RusskyHoya
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
In Soviet Russia, Hoya Blue Bleeds You!
Posts: 4,603
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Post by RusskyHoya on Nov 23, 2017 11:23:30 GMT -5
Any good organization periodically assesses its activities-It seems that Gtwn does not really do this very often or perform self evaluation in a sophisticated way. - Football has a pretty high academic cost in addition to financial. A number of athletic programs are struggling with little prospect of success- all should be evaluated for upgrade/downgrade periodically. The same logic should also be applied to Gtwn's academic programs which really receive very little scrutiny compared to other top univ's. Suspect we'll have to wait for DeGioia's successor to take a real look at everything- The perceived 'corporatization' of higher education notwithstanding, major non-profit universities are not simply brands and their programs are not simply products and offerings that can be turned on and off based on relatively simple targets like revenue. There are major institutional costs to discontinuing basically anything in a university - you are guaranteed to Edited off a segment of the alumni base and students who care about it. Dropping sports or academic programs generates a lot of bad publicity and is seen, at best, as robbing Peter to pay Paul. Schools generally only do this when they are forced by financial difficulties, and even then they are harshly criticized for it. Just recall the beating Maryland took just a few years ago: And you know what? Maryland football still sucks, men's basketball isn't any better in the 2010s than it was in the 2000s... hey, the lacrosse team won it's first national title since 1975 this year, so maybe the Lax Bro contingent think it was all worthwhile, but I know a lot of bad blood remains in Terp circles. Given that former athletes donate money to Georgetown at higher rates than basically any other group (I don't have a citation for that, so maybe I'm wrong, but I definitely heard it somewhere), it's really hard to justify killing or actively reducing support for their sport - any sport.
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Post by Problem of Dog on Nov 23, 2017 11:31:50 GMT -5
Russky with a good analysis, usual.
I honestly think the best thing that could be done at this point is to float the idea of killing the program and see if it galvanizes some sort of response. Might finally make some things happen, including an honest conversation about the sport, or it could show that apathy rules the day and that the program is not worth sustaining.
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Post by reformation on Nov 23, 2017 22:52:37 GMT -5
Russky, avoiding Editeding off some segment of university constituencies is certainly a factor in decision making at elite univ's but not the only one. The fear of alienating anyone seems to be an excuse to not make real decisions at Gtwn.
I was in an academic meeting at a top univ a couple of weeks ago where the faculty were explicitly comparing their academic program course by course to Princeton's e..g, which they viewed as a leader in a particular field. This is pretty std fare(maybe a little more detailed than usual), but its not the first time I've seen it-and quite frankly its pretty easy to do. My sense is that this type of critical examination does not really go on very often at Gtwn and I think the univ is worse off for it. The only place where I really see an explicitly comparative and critical examination at Gtwn seems to be in admissions: not surprisingly that seems to be an area where Gtown outperforms its peers given relative resources etc.
I'm not advocating dropping football, though I certainly could see that its a legit thing to review periodically along with other sports, especially the ones that habitually struggle. Few universities are exemplars of best managerial practices, but Georgetown despite good intentions of most staff is among the most lethargic in its decision making and lax in real comparative evaluation across the board that I've seen. Most other elite places are a lot more focused on creating centers of excellence and are a lot more aware certainly and adaptive to what their competitors are doing.
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Post by puppydog100 on Nov 24, 2017 9:19:22 GMT -5
I suggest that Mr. Reed compose a memorandum summarizing the University's vision for the future of GU football, and post for review and comment.
What's the plan Mr. Reed?
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RusskyHoya
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
In Soviet Russia, Hoya Blue Bleeds You!
