Here is how to lower the cost of attending college

 If universities want to lower the cost of attending college, instead of getting rid of staff who help students or professors who teach classes they ought to do away with administrator jobs.

At NJCU the president created a job of "provost." Probably did so to make herself feel important. Having a lot of assistants must be a status symbol of some sort.

The first provost said "This is an important day" when the university opened their "confucius center" to much pomp and circumstance. Yet no one really knew what the center was for, or why any students in Jersey City would care about what it did. It unceremoniously closed down several years later after the federal government accused the centers as being propaganda for the Chinese communist party. The provost left the job four years later. I'm still not sure what he actually did, or what he accomplished.

The second provost didn't seem to do much of anything either. The job is supposed to be like a senior vice president, overseeing academics, services, and other operations. Yet, how important can the job be when she left the campus after three years to take a job in private industry? Of course, this was after the campus declared a financial emergency, so I guess she had a moral epiphany after the fact. Or maybe just didn't want to get caught up in the state's investigation.

The third provost got rid of the only staff position in career services, yet a few months later signed off on a document stating that helping students find internships, explore careers, and land "good jobs" after they graduated was a top priority. But who exactly was supposed to help these students, if you don't have any staff? If anyone knows the answer to this question, let me know.

Universities functioned fine years ago when there were maybe half the number of administrators employed as today. A lot of them have titles with words like "associate," "vice," and other prefixes, but it’s not clear what they actually do in the jobs. The reality is a lot of what these people do is useless.

People who use big words...

People use words to make themselves sound more important than they really are. When I worked at NJCU a "school of business" already existed, with majors such as accounting, management, and finance. Then when the university president decided to spend millions of NJ taxpayer dollars to lease a building in downtown Jersey City, and move offices and classes for the school of business to that location, the guy who was the Dean of the school of business changed his title to "Founding Dean" of the school of business. Just because you moved your operations to a new location doesn't mean that you "founded" a new "school of business." It just means that you're in a different building. Yet everywhere it was noted that the person's title was not just "Dean" but "Founding Dean." Instead making a big deal about job titles maybe make a big deal about how your President was wasting money leading to a financial crisis, and how your university is being dissolved with the campus becoming another state university.

University administrators allow students into a building containing exposed asbestos

When I worked at New Jersey City University in Jersey City, in spring 2022 the vice president of enrollment management moved the career center (at the time, one person, me, although that's another story) into Grossnickle Hall. As you can see from the attached pictures there were broken tiles on the floor outside my office, and an entire section that that was broken but covered by a mat. I filed a complaint with the state of NJ; inspectors visited and tested the tiles for asbestos. The tests came back positive, and only then did the acting president bring in someone to repair the tiles. So for years NJCU had students coming in and out of classes in this building, and never bothered to repair the tiles. Former president Sue Henderson was too busy taking trips to China to pay attention to what existed on her own campus, and her vice presidents didn't care about the students, so this easily fixable situation went on.

College Administrators have B.S. jobs

Funny how when colleges and universities hire professors and staff the folks in charge of the hiring want candidates with degrees, credentials, experience, intangibles...the list goes one. Yet, these college administrator jobs don't require any real expertise in a certain area, and are often filled by the friend of another administrator, or for some sort of political or social reason. Like a Dean of the College of Professional Studies. at a university. That's a job you could have landed without any relevant experience or skills. Then when there's a financial emergency you could be involved in personnel decisions like layoffs of professors and staff, without any real knowledge of the situation. Basically you can be involved in ruining an organization and treating people like disposable objects without being qualified to make those decisions. You don't even have to be man enough to tell employees to their faces about the layoffs and why they're being done; just have HR send an email after hours.. Then a year later you can quit the job and move on. You get paid a lot of money to do nothing, other than mess up the lives of people who actually make a career out of helping students. But hey, that's the life of a college administrator.

Today's college students don't know what they're missing...

Today's college students don't know what they're missing. When I was in college there were organizations that anyone could join. Organizations like class one concerts, the college life union board, the Montclarion student newspaper, the yearbook, the literary magazine, the radio station. You didn't have to be a theater major to join Players, the acting organization. These were the types of groups that brought people together. There wouldn't be much for me to join if I was in college today. It seems like there's only special interest groups, and clubs that focus on religion, race, ethnic backgrounds, and other unique topics. I just wouldn't have been interested in being part of a Christian Fellowship, Muslim Student Association, or Jewish Student Union. There's nothing wrong with having those groups; I just don't know why they are the focus. Those are the types of organizations that separate people, not bring them together. Oh well. Whatever floats your boat I guess.

