All about the books: One wonders what the MUN audit will turn up
Edward Riche muses on the turns a pending investigation might take at Memorial University
This column is a satirical opinion by Edward Riche, a St. John's writer.
It has taken many years but the government of Newfoundland and, er, & Labrador has finally connived to give the auditor general access to the bizarre state-within-a-state known as Memorial University of Newfoundland, or "MUN, b'y."
Despite MUN's society long being closed and secretive, some things are evident to visitors. The infrastructure is, literally, crumbling even as costly new structures are built to honour its leadership/priest class.
And we can say with confidence that the vast tracts of land on campus dedicated to parking indicate there is a cult of the automobile.
We can only speculate wildly what the auditor general will discover when light is cast on the shadowy world that is Memorial University.
All the same, the following things ought to be among the findings…
The notion that the university should be a centre of innovation, a fount of new ideas, is at odds with it being a temple to orthodoxy.
As learning has been generally supplanted by training the term "higher education" should be replaced with "advanced preparatory."
The cost of removing incompetent or deranged faculty is so high that they are routinely retained.
Every new social issue and consequent agendas will result in another level of management.
Faculty spend one-third of their working hours answering unnecessary emails from other academics.
The Rate My Professor website has caused a 35 per cent increase in grades.
Banning the use of the words "committee," "heteronormative," "colonial" and "intersection or interstices" will save more than $1 million annually in computer processing power. The overuse of terminology should be reviewed every 10 years.
Political science isn't one. Half of the faculty could be replaced by old issues of The Economist and the Guardian.
Half of the economics faculty could be replaced by the Baltic Dry Index and a Ouija board.
The old Thomson Student Centre drug market should be re-established, as a profit centre for the university.
Without predators, the populations of vice-presidents and executive assistants has grown out of control and a cull may be necessary.
Deferred maintenance is so far advanced that in many cases it will be more economical to raze buildings. Doing so while staff and faculty are within, to cut costs, cannot be considered on moral and legal grounds.
Dividing the institution into sciences and humanities no longer reflects its reality as being one part relativists, two parts empiricists and three parts management.
The profitability of retailing undergraduate degrees is only made possible by the continued gross economic exploitation of sessional instructors.
The English department's BDSM sex dungeon has never been used since being built in 1989.
Retention of medical school graduates is so poor its $54-million budget would be better spent simply hiring doctors rather than training them to practise elsewhere.
Because this is Newfoundland and Labrador, the most egregious examples of mismanagement will go unpunished with the persons responsible remaining in their positions until eligible for generous pensions.
Memorial University's administrative bloat, misspending, inefficiency, poor productivity and load of morons so closely mirrors the government that the institution could be seamlessly turned into a department.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
