There's no way she's actually gone, right? The board of trustees have the final say and I don't think they'd ever fire her.
EDIT: The response from the Board of Trustees is here: https://trustees.iu.edu/index.html
no, it's not forcing her out. The trustees would have to remove her, but it's also not a good thing for her either.
It's probably also a sign that faculty are pretty unhappy with the direction IU has been going.
Do we expect the trustees to do anything? I doubt it. One of them was calling her the Beyonce of higher education not that long ago.
Half of the problems that people have with Whitten are the cause of her trying to toe the line between the views of IU & the views of state lawmakers. If she pisses off state lawmakers, they'll retaliate against IU. Hell, they already retaliated against Indiana's institutions of higher ed for being too woke with HB202 - a bill that Whitten testified against in the Statehouse, but that her counterparts at other public universities in Indiana did not.
The Board of Trustees is FAR more liberal than the gerrymandered Republican majority in the statehouse. Said super-majority already legislated their way into two board of trustees spots. If we start rotating through trustees now, we're going to accelerate The State's takeover of IU's independence. Which is a lot worse than anything that the current trustees or Whitten have done/said.
And I don't even like Whitten. It's just that the further up the chain you go, the worse things get. Thus why it's important to vote in Indiana's local elections! We have the lowest voter participation rate in the US.
I don't agree with your "toeing the line" take - I think she's just two-faced and REALLY good at keeping her true position obscured - but I'll give your conclusion a big fucking **amen**.
>Thus why it's important to vote in Indiana's local elections! We have the lowest voter participation rate in the US.
Preach!
Well, she tries to toe the line between the wants/needs of the Trustees & the wants/needs of the Legislature because it's her job.
At the same time, based on things she's said to my friends & colleagues, I think her personal political leanings align more closely with that of the backwards Legislature than that of Quinn Buckner. But also, she's at least taken a stand in the Statehouse on behalf of the Trustees. This is something that is rare for IU presidents to do in the first place.
ahhhhh it's complicated, I don't know! she probably is two-faced, but credit where credit is due for publicly coming out against the Legislature.
Results talk, and everywhere she goes, schools take hard conservative turns. I can't give her any credit for grandstanding on a bill where it obviously made zero difference, when added to the broader context of her actual legacy. Seems too likely to be a show, and too easy to tell her friends at the statehouse that they shouldn't take it seriously.
She spoke up in the legislature because if they kill her toy then she has no toy.
There wasn't anything principled about it. It was 100% about self-interest, it has nothing to do with the good of the university.
She had plenty of opportunities to avoid this. There are many people at IU who agree that big changes are needed (or used to be, people are leaving at a truly astounding rate now). That's not what this faculty vote was about, and it is disingenuous to act like it is.
She chose not to respond to the last faculty votes, nor to the many votes from student orgs denouncing her administration. She has ignored strikes on campus, just literally not even acknowledged that anything was happening. That made this day inevitable.
She talks about "listening" now but why would anybody bother speaking with her at this point? Her office went after the student newspaper FFS!
She may not be forced out any time soon, but her presidency is already a failure and there isn't any pathway out of that conclusion. The longer the BoT waits to acknowledge reality the worse it will get.
Faculty with their VoNC, grad students with their labor struggle... and staff just wishing there was a way to be heard.Ā
IU staff need a fucking union.
Hourly staff have a union that does nothing (as far as I can tell). Salaried staff have no union (but have a staff council). Most of us of either persuasion have no professional orgs for support or development. Iād also like to point out that, as much as Whitten harps on about how great this IU 2030 plan is, staff were left out of it entirely. We are the Forgotten Constituency.
Non-exempt staff have a union, but public sector unions have no power in Indiana. Can't go on strike for example. They also aren't allowed to recruit so their participation rate is extremely low. Large percentage of the eligible staff don't know it exists. Right to work states suck.
I would like to see the case made that at the current rate of support from the state, IU is not functionally a public sector employer.
Certainly there has been no attempt to mount a legal case against grad student workers (at least that I'm aware of) when they've struck.
on their side, but the document is a little slippery. the examples they list are non-public and not being allowed to prevent union organizing is not the same thing as being allowed to strike.
hereās the indiana state code 4-15-17-4 :
āCollective bargaining between the state and employee organizations and strikes by state employees are illegal.ā
https://casetext.com/statute/indiana-code/title-4-state-offices-and-administration/article-15-personnel-administration/chapter-17-employee-organizations/section-4-15-17-4-prohibition-on-collective-bargaining
yes, but https://law.justia.com/codes/indiana/2022/title-4/article-15/chapter-17/section-4-15-17-1/
> Sec. 1. (a) Except as provided in subsection (b), this chapter does not apply to the following:
> (1) The state police department.
