Section 2: Fighting Words COmmittees United against Privatization
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Tribune
4/3/01		   George Otto, Ph.D. Save the City Colleges Committee, Chair, Cook County College Teachers Union
NY Times
3/26/01		   A Student Is Not an Input By MICHELE TOLELA MYERS, BRONXVILLE, N.Y.
(Michele Myers is president of Sarah Lawrence College.)
Tribune
3/24/01		   Joo Heung Lee, Humanities Department, Wright College, Chicago
Tribune
3/22/01		   Peggy Shapiro, Department Chair Foreign Languages/ESL
Tribune   Dr. Diane Horwitz, Former Professor of Sociology, Moraine Valley Community College
    Robert Klein Engler, Professor Emeritus, Daley College
    Gloria Klein, Professor Emeritus, Daley College
  To Scott Smith, Publisher, Tribune, and AnnMarie Lipinski, Editor Chicago Tribune
published April 3, 2001
Voice of the People

City Colleges at Risk
The Tribune editorial of March 21, 2001"Fresh ideas at City Colleges" suggests that finally City Colleges of Chicago found some magic ideas to cure its ills. The piece praises the new Chairman of the Board, Mr Tyree, because of his skills acquired in the business world, and for capturing the state of City Colleges, in just a two short minutes on the job and providing a cure in an instance. The system is a bloated mess,"the editorial states.
         Tyree wasted no time firing 63 people who toiled in the finance department and replacing them with people from a private firm, American Express, at a cost of $1.75 million. Tyree asserted that it is not about the cost of saving money, it is about the quality of the CCC. Tyree sugggested that this may be only the beginning; other departments may undergo privatization as well.
          The problem at City Colleges is much deeper than your editorial. suggests. The management, or mismanagement, runs deep. The top management at the City Colleges of Chicago was changed, and changed, and changed again. Each new top administrator is appointed by the city not for their expertise, but for his political connections.

 If the colleges are run so poorly, why is not the top management accountable for it? The blame is placed on the hard-working, innocent employees who are now being punished for carrying out orders. The problems of the financial services department, should be attributed not to the employees of the department but the Board of Trustees.  (not printed in this editorial: It was not the employees of the financial department, but the Board of Trustees, let by Ronald Gidwitz, who invested $100 million in speculative derivatives and lost most of that investment.)
Tyree seems to think academic departments are the same as company divisions in the business world. He can fire all the professors and replace them with American Express employees or the like. He laments that some Business Departments do not use computer equipment. Once again, if Mr Tyree were to talk to some of those professors , he would discover that many have bombarded their presidents with requests for better computer labs with no effect. There was never money in the past for computers or software to teach accounting. Only recently has there been some movement in this direction but not a very enthusiastic one.

What's wrong with the City Colleges? It has more to do with the Board and top officials of this institution than the skilled, hard-working people who are employed there. Just ask the students about our faculty and they will tell anyone who cares to listen that they are the best in the State of Illinois.
          There is no doubt that sound business practices are not only good for business but are also beneficial in the academic field. If permitted by the College administration, the faculty would implement changes that would make Chicago proud. Instead, millions of dollars each year are spent on questionable, well-connected political consultants, who submit proposals in return for good money, with undisclosed results. A sharp administrator who wanted to save money, would tap his own people (such as the professors) who know the system, instead of turning to unskilled or less knowledgeable consultants whose only motivation is to benefit financially.
George Otto, Ph.D.
Save the City Colleges Committee,
Chair, Cook County College Teachers Union

The sentiments expressed in this article mirror my own. As FCCCC president, I made them to the Board, albeit not as eloquently. Margaret