** JOB OPENING ** - UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT IN NEW JERSEY

JOB OPENING ** University President ** REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS / SKILLS: None PREFERRED ACADEMIC BACKGROUND: - PhD in Higher Education Administration or other related useless field of study. - JD, with no experience in college teaching or college student services. PREFERED QUALIFICATIONS / SKILLS: - Ability to mismanage budgets. - Proficient in wasting the public's tax money. - Ability to conceive grandiose ideas that have no chance of success. - Proficient in not following agreements in legal contracts. - Skilled in creating new high paying jobs in the campus administration that are not needed and are of no benefit to students, such as Vice President of Global Initiatives, Vice President of Advancement, & Vice President of Enrollment Management. - Strong interest in developing relationships for no valid reason with communist countries such as China and Cuba. - Available to travel to China and spend taxpayer money for no valid reason. - Skilled in writing, utilizing big words in press releases to cover up the fact that you are not doing jack-squat. - Willingness to put students' health at risk by not repairing exposed asbestos tiles in a building, and later covering up knowledge of asbestos. - Proficient in giving Ted-Talk type speeches that in reality communicate nothing. - Belief that jobs that directly assist students such as career services are unnecessary. - Demonstration of strong leadership by showing complete lack of empathy and compassion for professional staff employees. - Ability to treat employees like they are nothing more than dog poop that you are scraping off the bottom of your shoe. - Strong cowardice skills, such as hiding behind emails to notify employees of job layoffs. - Previous job title of Vice President of Marketing & Strategy, Chief of Staff, or a similar unnecessary B.S. position preferred. ** AI generated resumes and cover letters expected. No need to have your own thoughts.

A job interview at Goldman Sachs

I’m sure lots of people have had strange experiences while searching for and interviewing for jobs. People who do the recruiting and interviewing of job candidates often have funny stories to tell. Sometimes I wonder though, if other people looking for a job have had anything similar to mine.

Once I went on an interview for a job as a college recruiter, with Goldman Sachs. This particular office was in lower Manhattan. The director of college recruiting was a guy named Mike Lowenthal. At the start of the interview he mused, “There’s mostly women working in college recruiting.” Hmm, maybe this gives me an edge, I thought. He didn’t ask me any questions though. He just rambled on for a couple of minutes about Goldman Sachs. Suddenly, he looked past me (his office was surrounded by windows).  He stood up, grabbed a stack of what look to be like tickets to a game or concert wrapped with elastic bands, and raced out the door. I turned around, but he had already fled down one of the hallways, disappearing from sight.

So I sat there for a few minutes, wondering what I should do. Wait until he comes back? Leave now? It started to dawn on me that I wasn’t going to get this job even if I stayed, so I was about to go when a girl named Kim walked in.

“Mike had to go, but I’ll finish the interview,” she said brightly. Then she proceeded to talk a little about the job. She didn’t ask me any questions, or ask if I had any questions about th position. She did talk at length about the bars in the area and how everyone in the department liked to go out for drinks after work.

After a few minutes she stood up and held out her hand. “It was nice to meet you,” she said.  For some reason I said thank you, nice to meet you too, instead of saying what I really felt, which was, why did you even bother to call me in….

I’ve thought that maybe they didn’t like the way I looked. If that’s the case, and I’m sure some interviewers consider that above all else (although they would never admit it), why not ask for a picture? A photograph with the resume on the back. It would save us all a lot of time and money. By looks, I mean beyond the blue suit/white shirt/red tie/polished shoes/clean shaven appearance.

Who knows. Maybe this isn’t as ridiculous as some others’ experiences. It feels like it was a waste of time and energy. On the other hand it’s given me something to write about, so maybe it wasn’t a total loss. Stay tuned for upcoming stories about job search…

A job interview at Montclair State University

Totally unprofessional interview process.

I was called to interview as an assistant director of cooperative education position; the search committee chairwoman, a biology professor, indicated in the e-mail that there were eight faculty members on the committee, so bring enough copies of your handout. She also said I would be meeting with the Dean of the school, after the interview with the search committee.

So I arrived the usual ten minutes early. Fifteen minutes after the scheduled start time, the secretary escorted me to a conference room down the hall. The committee chairwoman was there, and two other professors. The chairwoman said I would not be meeting with the Dean afterwards. Okay.

They asked me to give the presentation first, so I did that. The director of the career center arrived ten minutes later, after the interview had started. After I finished the presentation a couple of the faculty members asked me a question. The others just sat there in silence. The chair asked me if I had any questions, so I asked a few, and they gave their answers. I smiled and tried to engage with them, but these folks were clearly just going through the motions. Then they thanked me and I left.

I never heard back from them, not even an e-mail stating they had selected a final candidate. I found out months later they gave the job to someone who was already working in another office on campus. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. What’s wrong is wasting the time of the other candidates who had no chance of being hired.

The interview questions were just stock questions, nothing unexpected. They weren't very creative or imaginative questions.