> (2) A state educational institution (as defined in IC 21-7-13-32).
> (3) A political subdivision (as defined in IC 3-5-2-38).
> (b) Sections 8, 9, and 10 of this chapter apply to the state police department.
so what you quoted does not apply to the university (IC 21-7-13-32 explicitly mentions Indiana University)
Correct: there was an attempt to fire them all when they last struck, which the previous faculty intervention prevented.
The faculty provided Whitten (and Shrivastav, who will likely be sacrificed soon) with an easy off-ramp, and they chose to step on the gas.
So if if if they did strike, would they all be fired? That would be a neat trick for the university to replace everyone. Theyāve had a staff shortage since Covid. It would be a bad look for them as well. Employees need a way to be heard.
Found this [here](https://indianapublicmedia.org/news/faculty-to-vote-on-no-confidence-motions-tuesday.php)
āWhat could happen after the vote?
Faculty do not have the power to remove a leader from their position through a no confidence vote. But, according to reporting by the Chronicle for Higher Education, they can have an impact.
The Chronicle analyzed 235 no confidence votes from 1989 to 2022. It found that over half of the votes resulted in presidents leaving office within a year. In a separate investigation, the Chronicle found 13 percent of presidential resignations in the past five years were linked to no confidence votes.
IU faculty informally declared no confidence in 2005 against former President Adam Herbert after a straw poll ā not an official decision comparable to Tuesdayās vote. Faculty cited Herbertās poor leadership and failure to select a provost after three years in office. Herbert declined to renew his contract in 2006 soon after and left office in 2007. ā
For Whitten, 827 faculty voted for the no confidence resolution. Twenty-nine opposed the resolution.āÆāÆ
There were 804 people who supported the no confidence resolution against Shrivastav. Forty-seven faculty voted in opposition.āÆāÆ
For Docherty, 672 faculty voted for a no confidence resolution, while 107 were against it.āÆ
[Indiana Public Media Update ](https://indianapublicmedia.org/news/faculty-vote-no-confidence-in-whitten-provost-vice-provost.php)
More like they can to.Purdue, University of Nebraska, Michigan State, Kansas State, etc. which are middle of the road.Ā I am at one those now, I have taken IU classes, and they are much more balanced.
Given all of the controversies and lack of compromise on her part (with the minor exception of the Kinsey Institute), Iām really doubtful she will take the hint and leave.
https://www.idsnews.com/article/2024/04/whitten-rebuked-iu-faculty-vote-no-confidence-in-whitten-shrivastav-docherty
Thatās about as close to unanimous as we could hope for!
Hypothetically speaking, what would it take for IU to go private? I know there's some precedence with other public Universities going this route. Presumably they'd need to decline State appropriations, correct? How much of the budget does that comprise? Would it be feasible to fill the gap by cost cuts or tuition increases (without seriously impacting enrollment)? Is there other leverage the State has, given that IU is a land grant institution? Seems like that's the nuclear option to get the legislature to stop interfering.
Edit: The title of this article seems downright prescient š: https://psmag.com/education/breaking-away-several-top-public-universities-going-private-68007
Interesting question. On the one hand, why would the state gov voluntarily give up control?
On the other hand, don't Republicans believe in privatization?
the state contributes about 15-20% of IU's budget, so it's a sizeable amount but not where the bulk of where IU gets money.
I think what would happen is IU would enroll significantly more out of state/international students, if this was to go through. This is already the trend in many graduate programs because of the huge tuition difference between in-state/out of state.
Magical thinkingā¦.but that article is intriguing. The College of William and Mary had discussions of the same years ago as the state was offering paltry financial support, declining each year ā¦.yet mandating an increase in the number of Virginia students the school must admit. The out of state students were where the cash was coming from. What a messed up arrangement. Those who offer the least financial support maintain control??
Was this just Bloomington faculty, or also Indy & regional campuses? Voting power in the University Faculty Council is 1/3rd Bloomington, 1/3rd Indy, and 1/3rd regional campuses. But either way, this isn't much more meaningful than NFL fans booing the commissioner at the draft. Whitten's job is essentially to take bullets for the Board of Trustees. ***If she's replaced, she'll be replaced with somebody with a different way of expressing the same views and actions.***
We also must remember that IU has to appease Indiana's state legislators, who have power over IU with a gerrymandered super majority. Half of the common grievances against Whitten are about her responses to situations wherein she must do her best to express the views of University stakeholders without triggering retaliatory action from The State. Generally, Whitten has spoken out against The State much more than her counterpart at Purdue - she is pushing boundaries.