ID: <20010326153147.D43A0245AD@email4.lga2.nytimes.com
NYTimes.com Article:
A Student Is Not an Input
By MICHELE TOLELA MYERS, BRONXVILLE, N.Y.
(Michele Myers is president of
Sarah Lawrence College.)
Attend a conference of higher education leaders these days, and you will hear a lot of talk about things like brand value, markets, image and pricing strategy. In the new lingua franca of higher education, students are "consumers of our product" in one conversation or presentation and "inputs" — a part of what we sell — in the next. It's easy enough to see why academia has gotten caught up in this kind of talk. We borrow the language of business because we are forced to operate like businesses. Higher education has become more and more expensive at the same time it has become increasingly necessary. As we look for ways to operate efficiently and make the most of our assets, we begin learning about outsourcing, for-profit ventures, the buying and selling of intellectual property. And as the public is well aware, colleges and universities are now in conscious and deliberate competition with one another. We "bid for student talent," as the new language would put it, because we know that "star value" in the student body affects the "brand value" of the university's name: its prestige, its rankings, its desirability, and ultimately its wealth and its ability to provide more "value per dollar" to its "customers."
But there is something troubling about the ease with which these new words roll off our tongues. I pay attention to words and how we speak about things because language tells us a good deal about how we think and feel, and ultimately, how we act. What are the implications of thinking of a college or university as a brand? We know that some people will pay anything for prestige brand names. And as a result, some children are under unhealthy pressure from the time their parents begin panicking about which nursery school they will go to. Yet, prestige sells, prestige provides value; we know it, parents and students know it.

We at the colleges scramble to get up on that ladder. A business professor told a group of us at one recent conference that to run a successful organization you had better make decisions on the basis of being "best in the world," and if you couldn't be best in the world in something, then you outsourced the function or got rid of the unit that didn't measure up.
Have we really come to believe that we can only measure ourselves in relation to others, and that value and goodness are only measured against something outside the self? Do we really want to teach our children that life is all about beating the competition?
As we in the academy begin to use business-speak fluently, we become accustomed to thinking in commercialized terms about education. We talk no longer as public intellectuals, but as entrepreneurs. And we thus encourage instead of fight the disturbing trend that makes education a consumer good rather than a public good. If we think this way, our decisions will be driven, at least in part, by consumers' tastes. Are we ready to think that we should only teach what students want or be driven out of business? Physics is hard, it is costly, it is undersubscribed. Should it be taught only in engineering schools? I don't think so. Should we not teach math because everyone can get a cheap calculator? Should we stop teaching foreign languages because English has become the international language? And what about the arts, literature, philosophy? Many might think them impractical.
I think we have a responsibility to insist that education is more than learning job skills, that it is also the bedrock of a democracy. I think we must be very careful that in the race to become wealthier, more prestigious, and to be ranked Number One, we don't lose sight of the real purpose of education, which is to make people free — to give them the grounding they need to think for themselves and participate as intelligent members of a free society. Obsolete or naive? I surely hope not.
Joo Heung Lee  3-24-01  Voice of the People

I am writing in response to "Fresh ideas at City Colleges" (Editorial, March 21). This editorial is nothing short of an insult to the hundreds of men and women who are dedicated to providing quality instruction at the City Colleges.

To applaud Chairman James Tyree and Chancellor Wayne Watson for initiating moves toward privatization amounts to a slap in the face of the only City Colleges employees who actually engage with the students: the teachers. To imply that the teachers are "panicked about their futures" because the "status quo has been a nice, warm, comfy place" is an outright misrepresentation. What the teachers are truly concerned about is the corporate mentality that is inexorably eroding our social fiber.

Students come to the City Colleges for a variety of reasons, but I am sure that principal reason is that they are colleges, i.e. institutions of higher learning, not corporate training grounds. But this may all change with the "sound business practices" the administration has begun to implement.

In all the criticism directed toward the City Colleges, nothing has been said about the opinion of the students, who should be the ultimate judges of the quality of instruction. I am sure that, if asked, the students will almost universally assert that the education they are receiving is second to none. And this is despite, not because of, the actions of the administration.

Almost every year, the administration insists on adding to the number of courses that the faculty is required to teach.

There seems to be a ridiculous misconception on the part of the administration that the profession of teaching is limited to the time spent in the classroom, as if teachers

spend the rest of their time lounging around eating bonbons. Perhaps teachers should start submitting billable hours so that the administration might begin to understand that classroom time is just the tip of an iceberg, whose massive base consists of time spent preparing class and grading work, not to mention the time wasted on various administrative chores that add nothing to the quality of education.

Because of administrative decisions, every year academic departments at the City Colleges are forced to replace experienced, senior faculty with a mixed bag of adjuncts, as if stability were just an incidental factor in quality education. Still, the administration finds it easier to accuse the faculty of whining than to take the blame that it so richly deserves.

Alas, the reason for these misconceptions is easily understandable: Those at the top levels of administration have had little or no experience in the classroom. There seems to be an inverse relationship between one's educational credentials and one's position on the administrative totem pole. If the reputation of the City Colleges is questionable, one need only look at the top to understand why. When a baseball team with talent is performing poorly, it is not the players but the manager who is fired. The teachers and support staff at the City Colleges are doing their jobs; it is the administrators who are not.

