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In this current economy, with the government knocking education for its gross inefficiency and lack of results, urging it to adopt a business model when businesses all around are failing, U of All People has remained mostly untouched, probably because no one thinks it worth attacking.
Nobody thinks of supporting it, either. It has little assistance from the state, a laughable rate of tithing from the alumni network, and such a low profile in the community of Ennyville that many residents mistake it for the old Whirlpool plant south of town. “If you want more money and recognition,” the mayor of Ennyville, Bob Barter, told the Board of Trustees last month, “you need a five-year plan. Get us excited about what you’re doing.”
It’s true: as the bursar fills out IOU’s for tuition waivers, we clearly have no organized vision beyond paying the unsanitary waste bill next Tuesday. The boiler room below the half-finished gym is still making an alarming noise, and the entire biology department is teaching with microscopes dating to 1975. Yet everything from classroom space to the student social network is evolving, so why shouldn’t we? Accordingly, we’ve set up the 7W Committee to study Where We Were and Where We Want to Wind up. The president’s personal assistant even found our old mission statement, rotting in a file cabinet from the Nixon era, and we’ve tried to build on that.
Reach for the sky, the committee was instructed, but don’t fall flat on your face. Below are the notes from our brainstorming session.
Title: Something imposing, like “Gateway to Tomorrow”
Lead-in: U of All People was the first school to -- to what? To rack up a student retention rate of under 50 percent? We lead the way in Scantron testing. We look forward to (ending this meeting). Enough preamble. How about goals?
1. Global. Multinational. Extending the reach of something, embracing the 21st century. We’ve still got that satellite campus timeshare in Manchester, right? Work with that. Maybe predict an exchange program in Moldavia, or is it Moldova, by 2015.
2. Technology up the wazoo (don’t put it that way). Smart classrooms, smart students? Interconnected, which sounds better than connected. Can get grants for that stuff. Webcams in all dorms -- wait, sounds like an invasion of privacy. Wireless in the cafeteria by 2013?
3. Research. Right. Continuing a proud tradition of. Didn’t Dwayne Dwight in the chem department get a patent 10 years ago for something? Problem: how to light a fire under our nonproductive faculty. Which is almost all of them. By 2016, increase the number of published papers by 25 percent . Easy. 25 percent of nothing is still nothing.
4. Become better teachers. Ha. Increase the level of faculty-student communication through -- God, not more brown bag seminars. Utilize the most modern pedagogical techniques in an attempt to. Maybe we can just get Mona Desiree in mod langs to show up for her 8:00 a.m. French class.
5. Involve students more in school activities. Free drugs, student rec center with more than a broken ping pong table. By 2014, we hope to have a broken pool table, as well. Could also impose a dorm curfew to keep them on campus.
6. Better prepare students for the job market. What job market? Death out there. Maybe say something about usable skills. Post-graduation follow-up. We sent out that survey, right? Did anyone ever respond to it?
7. Increase public awareness of UAP by 15 percent. Too bad we fired our media relations staff last year. Five-year plan for changing motto from “U of All People: What You See Is What You Get” to “U of All People: A Nice Place to Study” to “U of All People: Absolutely Incomparable!”
Or at least put up some signs around campus to prevent people from thinking we’re the Whirlpool plant.