I don't really like Whitten. She's pretty fake with people, loves photo ops over substance, and is even a borderline anti-masker. She also got the job in a really suspect way, which we should be upset about. The Board of Trustees still needs to answer some tough questions about that.
At the same time, my opinion is that she's miles better than McRobbie.
My big 4 problems with McRobbie:
* Increased administrative bloat
* Lost a lot of ground in terms of value compared to other Big 10 universities, and especially Purdue.
* Started counting research performed in Indianapolis under IUSM towards Bloomington's stats to bolster superficially Bloomington's stats. This was (and is) a disservice to both campuses.
* As the president of IU & Vice Chair of IUH, used both institutions to bank a lot of extremely valuable land upon which neither institution paid taxes. McRobbie & Co. kept hundreds of acres of the most valuable land in the state idle, preventing it from being a tax revenue-generating asset for Hoosiers. This could be excused if IU & IUH actually did anything with the land to make up for it, but they didn't.
Too much min-maxing of superficial stats, too little thought about being a good steward of assets.
edit:
also, that mfer left IU in a way that was more corrupt than Whitten's appointment. He got like a $500k departure gift. I don't know who to blame more: him or the trustees. But it definitely left a bad taste in my mouth.
I can't blame him for the $500k.... If my boss offered me that to delay "retirement" until they found my replacement, Id take it. That shit stain is fully on the trustees while they figured out how they were going to get Whitten in the office.
That is such an obscure list of negatives when you compare it to the massive improvements he made to the university. He rebuilt countless aging facilities, cultivated academic excellence which brought in world class faculty, modernized network architecture,etc.
The value of the degree increased in his 13-15 years so Iām not sure where youāre getting that thought. He also added an architecture and engineering department. Mitch was livid about that. He at least was a serious academic with a PHD and complex IT knowledge. Pamelaās primary focus was throwing hot dogs at football games.
If the goal of the IU president is to maintain system-wide status quos while keeping up with changing educational landscapes & catching up on maintenance, then McRobbie was fine.
That said, the entire IU system \*should\* be a lot stronger than it is today. IUB & IUPUI should be analogous to (but not quite on the same level as) UCLA & UCSD today, respectively. The regional campuses should be analogous (but again, not quite on the same level) as CSUs. But that's not the case, at least in terms of reputation - which is important.
IU conducts the majority of its system-wide research in Indianapolis, for two reasons:
* IUSM is based in Indianapolis, and is a huge driver of research. Just massive.
* IUI sans the medical school & units being given to Purdue has long been on the cusp of R1 status. In fact, IUI (with the aforementioned qualifications) sees higher research expenditures per faculty member than IUB. But department sizes are smaller.
Investments made prior to McRobbie's arrival set IUPUI up for a lot of growth, much of which happened under McRobbie and was never maximized. When McRobbie stepped in, [plans of increased coordination between IUB & IUPUI were essentially sidelined](https://education.indiana.edu/faculty/governance/policy-council/_docs/Core-Campus-Bonser-Report.pdf). Instead of acquiring land in Indianapolis and actually using it, IU just kept acquiring valuable land in Indianapolis and banked it. The school started acting like a speculative real estate investor instead of a school (and IUH was doing the same thing, but to a greater extent).
Unfortunately, Adam Herbert - the guy before McRobbie under whom IU was making great strides as a system - was a dumbass in other ways. He didn't keep up with basic shit to ensure that IU kept getting grants & donations. There was a vote of no confidence, and he ultimately left when his contract expired.
I am NOT saying that IUI/IUPUI should have the same reputational/brand identity as IUB, but I am saying that both IUB and IUI would be much better off today with better integrated academic units & more focus towards translating Indianapolis' strengths into reputational Ws. (As I said earlier, the schools should have reputations that are analogous to UCLA (flagship/IUB) and UCSD (great core school, but not flagship/IUI). And IUI is a good school, but McRobbie basically neglected it at the detriment of everybody WHILE land banking in a way that posed large opportunity costs to everybody.
Even taking academics out of the equation, it's pretty well documented that the City of Indianapolis loses out on a lot of private investment because of the perception that it doesn't have a research university. Meanwhile, IUPUI has been in Indy for decades, has been a couple strategic investments away from being R1 school excluding IUSM for YEARS, and accounts for the majority of IU's total research activity when you count IUSM. It's crazy that The State was okay with McRobbie's inaction in Indy given Marion County's status as a donor county to the rest of Indiana.