Joo Heung Lee, Humanities Department, Wright College
Peggy Shapiro  March 22, 2001 Scott C. Smith, Publisher Chicago Tribune

Dear Mr. Smith:
Your editorial on "Fresh Ideas at City Colleges" can only have been written without stepping foot in a city college, without communicating with either faculty or students, and without even reading the Central Administration's report on the City Colleges.

If you had, you would have learned that we offer extensive services to meet the needs of today's City College students. In my department alone, we work with students who come from over sixty different countries and whose ages range from eighteen to ninety two. In addition to classes, we volunteer our services for lectures on acculturation, international film festivals, discussion groups with Americans who are born in the U.S., field trips, housing help, and countless other student activities.

If you had read the report by the Central Administration of the City Colleges issued Fall 2000, you would have learned that, "In Spring 2000 students who sought improvement in specific academic areas had major accomplishments through the course they took at CCC: 96% of students indicated they improved their oral communication and science skills, 95% indicated they improved their reading skills, 94% of students… improved their oral communication and science skills, 91% improved their computer skills, and 89%… improved their business/management skills."

In addition you would have discovered that, "Satisfaction with instruction was the highest single level… Eighty one percent of respondents reported being satisfied or very satisfied with instruction." The Board report would have also informed you that the City Colleges of Chicago are doing an excellent job of helping the most disadvantaged students succeed on the job. "Associate degree completers who were economically disadvantaged while attending the City Colleges experienced a 163% increase in median earning."

We make every effort to accommodate the changing educational environment. We try to be as "nimble" as possible, which isn't always easy to do with a full-time faculty as old as we are. In fact, the full-time faculty today is half what it was ten years ago and is expected to be reduced in half again in the next three years. As an example, I have been in the system over twenty four years and am the lowest person in seniority.

So that your future editorials are based on reality, we invite you and your editorial staff to visit our classes, speak to our students, and see what we really do.

Sincerely Yours,
Peggy Shapiro
Department Chair Foreign Languages/ESL
 To Scott Smith, Publisher, Tribune, and AnnMarie Lipinski, Editor Chicago Tribune  Voice of the People


Your editorial "Fresh Ideas at City Colleges" is cause for alarm! I'm six months into retirement from an over three decade career as a community college teacher, and am deeply concerned about the direction the City Colleges is moving in. First, some corrections: your characterization of community colleges 20 years ago is inaccurate. We have always served people seeking skills training, workers preparing for jobs, people on welfare looking to move into the mainstream, and new immigrants. From my long experience these are exciting places for learning. But, why don't we hear stories about the remarkable efforts and transformations that take place daily in our classrooms? The heroic efforts of students and teachers in our city and suburban community colleges merit more attention.
      We do need to ensure that community college students have access to high quality committed teachers, with time to mentor, advise, and counsel students. Yet over 70% of courses at my college are
taught by part time adjuncts making less than $1200 a course, often rushing from school to school with little time to work with students. Will outsourcing or privatizing teachers solve this problem?


Of course our community colleges need improvement, but sound business practices are different than a corporate takeover of public education. Arthur Levine of Teachers College, warned educators of the pressures from "outside" to shape our schools. A corporate entrepreneur told him, "You're going to be the next health care: a poorly managed nonprofit industry which was overtaken by the profit-making sector." The moves by the City colleges Board takes us one more step in that direction. The turn to a profit-making health care sector has not increased the quality of care for most patients; it hasn't enhanced the nature of the doctor-patient relationship or the ability of the doctor to practice her craft. It's a mistake to frame this story as a fight between teachers who "are panicked about their futures," and a Board and Administration whose only concern is waste and inefficiency. The corporate agenda for public education impacts all of us - negatively!

Dr. Diane Horwitz
Former Professor of Sociology
Moraine Valley Community College
Robert Klein Engler, Professor Emeritus, Daley College

Putting Productivity in its Place at the City Colleges: An Editorial

Much is said nowadays in the City Colleges of Chicago about a "new direction" and a "new way of doing things". This may strike someone familiar with the City Colleges as rather ironic. It is ironic because the same old, mistaken management philosophy still prevails there. The managers at the City Colleges act as if they have never heard of Japan. What is this mistaken management philosophy at the City Colleges? It is nothing more than a blind emphasis on productivity.

