[The Montana Professor 1.3, Fall 1991 <http://mtprof.msun.edu>]
Dear Editor,
As a longtime Northeast Montana resident, I am about as far removed from the physical presence of the University system as a Montana taxpayer can get. However, I am a taxpayer, and for years I have had one or more children attending various Montana University units, so I do have some interest, and a great deal of puzzlement, about current developments.
During my years as a distant observer, I have watched the infighting wherein one college town tries to crush programs and appropriations for a competing unit in another town. I have watched the Chancellor System come and hopefully go. I have watched the present growth of the super office in Helena, that was sold to us as a tool of management efficiency, but which instead has turned out to be a tremendously expensive tool of management duplication.
In recent years, we have had a multitude of public outcries about the shortage of higher education funds, Montana's declining rating in expense of student per dollar, our underpaid professors, etc.
Currently, the entire State is facing a budget crunch and the only reaction I see from the University System is to cut courses and cut students. No other alternative seems to make any headlines.
I wonder if living in Northeast Montana means I am so far out of touch that I don't understand this problem, or if instead, the Montana professors who are your readers are so close to the woods that they aren't seeing the trees?
One of your own, Professor Bill Plank, of Eastern Montana [College], has written a masterful treatise discussing faults in the present University System and its finances, and pointing out rather painless ways to cure many of those faults.
There is no room in this short letter to cover all of Professor Plank's proposals, but by way of very brief summary, his treatise suggests:
It's neither logical nor politically possible to eliminate units of the University of Montana System.
It's ridiculous that each unit is its own little kingdom, and that none are integrated with the others, either by way of overall management, by way of exchange of credit, or by way of coordinated purchasing and coordinated courses.
No business could successfully run in Montana if it had six branch offices which are completely independent of each other and which are managed by separate managers, plus a seventh general manager, complete with his staff, located in a different town and purporting to somehow manage the six independently-managed business units.
Tremendous economies could be accomplished if the present ridiculous duplication of administrators and supervisors were ended, and if the entire system were managed by a single supervisor, with power to coordinate expenditures, courses, and all details of the interrelationship between the units.
I am briefly summarizing some complex matters, and I may not be doing justice to Professor Plank's proposals. However, I am writing to suggest that I am amazed that your entire group of readers/members seems to be entirely unaware of the Professor Plank proposals, or of any other proposals except the barren proposal that we do nothing about overlapping administration and expense, and instead, our only choice is to cut courses and cut students.
Surely the readers of The Montana Professor must be vitally interested in Montana's higher education system. Surely those same readers must, from personal experience and knowledge, be especially attuned to the problems in that system.
Are all of Montana's professors of such unanimity that all agree with our present "Chancellor's" proposal to do nothing about administration and instead cut courses and teachers? Why instead aren't professors in Montana's University System actively promoting Professor Plank's proposals, or some variation thereof, as a viable alternate which will preserve our present higher education system by eliminating duplication and waste, instead of sitting idly by while the "Chancellor" saves the system by cutting off an arm here and a leg there?
Why aren't your readers obtaining copies of Professor Plank's proposals? Why aren't your readers pushing those proposals, or some variation thereof, as an alternative to the disastrous proposals presently being urged on our State?
Cordially yours,
Robert Hurly
Attorney at Law
Glasgow, Montana
[The Montana Professor 1.3, Fall 1991 <http://mtprof.msun.edu>]