What About Accountability?

Another comment from a faculty member on my shift ...

"This is my tenth day on the picket line and I can honestly say that not once have I heard a faculty member say that they want more money in their personal pockets, nor that they want to work less. But I do hear again and again stories of how frustrated they are at not being able to do the job as effectively as they want to, because their classes are too big to work with, their labs are overcrowded, and that their classes have been stuffed with students that the college expects to complete their year regardless of achievement relative to "academic quality" (as in assignments not completed, tests failed, and so on) and lack of quality control on course achievement relative to student progress.

(And when was the last time that your management reviewed your evaluation factors in terms of measuring achievement of course outcomes?)

I have to believe that if the managers at our college just taught one class every year or so, they would hear what their faculty are telling them; however, my impression is that they would rather not know what we have to deal with, and instead just focus on making the numbers work out to fit what they have determined to be their budgets, not what $$$ they have. As far as we know, nobody holds management accountable for how or on what they spend their budget $$$, no matter how much money the government gives them. Have the colleges been underfunded? No question. But has anyone held college management accountable as to how they spend that money?"