Posts: 4,603
|
Post by RusskyHoya on Dec 2, 2017 17:34:31 GMT -5
Russky, avoiding Editeding off some segment of university constituencies is certainly a factor in decision making at elite univ's but not the only one. The fear of alienating anyone seems to be an excuse to not make real decisions at Gtwn. I was in an academic meeting at a top univ a couple of weeks ago where the faculty were explicitly comparing their academic program course by course to Princeton's e..g, which they viewed as a leader in a particular field. This is pretty std fare(maybe a little more detailed than usual), but its not the first time I've seen it-and quite frankly its pretty easy to do. My sense is that this type of critical examination does not really go on very often at Gtwn and I think the univ is worse off for it. The only place where I really see an explicitly comparative and critical examination at Gtwn seems to be in admissions: not surprisingly that seems to be an area where Gtown outperforms its peers given relative resources etc. I'm not advocating dropping football, though I certainly could see that its a legit thing to review periodically along with other sports, especially the ones that habitually struggle. Few universities are exemplars of best managerial practices, but Georgetown despite good intentions of most staff is among the most lethargic in its decision making and lax in real comparative evaluation across the board that I've seen. Most other elite places are a lot more focused on creating centers of excellence and are a lot more aware certainly and adaptive to what their competitors are doing. I used to work at both Undergraduate Admissions and in an academic program, so while it's been a couple of years now, I do have some insight into this question. Academic departments and programs absolutely do look at what other universities are doing - not just peers, but big state schools as well - as part of regular curriculum reviews. I worked for the Security Studies Program, which (justifiably imho) believes itself to actually be the preeminent program in the field. Yet we still reviewed what the Elliot School, Fletcher, SAIS, SIPA, the Wilson School at Princeton, etc. were doing. Now, does this sort of review happen with equal regularity and thoroughness everywhere? Surely not. And it has seemed to me that there is a certain lack of...I have to use a corporate buzzword here, but - "portfolio management" at the individual school and University levels. The business school is probably the exception. Programmatic decisions seemed to me to be more driven by the preferences of individual leaders. So, when Carol Lancaster (RIP) became dean, suddenly we launched M.A. programs in Global Human Development and Asian Studies because she had a development background and was personally invested in upgrading the Asian Studies Program to full MA status. Other recent decisions have in large respects been driven by external events, such as the elevation of African-American Studies to full major. Having said all that, for schools with strong - dare I say 'distinctive' - identities and brands, there is no expectation that they will copy what others are doing just because that looks like the surest route to prestige. There are certain things Georgetown is going to focus on, even if peer institutions don't, such as theology, ethics, and Government. The last of these is a field where Georgetown actually deviates significantly from pretty much all its peers: where Political Science departments around the U.S. have become heavily quantified and focused on identifying mathematical relationships between political variables (and numbers-driven theories to explain them), Georgetown is a near-lone holdout in retaining a qualitative focus. Admissions, which you cited, is a similar story. I think Charlie Deacon would very much agree that Georgetown's ability to punch above its weight class in admissions is closely ties to its continued insistence on doing things its own way, rather than following the herd. The most famous example is, of course, Georgetown's steadfast refusal to switch to the Common Application. There are other examples, such as eschewing the moves to Early Decision and Single-Choice Early Action when those were en vogue, or maintaining need-blind admission for international students. Admissions staff certainly track what other schools are doing and stay apprised of developments in the field, but any changes must be in line with the University's principles and priorities. To me, one of the biggest challenges facing Georgetown athletics is that it has no peers, in a certain sense. There are no other schools, no other programs, with the priority and constraint set that is found on the Hilltop. Every university is unique, of course, but I think McDonough does suffer from having nothing resembling a role model to emulate.
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Post by reformation on Dec 3, 2017 21:40:04 GMT -5
Agree with your post. Would offer the following comments. Agree Security Studies is a high elite program and not surprised that they do regular and rigorous peer assessment. I'd bet that there is a correlation between department quality and the departments that exercise that type of peer assessment as I'm sure that there are others that do it in addition to SSP. My own informal conversations with academics at Gtown is that rigorous peer assessment is not done consistently or very rigorously as there isn't high value placed on lining up the various programs academically with the top institutions(I'm sure its not phrased that way).
Re: the govt department specifically you are certainly right that they have not embraced big data type analysis, though I don't think that is something to be particularly proud of-having a good quant social science program would certainly be useful to the students and avail them of more employment and grad school oppty's. At a univ mgmt "portfolio" kind of perspective this is certainly a big miss, given the high # of students in these disciplines at Gtwn, that would have been spotted should have been acted on if the Univ admin paid attention to peer analysis. A lot of other univ's set up interdisciplinary quant social science programs-not necessarily run by the govt dept alone over the past # of years.
Re the athletic department totally agree that lack of obvious across the board peers is an issue in setting standards and accountability. In some sense it is a microcosm of the academic discussion above(a few elite activities and many average ones with no clear peers/accountability other than those set by individual coaches or academic debts). Maybe 30 years ago Duke, e.g., might have viewed itself in the same situation but decided to emulate Stanford. Obviously we are not in the same resource situation as Duke but I think we'd be better off if we picked some programs to emulate ourselves for each of the sports (i guess academically too) and measure ourselves against them. Obviously the ath dept can use judgment in selecting peers and can adjust as circumstances change.
One further observation: Both managing and communicating what the Univ is doing across a lot of fronts would be easier if it simply picked some peers and measured its performance accordingly. Just saying were totally unique all of the time leads to a lot of bad decisions.
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