Bureaucracy has become an integral part of university life. Students come expecting lines at the service stop and never to know the name of their dean. Getting rid of the layers of bureaucracy could enhance the sense of community on campus, but they are there to accomplish something.
University of Calgary president Harvey Weingarten and provost Alan Harrison are setting up a committee with local and external deans to see if combining the communication and culture, fine arts, social science and humanities faculties would be a viable option. The committee has until May 2009 to come up with a list of pros and cons to show the general faculties council.
A super arts faculty would cut the number of deans, which has considerable implications. The costs of running a super-faculty would be lower than four separate ones. Even if the overall number of support staff is not cut to a quarter of the original, paying one dean’s salary instead of four would result in substantial savings. However, one dean’s attention spread over four times as many students would also be a significant decrease in face time. Deans meet with students going through academic appeals and play a huge role in deciding whether they get kicked out or not. This is a tricky balance that the committee is going to have to tackle. If the savings could be promised to improve student scholarships or go towards smaller class sizes, then a change might be called for. But this is where the pessimism kicks in.
Less deans and support staff means less representation for students at administrative levels. One dean wouldn’t be able to have the same pull as four. Roughly a quarter of students with one representative would be competing against 13 other (usually smaller) faculties for money. Fine arts, humanities, social science and communications and culture already have comparatively low funding. They also don’t draw the same kind of corporate sponsors that Haskayne or Schulich do and need as much help getting financial attention as they can get. A university needs income to exist, but that doesn’t mean it should be run like a business, focusing only on areas where profits can be made. With the Alberta College of Art and Design so close by, the university should be worried about increasing funding and recruitment in art related programs, not moving things around.
One of the main arguments in favour of the re-organization is the increased emphasis on multi-disciplinary degrees. The future committee will also be tasked with organizing this likely mess. Currently, these degrees exist in all four faculties in question, which raises the question why a change will help. Other non-arts related faculties support multi-disciplinary programs, but aren’t being considered for re-organization. There are separate faculties for a reason.
The conglomeration idea has been brought up before, but was always rejected. In 2004, a committee of the same four deans argued that combining the faculties would imply that arts is a completely separate entity from science and in fact cut students off even more. The natural sciences would be completely foreign and even other arts related programs like environmental design would be more complicated to mesh with.
The discussion has been called “timely” because several deans of the involved faculties are interim or nearing retirement. Hopefully this doesn’t mean that the committee will feel rushed to come up with recommendations before their own deadline.
While the discussion does have some legitimate claims for its existence, student consultation can’t be ignored. So far, there is no direct line of communication between the committee and students. Deans will have their regular meeting with student reps, but there won’t be meetings to discuss the change specifically. Hopefully the committee will decide based on what’s best for students and not what will save the university the most in administrative costs.