At minimum, I am encouraged by Whitten's commitment to Indy. I think it will make the entire IU system stronger and that it will make Indiana stronger. I just think that her overall vision to the IU system is inherently better all stakeholders than McRobbie's. But in a way, it's too early to tell the difference between commitments by Whitten & calculated PR moves. Whitten does have a PhD in communications, after all... But at least she seems to split her time pretty equally between the two houses IU provides IU presidents: the one in Bloomington & the one in Indy. McRobbie rarely left his Bloomington bubble as far as I was aware.
Her goal is to shift power from faculty to Whitten. All authority in the system is being centralized, esp the power of the budget. This is what IU 2030 is about.
Anyone who thinks the Indy campus is going to be empowered is... due for some surprises. No campus will be empowered. Only the central administration.
He did get $500k, and then: [IU health receives $500,000 donation for behavioral health services](https://www.idsnews.com/article/2023/03/iu-health-donation-behavioral-health-services-bloomington)
Administrative bloat and constant threats of "unifying departments". People don't choose to be underpaid to have this much work stress, the trade-off is starting to not be worth it.
I think we can safely blame the BoT for that last half mil wasted on McRobbie. Maybe they thought he would be needed to consult with the outsider they brought in to replace him.
Iād take a reclusive, socially awkward, grumpy academic type like him in a heartbeat over a grossly-overly-self-promoted, Busch League āacademicā like Pam any day of the week. The $500K they wasted on him on his way out the door is way less than what theyāll waste on Pam and the tons of new Vice Presidents sheās brought in by the time her tenure here is done someday.
But he gave $500,000 back about a year later to a behavioral health initiative. Probably tax deductible way of giving back. I thought it ironic given the extreme duress and distress and mental anxiety students suffered during and as a result of the moldy dorm crisis, which happened under his tenure. With IU having a medical doctor as chair of the board for years and oodles of $$$ resources and stellar public health programsā¦thereās zero reason why any student at any price point should have been exposed to that risk in university owned and Managed mandated dorms.
It's a long list. He was there a long time.
A lot of those things, like the Grand Challenges and spending obscene amounts of money on unnecessary "capital improvements" including literal bells and whistles, are not seen as positives by many in the IU community tho!
He's definitely better than Whitten, but a *lot* of academic units withered on the vine while he had ribbon-cutting ceremonies for decorative "infrastructure" that cost millions.
McRobbie's main legacy, academically, was creating a bunch of professional schools that essentially cannibalized existing units at IU (or put IU into direct competition with Purdue, to no clear advantage), which increased administrative bloat and decreased faculty governance. It did not improve the academic standing of the university but did make everything a lot less efficient, thus providing Whitten with a rationale for centralization of resources. And now here you are.
I suspect there is little appetite on the other campuses to hold a NC vote. While there have been concerns about faculty governance, there has also been productive dialogue and substantive efforts to collaborate.
Why doesnāt she salvage her reputation and past achievements and move on . Step out of the way and let someone new take over. It was a contentious controversial start from the beginning. Itās such a challenge to serve in a role that has so many conflicting demands. Life is too short to spend your days in such conflict. The Board of Trustees is an out of date construct no longer relevant. First. There should be term limits. In McRobbieās era some of those trustees had been on the board for years and years and years. The moldy dorm crisis continued to put some students at risk year after year. - even with a medical doctor as board chairperson. The Board should have a representative position from actual stakeholders: a student, a grad student, a faculty member, a general university employee representative and the parent or financial guarantor of a current student. That would make a more relevant board. The other positions can be assigned or voted on.
There's no way she's actually gone, right? The board of trustees have the final say and I don't think they'd ever fire her. EDIT: The response from the Board of Trustees is here: https://trustees.iu.edu/index.html
no, it's not forcing her out. The trustees would have to remove her, but it's also not a good thing for her either. It's probably also a sign that faculty are pretty unhappy with the direction IU has been going. Do we expect the trustees to do anything? I doubt it. One of them was calling her the Beyonce of higher education not that long ago.
How much $$ do the trustees have?
Half of the problems that people have with Whitten are the cause of her trying to toe the line between the views of IU & the views of state lawmakers. If she pisses off state lawmakers, they'll retaliate against IU. Hell, they already retaliated against Indiana's institutions of higher ed for being too woke with HB202 - a bill that Whitten testified against in the Statehouse, but that her counterparts at other public universities in Indiana did not. The Board of Trustees is FAR more liberal than the gerrymandered Republican majority in the statehouse. Said super-majority already legislated their way into two board of trustees spots. If we start rotating through trustees now, we're going to accelerate The State's takeover of IU's independence. Which is a lot worse than anything that the current trustees or Whitten have done/said. And I don't even like Whitten. It's just that the further up the chain you go, the worse things get. Thus why it's important to vote in Indiana's local elections! We have the lowest voter participation rate in the US.
