British university administration
May. 19th, 2016 08:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtbcAt work I am very conscious of the degree to which I am shielded from school and university-wide administration by our overworked project administrator and their friends. I still see some of it myself: for instance, if I want intra-campus mail to be sure to arrive within a couple of weeks, I hand-deliver it rather than entrusting it to the mail system. An early lesson was on buying textbooks and other smaller items: with our group's grants we can't just order from Amazon, we have to go through central procurement who use university-approved suppliers who largely take considerable time to determine they can't supply what we need, or if they do the internal overhead it costs is obscene. This has been ongoing: for instance, this month the coffee machine in the kitchen died. A division head can't get it replaced: probably in July the matter will come before the university chancellor (assuming I heard correctly) so people around our building are instead simply donating their own money for a replacement.
One'd think that our newer buildings would at least have decent facilities. But, the showers have 50% availability on average and it's taken weeks to get a toilet fixed. We have maybe sixty guests or so coming for a conference in one of the main function buildings in a couple of weeks and apparently it may not be
Moving into the new building was an experience. I had a perfectly fine old chair in my previous office. But, it was the wrong color for the new building. An extra chair appeared in that office without any explanation. Some days later it was taken away and we were asked what we'd thought of it: of course, nobody knew, because we didn't know we'd been to sit on it. Eventually it returned for a spell far too brief for all of us to realistically be able to judge it. Then it turned out that the model was discontinued so it couldn't be ordered anyway. I was actually aware of a cheap available chair model in the appropriate color that works well for me but that idea was rejected because it might still look too different from others' chairs. (I won't get started on the desks.) I was naturally reminded of my previous workplace which featured a variety of chairs and not an eyebrow raised when I had them provide me a further chair unlike any of the others. But, they differed in instead tending to prioritize whatever helped us to actually achieve the institution's raison d'être.
This isn't just our own university though. For instance, earlier this week a colleague at a well-known English institution had, via said a/v equipment, a videoconference with us from outdoors, praying that the rain held off, because they appear not be able to provide him access to a quiet room indoors for the purpose. He also couldn't get a suitable headset from his university so we arranged one for him.
At the moment the lead time for ordering laptop computers is several weeks so I guess it behooves us to notice well in advance that one of ours might be starting to fail. Then it arrives with strongly
Are most British universities administrated by inept idiots? In total it must be an enormous waste of time and money. I feel like we get our work done despite the institutional support. In the meantime I am grateful that, thanks to the significant efforts of others, my group is a bubble of relative sanity in the larger sea of, well, something that perhaps should just be taken outside and put out of its misery.
One'd think that our newer buildings would at least have decent facilities. But, the showers have 50% availability on average and it's taken weeks to get a toilet fixed. We have maybe sixty guests or so coming for a conference in one of the main function buildings in a couple of weeks and apparently it may not be
viablefor them to use the wifi so we're seeing what access points we can bring along and set up ourselves. We also provide our own audio/video equipment; a recent attempt to upgrade that via central procurement foundered in the usual way.
Moving into the new building was an experience. I had a perfectly fine old chair in my previous office. But, it was the wrong color for the new building. An extra chair appeared in that office without any explanation. Some days later it was taken away and we were asked what we'd thought of it: of course, nobody knew, because we didn't know we'd been to sit on it. Eventually it returned for a spell far too brief for all of us to realistically be able to judge it. Then it turned out that the model was discontinued so it couldn't be ordered anyway. I was actually aware of a cheap available chair model in the appropriate color that works well for me but that idea was rejected because it might still look too different from others' chairs. (I won't get started on the desks.) I was naturally reminded of my previous workplace which featured a variety of chairs and not an eyebrow raised when I had them provide me a further chair unlike any of the others. But, they differed in instead tending to prioritize whatever helped us to actually achieve the institution's raison d'être.
This isn't just our own university though. For instance, earlier this week a colleague at a well-known English institution had, via said a/v equipment, a videoconference with us from outdoors, praying that the rain held off, because they appear not be able to provide him access to a quiet room indoors for the purpose. He also couldn't get a suitable headset from his university so we arranged one for him.
At the moment the lead time for ordering laptop computers is several weeks so I guess it behooves us to notice well in advance that one of ours might be starting to fail. Then it arrives with strongly
managedsoftware including anti-virus that multiplies our code build times significantly. We can't actually install the prerequisites to build our code without taking a course all about the security of student data and suchlike despite the fact that we do not put student data on our laptops, indeed we work on open software; at the end of the course we then have to select our role and where we work except that none of the available options apply to us.
Are most British universities administrated by inept idiots? In total it must be an enormous waste of time and money. I feel like we get our work done despite the institutional support. In the meantime I am grateful that, thanks to the significant efforts of others, my group is a bubble of relative sanity in the larger sea of, well, something that perhaps should just be taken outside and put out of its misery.
no subject
Date: 2016-05-20 01:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-20 02:24 pm (UTC)I did also consider trying to give credit where it's due. For instance, I thought about how when there are planned works then Estates & Buildings are generally good at warning us even with an attached map showing which area is affected. (Instances of eptness are notable!) But then I also recalled that they're the ones responsible for commissioning and fixing the plumbing so I decided that nullified it.
False economy
Date: 2016-05-20 02:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-25 06:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-25 07:08 pm (UTC)Okay, so there were oddnesses: for instance, at Aetna my supervisor needed to apply in writing to allow Firefox onto my company laptop (I was working on web applications!), but it happened with little fuss and much speed so it wasn't frustratingly obstructive.
: In defense of the University of Dundee, today I wandered down to that building and tried the wifi for those with UoD accounts and also for eduroam and both worked seamlessly and with much the same authentication settings as for the School of Life Sciences wifi. I'd been sufficiently doubtful to actually make the trip but perhaps I oughtn't be so faithless. Guest wifi's another matter still, of course.