And it's really scary to think that some of our administrators subscribe to a shock doctrine approach to educational change, awaiting a "sufficient sense of urgency" to reach the campus to get it engaged in MOOCs.

Let's really debate the MOOCs, sifting and winnowing our way through the process. Let's talk about how to assess this pilot effort, and what sorts of outcomes must be measured.  Let's figure out a plan to put an end to these pilots if they are costing us more than they're worth.  As my colleague Kris Olds has put it, "There are political and economic machinations associated with the stirring of interest in, and coverage of, MOOCs. Given this, and given the stakes at hand, it is important to address the MOOCs phenomenon is a serious, sustained, and reflective way, not in a knee jerk fashion, one way or the other."  Agreed. And now Olds is creating one of Madison's 4 new MOOCs.

With that,  I invite you to a conversation about MOOCs taking place during ED TALKS Wisconsin, Friday March 15 at 7 pm at the School of Education.  Our keynote speaker is Anya Kamenetz, and Kris Olds will be responding to her, along with Chancellor of UW Colleges Ray Cross.  It should be a really good time-- hope to see you there!


ps. Need a laugh? Check out what North Korea's up to regarding MOOCs. (H/T Gary Rhoades)

Recruiting in Classrooms???

The Answer Sheetover at the Washington Post recently ran an editorial by a professor at Fordham University about his reasons for not allowing Teach for America to recruit in his college classroom.  Mainly, he objects because TFA focuses on short-term rather than long-term commitments to teaching and as a result, he claims, “an organization which began by promoting idealism and educational equity has become, to all too many of its recruits, a vehicle for profiting from the misery of America’s poor.”

Like this professor, I don’t allow TFA to recruit in my classrooms at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  Apparently, many of my colleagues feel the same way. When I noted this on Twitter and Facebook, the response was substantial.  Faculty from across the country said “me too,” “me too,” though only a few elaborated on why.

Those that did expound on their practices revealed that TFA’s strategy of in-classroom recruitment may have unintended consequences.  The professors, it seems, use it as an opportunity to describe the “cult-like” aspects of the program, the negative experiences other students have had with it, and the ways it undermines a focus on high-quality teaching and teacher retention.  No, this is apparently not limited to my colleagues in education or sociology; I heard similar stories in STEM disciplines too.

But regardless of whether the recruitment strategy employed by TFA works or not, and whether or not professors take kindly to it or not, my reason for not allowing TFA to recruit in my classroom is very simple:  My classroom is a place for education not solicitation.

The bigger question neglected by the Washington Post editorial—and the one that should be asked all over the country— is why is any organization seeking to take class time for advertising?  And why are universities allowing it? At most colleges and universities, solicitations are confined to public spaces. Why should this only apply to commercial solicitation? If TFA is allowed to recruit during our class time, then doesn’t any other potential employer have the right to? Do we professors really want to subject ourselves to fielding such requests?  Even if no endorsement is implied—and I believe that we’re fooling ourselves if we don’t understand that it’s inherent in opening the door—it still costs us limited instructional time.

There is a hypocrisy in future educators asking current educators to take time away from their teaching so that they can “pitch” students on their product. Teach for America is just one potential opportunity after all; there are numerous others out there.  Our job as professors is to help students develop the critical thinking skills needed to vet these options for themselves—not provide the time for advertisers to reach them.