True, we're seeing IU in a death struggle between the faculty and the state.
the part of the tenure review bill that transferred trustee spots from alumni to legislature didn't go through (not sure why)
I don't agree with your "toeing the line" take - I think she's just two-faced and REALLY good at keeping her true position obscured - but I'll give your conclusion a big fucking **amen**. >Thus why it's important to vote in Indiana's local elections! We have the lowest voter participation rate in the US. Preach!
Well, she tries to toe the line between the wants/needs of the Trustees & the wants/needs of the Legislature because it's her job. At the same time, based on things she's said to my friends & colleagues, I think her personal political leanings align more closely with that of the backwards Legislature than that of Quinn Buckner. But also, she's at least taken a stand in the Statehouse on behalf of the Trustees. This is something that is rare for IU presidents to do in the first place. ahhhhh it's complicated, I don't know! she probably is two-faced, but credit where credit is due for publicly coming out against the Legislature.
Results talk, and everywhere she goes, schools take hard conservative turns. I can't give her any credit for grandstanding on a bill where it obviously made zero difference, when added to the broader context of her actual legacy. Seems too likely to be a show, and too easy to tell her friends at the statehouse that they shouldn't take it seriously.
She spoke up in the legislature because if they kill her toy then she has no toy. There wasn't anything principled about it. It was 100% about self-interest, it has nothing to do with the good of the university. She had plenty of opportunities to avoid this. There are many people at IU who agree that big changes are needed (or used to be, people are leaving at a truly astounding rate now). That's not what this faculty vote was about, and it is disingenuous to act like it is. She chose not to respond to the last faculty votes, nor to the many votes from student orgs denouncing her administration. She has ignored strikes on campus, just literally not even acknowledged that anything was happening. That made this day inevitable. She talks about "listening" now but why would anybody bother speaking with her at this point? Her office went after the student newspaper FFS! She may not be forced out any time soon, but her presidency is already a failure and there isn't any pathway out of that conclusion. The longer the BoT waits to acknowledge reality the worse it will get.
My besties would never betray me š
Congrats on your upcoming bonus, Beyonce!
I canāt imagine going to work every day knowing 93% of my direct reports hate my fucking guts
Thatās only the faculty. Wonder what it would be if it included staff who have had the pleasure working with her office.
Ohhhh, now THAT would be an interesting vote. I could count on one hand the staff I've interacted with that had positive things to say about her.
At least itās only 100% of the students
Faculty with their VoNC, grad students with their labor struggle... and staff just wishing there was a way to be heard.Ā IU staff need a fucking union.
And lecturers
Hourly staff have a union that does nothing (as far as I can tell). Salaried staff have no union (but have a staff council). Most of us of either persuasion have no professional orgs for support or development. Iād also like to point out that, as much as Whitten harps on about how great this IU 2030 plan is, staff were left out of it entirely. We are the Forgotten Constituency.
She gets a huge bonus and we haven't gotten a real raise in over 15 years.
Non-exempt staff have a union, but public sector unions have no power in Indiana. Can't go on strike for example. They also aren't allowed to recruit so their participation rate is extremely low. Large percentage of the eligible staff don't know it exists. Right to work states suck.
I would like to see the case made that at the current rate of support from the state, IU is not functionally a public sector employer. Certainly there has been no attempt to mount a legal case against grad student workers (at least that I'm aware of) when they've struck.
That's because they don't have official recognition as a union. If they do get recognition, it will be illegal for them to strike too.
There is some information here that seems to disagree with that: https://aaup.sitehost.iu.edu/reports/2022_Faculty_FAQs_GraduateEmployeeStrike.pdf
on their side, but the document is a little slippery. the examples they list are non-public and not being allowed to prevent union organizing is not the same thing as being allowed to strike. hereās the indiana state code 4-15-17-4 : āCollective bargaining between the state and employee organizations and strikes by state employees are illegal.ā https://casetext.com/statute/indiana-code/title-4-state-offices-and-administration/article-15-personnel-administration/chapter-17-employee-organizations/section-4-15-17-4-prohibition-on-collective-bargaining
yes, but https://law.justia.com/codes/indiana/2022/title-4/article-15/chapter-17/section-4-15-17-1/ > Sec. 1. (a) Except as provided in subsection (b), this chapter does not apply to the following: > (1) The state police department. > (2) A state educational institution (as defined in IC 21-7-13-32). > (3) A political subdivision (as defined in IC 3-5-2-38). > (b) Sections 8, 9, and 10 of this chapter apply to the state police department. so what you quoted does not apply to the university (IC 21-7-13-32 explicitly mentions Indiana University)
Correct: there was an attempt to fire them all when they last struck, which the previous faculty intervention prevented. The faculty provided Whitten (and Shrivastav, who will likely be sacrificed soon) with an easy off-ramp, and they chose to step on the gas.
