Proposal #79
Proposal Title: technology and other administrative issues
Anticipated Savings/Revenue:
Units affected:
Impacted Degrees/Courses:
Brief Description of Proposal:
While I appreciate all that technology offers and provides for us, it seems to me that it has taken over the university and eats a
larger part of our budget each year (and probably most campuses). Whenever
we've hired all university or division-wide people in technology, there
is some vague promise that they will support "the university,"
which I always thought would end up meaning any program or person who needed assistance. However, what it has turned out to mean is that each college/department/unit has needed to hire or train an in-house person to be the tech expert and the university-wide people at best serve as consultants and at worst seem to require more of the units themselves. So rather than hiring additional faculty or academic support staff it seems like we've had to spend the money hiring technology personnel. Websites are wonderful but they need to be updated and maintained and accessible etc.... and someone has to do it. I don't know if there's a cheaper, more efficient way, but the current trend appalls me.
It seems that we all end up at the mercy of the technology at all levels. Hiring, purchasing, travel used to be something where a department filled out a piece of paperwork and people centrally would handle the details, leaving us to do our jobs. But now these are all mechanized in such a way that they require many levels of time-consuming electronic approval at the department level. The central people that are left seem to spend their time explaining to the rest of us how to deal with the technology.
When I first began working here in the dark ages, one of the things I appreciated was that we seemed to work as one university toward a common goal. Now it seems like we're much more isolated often with each unit defending its own turf. I was much further from the process at the time to actually know how budgets worked, but I think units were far less responsible for everyday items. Units weren't nickeled and dimed for everything (e.g., if we needed forms from the Registrar or from Purchasing, we were given them - now we have to order and pay for them ourselves). I think if we needed someone to paint of fix something, that was paid for centrally rather than our having to find the funds to pay for it.
It seems like we've become individually responsible for everything in a way that makes things far less cost effective. I'm' sorry I don't have any real suggestions, other than that I believe that we would be better off with more centralized assistance and expertise and less demand on individual units.
Note: Proposals are posted as submitted, without
editing other than to remove the submitter's contact information.