When our education management looks at the "college industry" they say we have to do something about productivity. They decide to cut courses offerings, and pile more and more students in fewer and fewer classes. They devise a budget formula that looks like an alien space transmission, and they demand that the faculty be in their offices forty hours a week. They reason that fewer course offerings and larger classes will save money and increase productivity. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

The irony here is you don't get productivity by emphasizing productivity. If the officers of the district and the administrators think productivity can be increased by cutting course offerings, making classes larger, attacking the faculty and clerical unions, and lowering worker morale and wages, they are shortsighted, shortchanged and short lived. If they think productivity is the answer to problems at the City Colleges, they are more than twenty-five years behind the times. The truth is, course cuts and increased class size have nothing to do with productivity. We know this because W. Edwards Deming taught the same lesson to Japanese industry more than twenty-five years ago.

This same point is repeated in recent literature. Consider John Simmons' article, "Ownership Rather Than Layoffs," Chicago Tribune, Perspective Section, Monday, March 7th, 1994, p. 13,
or
Ronald E. Yates', "Building Trust Means Tearing Down Old Business Ways," Chicago Tribune, Business Section, Sunday, March 6th, 1994, p. 3.

They all cite Deming and his ideas. The same point of view is echoed by Maurice Holt's article,"Deming on Education: A View from the Seminar," Phi Delta Kappan, December 1993, Vol. 75, No. 4, p. 329.

Deming knew that if you want to increase productivity, the last thing you do is to concentrate on productivity. In short, if you want to increase productivity, do something about quality first. If dreams are the royal road to the unconscious, then quality is the royal road to increased productivity. The emphasis on quality is what turned around the Ford Motor Company. It was Deming's ideas about placing quality first that made Ford more productive.

Furthermore, when Deming looked at Ford he found their problems with productivity were not with the workers, but with the managers. The workers were faithfully producing what they were told to make.
Eighty percent of the productivity problems at Ford were problems with management, not workers.

Likewise, only a small portion of waste in business can be laid at the feet of workers.

It was not the faculty that drove Kennedy-King College into the ground, but bad management practices. Now, the man who used to be president of that campus is chancellor of the entire system. To make up for past mistakes, management at the City Colleges of Chicago is now making another one. They are talking about productivity but overlooking quality. It is clear that management at the City Colleges cannot solve the college's problems because management there IS the problem.

A quality college needs small classes where students with learning difficulties and disadvantaged backgrounds can get a good education. A quality college also calls for a wide range of course offerings to meet the needs of a diverse population. The City Coilleges aspires to be a multicultural institution. It may be the last education opportunity for students of all ages and economic backgrounds. By cutting courses and making classes larger, management actually makes decisions that adversely affect opportunities for these students. These decisions diminish quality and will never improve productivity. In fact, the long term consequences of these policies is to make the college less and less productive.

Quality management will assist also in upgrading skills and achievement among all levels. The macabre dance between the board and faculty union, which has gone on now for more than twenty-five years, is what happens when trust is vitiated, productivity is emphasized over quality, and management has its eyes on survival, power and revenge, instead of the common goals of making the City Colleges of Chicago a quality educational institution.

Now some say the City Colleges of Chicago will never take Professor Deming's advice. Not because they don't want to, but because they can't. They can't, because unlike a private business, the City Colleges of Chicago is really a child of politics. Political appointees are not interested in quality, but rather in paying back or dishing out. They could care less about the high aims of education. If this is true, then we should remember every discussion of productivity from management is nothing more than a smoke screen for political motives. If politics moves management decisions at the City Colleges, then regardless of how they try to sugarcoat it, cutting course offerings and making classes larger are simply the vindictive policies of shortsighted politicians.

If management does not want to be seen as a political stooge or pawn, it has no other alternative but to emphasize quality. I believe we can turn our attention to quality instead of selfish political motives. We must do this, because we are responsible to the taxpayers of this county, and we are also the taxpayers. As a public institution of higher education, the City Colleges of Chicago has much in common with employee owned businesses like Avis Car Rental and Wierton Steel. All these companies prospered with employee participation or ownership. Wierton Steel not only saved 10,000 jobs from meltdown, but became the nation's most profitable steel company within two years of its employee buyout.