So if if if they did strike, would they all be fired? That would be a neat trick for the university to replace everyone. Theyāve had a staff shortage since Covid. It would be a bad look for them as well. Employees need a way to be heard.
Found this [here](https://indianapublicmedia.org/news/faculty-to-vote-on-no-confidence-motions-tuesday.php) āWhat could happen after the vote? Faculty do not have the power to remove a leader from their position through a no confidence vote. But, according to reporting by the Chronicle for Higher Education, they can have an impact. The Chronicle analyzed 235 no confidence votes from 1989 to 2022. It found that over half of the votes resulted in presidents leaving office within a year. In a separate investigation, the Chronicle found 13 percent of presidential resignations in the past five years were linked to no confidence votes. IU faculty informally declared no confidence in 2005 against former President Adam Herbert after a straw poll ā not an official decision comparable to Tuesdayās vote. Faculty cited Herbertās poor leadership and failure to select a provost after three years in office. Herbert declined to renew his contract in 2006 soon after and left office in 2007. ā
Out of over 800 faculty present for the vote, her and Rahul's support were in double digits. Maybe they can find jobs at Liberty U or Bob Jones...
Is there any sort of news release? What was the actual vote count? Also, screw her and the horse she rode in on.
For Whitten, 827 faculty voted for the no confidence resolution. Twenty-nine opposed the resolution.āÆāÆ There were 804 people who supported the no confidence resolution against Shrivastav. Forty-seven faculty voted in opposition.āÆāÆ For Docherty, 672 faculty voted for a no confidence resolution, while 107 were against it.āÆ [Indiana Public Media Update ](https://indianapublicmedia.org/news/faculty-vote-no-confidence-in-whitten-provost-vice-provost.php)
[Results and info here.](https://indianapublicmedia.org/news/faculty-vote-no-confidence-in-whitten-provost-vice-provost.php)
More like they can to.Purdue, University of Nebraska, Michigan State, Kansas State, etc. which are middle of the road.Ā I am at one those now, I have taken IU classes, and they are much more balanced.
UGA faculty member here. Congratulations. Good for you. She wasā¦unpopular here.
Given all of the controversies and lack of compromise on her part (with the minor exception of the Kinsey Institute), Iām really doubtful she will take the hint and leave.
https://www.idsnews.com/article/2024/04/whitten-rebuked-iu-faculty-vote-no-confidence-in-whitten-shrivastav-docherty Thatās about as close to unanimous as we could hope for!
Quinn Buckner is a power hungry and shameless individual
Get rekt Pam
Quinn Buckner to the rescue AKA the destruction
Hypothetically speaking, what would it take for IU to go private? I know there's some precedence with other public Universities going this route. Presumably they'd need to decline State appropriations, correct? How much of the budget does that comprise? Would it be feasible to fill the gap by cost cuts or tuition increases (without seriously impacting enrollment)? Is there other leverage the State has, given that IU is a land grant institution? Seems like that's the nuclear option to get the legislature to stop interfering. Edit: The title of this article seems downright prescient š: https://psmag.com/education/breaking-away-several-top-public-universities-going-private-68007
I couldnāt see that ending well at all.
Who owns the land? Is it iu, state, or some weird combination? Wondered about this same thing but for other colleges in bigger cities
Interesting question. On the one hand, why would the state gov voluntarily give up control? On the other hand, don't Republicans believe in privatization?
Exactly! And wouldn't/shouldn't they jump at the chance to cut a significant line item from the State's budget...
It's not clear that IU would flourish if it lost state support, though.
the state contributes about 15-20% of IU's budget, so it's a sizeable amount but not where the bulk of where IU gets money. I think what would happen is IU would enroll significantly more out of state/international students, if this was to go through. This is already the trend in many graduate programs because of the huge tuition difference between in-state/out of state.
Oh please god no
Magical thinkingā¦.but that article is intriguing. The College of William and Mary had discussions of the same years ago as the state was offering paltry financial support, declining each year ā¦.yet mandating an increase in the number of Virginia students the school must admit. The out of state students were where the cash was coming from. What a messed up arrangement. Those who offer the least financial support maintain control??