A job interview at the University of Pennsylvania that never happened

So you would think people who work in a college career center who know better.  I had sent a resume for a job at the University of Pennsylvania's career services office. A few weeks later I received a call to schedule an interview. When the day arrived I used vacation time and drove two hours to Philadelphia. I parked and got to the career services office about ten minutes before the scheduled interview. However there was no receptionist, and I noticed that the staff members had offices beyond a partition; there was a waiting room for the students.  So I stood there for a minute, contemplating what to do, when an older lady appeared from the rear area. She introduced herself as one of the members of the career staff, with a smile and a British accent, and said that members of the search committee would be with me in a few minutes. Then she disappeared back behind the partition.

So I sat in a chair in the waiting room. And I waited. And waited, And waited some more. About 20 minutes past the scheduled interview time the British lady came to the reception area, saw me, and frowned.

"They didn't come out yet?" she asked.

"Um, no," I replied. I remained polite and smiled, trying to look upbeat.

"Let me go see what's going on," she said, and disappeared back behind the partition.

I sat and waited another 15 minutes. I had nowhere else to go, so I figured I see this through to the end.

The British lady appeared again.  "You're still waiting?" She looked somewhat perplexed.

"Yes."  I wasn't sure what else to say.

"Okay. I'll be right back."  She scurried back to behind the mysterious partition.  Interestingly, there weren't any students in the waiting room. I did see students walking in the hallway outside the office.

I sat there and waited another 20 minutes. Now it's nearly one hour past the scheduled interview time. I think to myself, time to take the hint. I walk out and back to my car and drive the two hours home. A total waste of time, not to mention a wasted vacation day.

In retrospect, if I had the chance to do things again, I would have walked back there behind the partition and asked everyone what the hell is going on.  Then I would have left.  For some reason I was just too polite in those days.

Interestingly, a year later I saw an ad for the same job at the same career center. I sent in my resume, and a few weeks later received a call from the British lady about scheduling an interview.

"You don't remember me, do you?" I said.  "A year ago I was there for an interview for the same job, but I waited for an hour, and no one came out to interview me.  No one even came out to apologize or tell me what was going on."

"Oh," the British lady said. "Well, we're more organized now."

So I pretended to be cheery and scheduled the interview for the next week. Of course, I didn't go, nor did I call them to cancel.  I doubt if anyone there cared, though.

I'm better off, probably. I would have to move down to Philadelphia for a job that had a salary that was only minimally higher than what I was making in the job I had at the time.  So in this case things worked out for me.

Still, the world would be a better place if people treated job candidates with more respect. Especially at a college career center. And a place like the University of Pennsylvania, which is supposed to a leader in the field.

The Lack of Leadership at American Colleges & Universities

In another post I wrote about how American are not always leaders. I don't want to only pick on them; there's other areas where a lack of leadership is clear. American colleges and universities, for one. An example of the lack of leadership from college presidents and other upper level administrators can be found in New Jersey. several years ago the state was allegedly going through a "financial" crisis, and the former brilliant governor Jon Corzine wanted to save money by asking state workers to take unpaid days off - employees were locked out, and not paid. Some unions at the state colleges agreed to have their workers take ten unpaid lockout days, while other unions agreed to take seven days. The college presidents and other managers? They took less, most only two or three. Why? They claimed that the state (governor's office) said they would have to save a "percentage" of state funds, not take a certain number of furlough days. So at higher education institutions like Montclair State University, high level administrators took only two unpaid days off.

How is this a lack of leadership?  Well, if there really was a financial "crisis" - unlikely to be actually true, as it was more the Governor and other elected officials trying to win over voters by trying to show they were "saving" tax dollars - real leadership would have been the college presidents standing up and together saying, "New Jersey is in a financial crisis; so we're all going to take ten unpaid days off to help the state save money, and we hope all other state workers do the same."  Now that would have been true leadership. What is not leadership is being a weasel and saying, well the amount of money we were asked to save was a percentage, and it only came to two days for us. Please. What a bunch of slimeballs. Only interested in serving themselves, not students or taxpayers. College presidents in the U.S. are overpaid as it is, so what would taking less pay mean for them? Come on. College presidents are almost as bad as some CEO's.

Crazy Job Search/Interviewing Stories, Part VI: Montclair State University

<sup>I interviewed for a few jobs at Montclair State. One director I met with had this look of shock on her face when I said I didn't reveal my salary history, that to me salary is something to be negotiated after a job offer. Another committee I met with spoke among themselves for a while before even acknowledging I was there. A stress test perhaps? Or are they just morons who have no idea how to conduct a professional job interview? I guess I'll never know for sure, unless one of them reads this and responds. Wouldn't you try to engage the candidate and try to make them feel comfortable? I would. I would want to give a positive impression. Montclair State certainly did not.

Actually for another job at Montclair State the person who interviewed me, a guy named Chuck, actually called me back afterwards, and said, "I just wanted you to know that you interviewed well, even though we picked another person." I said, OK, who did you hire, just out of curiosity? There was no sound on the phone, for a second, then Chuck said, "We hired an African American woman who worked in the President's office." Oh. Well, nice to know I had a fair shot at the job!</sup>