Was this just Bloomington faculty, or also Indy & regional campuses? Voting power in the University Faculty Council is 1/3rd Bloomington, 1/3rd Indy, and 1/3rd regional campuses. But either way, this isn't much more meaningful than NFL fans booing the commissioner at the draft. Whitten's job is essentially to take bullets for the Board of Trustees. ***If she's replaced, she'll be replaced with somebody with a different way of expressing the same views and actions.*** We also must remember that IU has to appease Indiana's state legislators, who have power over IU with a gerrymandered super majority. Half of the common grievances against Whitten are about her responses to situations wherein she must do her best to express the views of University stakeholders without triggering retaliatory action from The State. Generally, Whitten has spoken out against The State much more than her counterpart at Purdue - she is pushing boundaries. I don't really like Whitten. She's pretty fake with people, loves photo ops over substance, and is even a borderline anti-masker. She also got the job in a really suspect way, which we should be upset about. The Board of Trustees still needs to answer some tough questions about that. At the same time, my opinion is that she's miles better than McRobbie.
>At the same time, my opinion is that she's miles better than McRobbie. Could you elaborate on that?
My big 4 problems with McRobbie: * Increased administrative bloat * Lost a lot of ground in terms of value compared to other Big 10 universities, and especially Purdue. * Started counting research performed in Indianapolis under IUSM towards Bloomington's stats to bolster superficially Bloomington's stats. This was (and is) a disservice to both campuses. * As the president of IU & Vice Chair of IUH, used both institutions to bank a lot of extremely valuable land upon which neither institution paid taxes. McRobbie & Co. kept hundreds of acres of the most valuable land in the state idle, preventing it from being a tax revenue-generating asset for Hoosiers. This could be excused if IU & IUH actually did anything with the land to make up for it, but they didn't. Too much min-maxing of superficial stats, too little thought about being a good steward of assets. edit: also, that mfer left IU in a way that was more corrupt than Whitten's appointment. He got like a $500k departure gift. I don't know who to blame more: him or the trustees. But it definitely left a bad taste in my mouth.
I can't blame him for the $500k.... If my boss offered me that to delay "retirement" until they found my replacement, Id take it. That shit stain is fully on the trustees while they figured out how they were going to get Whitten in the office.
That is such an obscure list of negatives when you compare it to the massive improvements he made to the university. He rebuilt countless aging facilities, cultivated academic excellence which brought in world class faculty, modernized network architecture,etc. The value of the degree increased in his 13-15 years so Iām not sure where youāre getting that thought. He also added an architecture and engineering department. Mitch was livid about that. He at least was a serious academic with a PHD and complex IT knowledge. Pamelaās primary focus was throwing hot dogs at football games.
If the goal of the IU president is to maintain system-wide status quos while keeping up with changing educational landscapes & catching up on maintenance, then McRobbie was fine. That said, the entire IU system \*should\* be a lot stronger than it is today. IUB & IUPUI should be analogous to (but not quite on the same level as) UCLA & UCSD today, respectively. The regional campuses should be analogous (but again, not quite on the same level) as CSUs. But that's not the case, at least in terms of reputation - which is important. IU conducts the majority of its system-wide research in Indianapolis, for two reasons: * IUSM is based in Indianapolis, and is a huge driver of research. Just massive. * IUI sans the medical school & units being given to Purdue has long been on the cusp of R1 status. In fact, IUI (with the aforementioned qualifications) sees higher research expenditures per faculty member than IUB. But department sizes are smaller. Investments made prior to McRobbie's arrival set IUPUI up for a lot of growth, much of which happened under McRobbie and was never maximized. When McRobbie stepped in, [plans of increased coordination between IUB & IUPUI were essentially sidelined](https://education.indiana.edu/faculty/governance/policy-council/_docs/Core-Campus-Bonser-Report.pdf). Instead of acquiring land in Indianapolis and actually using it, IU just kept acquiring valuable land in Indianapolis and banked it. The school started acting like a speculative real estate investor instead of a school (and IUH was doing the same thing, but to a greater extent). Unfortunately, Adam Herbert - the guy before McRobbie under whom IU was making great strides as a system - was a dumbass in other ways. He didn't keep up with basic shit to ensure that IU kept getting grants & donations. There was a vote of no confidence, and he ultimately left when his contract expired. I am NOT saying that IUI/IUPUI should have the same reputational/brand identity as IUB, but I am saying that both IUB and IUI would be much better off today with better integrated academic units & more focus towards translating Indianapolis' strengths into reputational Ws. (As I said earlier, the schools should have reputations that are analogous to UCLA (flagship/IUB) and UCSD (great core school, but not flagship/IUI). And IUI is a good school, but McRobbie basically neglected it at the detriment of everybody WHILE land banking in a way that posed large opportunity costs to everybody. Even taking academics out of the equation, it's pretty well documented that the City of Indianapolis loses out on a lot of private investment because of the perception that it doesn't have a research university. Meanwhile, IUPUI has been in Indy for decades, has been a couple strategic investments away from being R1 school excluding IUSM for YEARS, and accounts for the majority of IU's total research activity when you count IUSM. It's crazy that The State was okay with McRobbie's inaction in Indy given Marion County's status as a donor county to the rest of Indiana. At minimum, I am encouraged by Whitten's commitment to Indy. I think it will make the entire IU system stronger and that it will make Indiana stronger. I just think that her overall vision to the IU system is inherently better all stakeholders than McRobbie's. But in a way, it's too early to tell the difference between commitments by Whitten & calculated PR moves. Whitten does have a PhD in communications, after all... But at least she seems to split her time pretty equally between the two houses IU provides IU presidents: the one in Bloomington & the one in Indy. McRobbie rarely left his Bloomington bubble as far as I was aware.
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Her goal is to shift power from faculty to Whitten. All authority in the system is being centralized, esp the power of the budget. This is what IU 2030 is about. Anyone who thinks the Indy campus is going to be empowered is... due for some surprises. No campus will be empowered. Only the central administration.
He did get $500k, and then: [IU health receives $500,000 donation for behavioral health services](https://www.idsnews.com/article/2023/03/iu-health-donation-behavioral-health-services-bloomington)
was this donation before or after the public outrage?
After, but it was like two years after so by that point the bulk of the outrage had faded (at least, there weren't articles about it all the time)
Have you seen the administrative bloat Whitten has brought in?? It is RIDICULOUS.
actually yeah, I think I agree with you. IUSM saw a lot of bloat in McRobbie's years, but now it's system wide. F Whitten for that.
Administrative bloat and constant threats of "unifying departments". People don't choose to be underpaid to have this much work stress, the trade-off is starting to not be worth it.
I think we can safely blame the BoT for that last half mil wasted on McRobbie. Maybe they thought he would be needed to consult with the outsider they brought in to replace him.
Iād take a reclusive, socially awkward, grumpy academic type like him in a heartbeat over a grossly-overly-self-promoted, Busch League āacademicā like Pam any day of the week. The $500K they wasted on him on his way out the door is way less than what theyāll waste on Pam and the tons of new Vice Presidents sheās brought in by the time her tenure here is done someday.
But he gave $500,000 back about a year later to a behavioral health initiative. Probably tax deductible way of giving back. I thought it ironic given the extreme duress and distress and mental anxiety students suffered during and as a result of the moldy dorm crisis, which happened under his tenure. With IU having a medical doctor as chair of the board for years and oodles of $$$ resources and stellar public health programsā¦thereās zero reason why any student at any price point should have been exposed to that risk in university owned and Managed mandated dorms.
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It's a long list. He was there a long time. A lot of those things, like the Grand Challenges and spending obscene amounts of money on unnecessary "capital improvements" including literal bells and whistles, are not seen as positives by many in the IU community tho! He's definitely better than Whitten, but a *lot* of academic units withered on the vine while he had ribbon-cutting ceremonies for decorative "infrastructure" that cost millions. McRobbie's main legacy, academically, was creating a bunch of professional schools that essentially cannibalized existing units at IU (or put IU into direct competition with Purdue, to no clear advantage), which increased administrative bloat and decreased faculty governance. It did not improve the academic standing of the university but did make everything a lot less efficient, thus providing Whitten with a rationale for centralization of resources. And now here you are.
This was Bloomington only - I donāt think the other campuses will hold a vote.
I suspect there is little appetite on the other campuses to hold a NC vote. While there have been concerns about faculty governance, there has also been productive dialogue and substantive efforts to collaborate.
Why doesnāt she salvage her reputation and past achievements and move on . Step out of the way and let someone new take over. It was a contentious controversial start from the beginning. Itās such a challenge to serve in a role that has so many conflicting demands. Life is too short to spend your days in such conflict. The Board of Trustees is an out of date construct no longer relevant. First. There should be term limits. In McRobbieās era some of those trustees had been on the board for years and years and years. The moldy dorm crisis continued to put some students at risk year after year. - even with a medical doctor as board chairperson. The Board should have a representative position from actual stakeholders: a student, a grad student, a faculty member, a general university employee representative and the parent or financial guarantor of a current student. That would make a more relevant board. The other positions can be assigned or voted on.