Our management can learn a lot from such companies. We owe our citizens a quality educational institution, one that is far sighted and continually improving. We can start right now to achieve our goal of making the City Colleges of Chicago the best community college system in Illinois. We do it by offering more courses and making classes smaller. From there we go on to deal with other problems. I say we look on this as our patriotic duty.
Gloria Klein

MY ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY: WHAT'S NEXT AFTER THE NEW CONTRACT AT THE CITY COLLEGES IS RATIFIED?

ONE WAY TO BEGIN A splash of silver light flashes off the river. The sun sets above Chicago with the chill of November in the air. From my office window I see the gray Michigan Avenue bridge and just a corner of the building that houses Harold Washington College. The man at the desk next to mine worked at the City Colleges of Chicago for a long time. He confided in me the other day about the troubles there, and now he wonders where the colleges are heading. But wait! What if I had to work ten or fifteen more years at the City Colleges, too? What if I was only in the middle of my career, or just getting tenure? What then? What would I like to see happen to improve the system of education and the institution? What would be important to work towards, so that the City Colleges of Chicago would be a better place to teach and learn? How could I overcome the cynicism that infects the institution? People say that nobody really wants to make the city colleges better. All they are after is more money or more power for themselves. How does anyone make their work at the city colleges an act of love?

TAKE IT AGAIN FROM THE TOP   Travelers to great cities like Chicago and Los Angeles can't see everything in one day. Many who go to L. A. often miss the La Brea Tar Pits and go to the Grauman's Chinese Theater instead. Likewise, those who visit Chicago for a short time often miss the city colleges, where all things also sink into the muck. Instead, they visit the Art Institute.

SCHOOL YARD BULLIES  It is an old saw to bad mouth college administrators, but nevertheless, it is a good saw and it rips well across the grain. From the top down, the city colleges has been plagued by foolish and self-serving administrators appointed by the mayor and his political associates. From a series of Affirmative Action appointees through a group of self-serving businessmen filled with illusions of their importance or inherited wealth, the top administrators of the city colleges have thought little and done less to bring quality education to the working classes. Have you ever wondered what happened to those bullies you knew in grammar school? Why they grew up and some of them became administrators at the city colleges, that's what.
You'd better stand up to them now, or you won't have any lunch money.

When you touch the City Colleges of Chicago you touch the exposed nerve of the corrupt administration that runs the one party state that is Chicago. On the TV news we see videos of the mayor as he walks from grand opening to grand opening to cut ribbons and pout with his hands behind his back like Adolph Hitler in those old newsreels. The ghost of his father trails behind, stumbling over words. "Chicago works," the spin meisters and advertising executives shout from the roof tops.

The same TV news reports that the state of Illinois has just come out with a report on education. In spite of years of school reform in Chicago led by the mayor's 'team, 80% of the failing public schools in Illinois are in Chicago. Still, the mayor's friends and contractors get paid, no matter what. We have seen this movie before. Is it Lini Riefenstahl or" Land of the Walking Dead?"

OUR MISSION   If we believe that the mission of the City Colleges of Chicago is to offer quality education to the working classes, then a strong faculty union is an integral part of that mission.

POWERS THAT BE   Everyone knows that if you want students to be educated you need teachers to do it; well, everyone but administrators and legislators. Teachers don't like foolish bosses and they usually don't vote for fools, so they have to be replaced by computers and distance learning. The virtual college can be managed and it can be marketed. Who cares if it can't educate? There comes a time in a teachers life when she must decide. "Do I want power over my students or do I want to teach them something?"

If she decides for power then she slips into the same mold most administrators are stamped from. Her career will be ordinary and she will have to tell little lies to herself until she retires. If she decides for teaching, then she will have to learn to suffer fools gladly for a long time, especially if she works at the City Colleges of Chicago.

Why bother? Just come in and teach, collect a not so big pay check and then go home to another and more real life. It's better not to make waves. If you do, who knows what sleeping behemoth will awake and rise to the surface. In the depths of the city colleges the monsters of anti-Semitism and homophobia are always breathing in an uneasy slumber.

I know, let's pretend we are at Yale. Now we can talk about education without getting our hands dirty by educating. But what if I really want to do a good job as a teacher? What if I believe in it as a career and as a calling? How can a faculty union serve me if all it is interested in is salary raises and fringe benefits for the decreasing number of full-time and tenured faculty? What about the ideals I must hold on to in order to keep my integrity as a teacher? The union looks more and more like an obstacle to quality education after each new contract is negotiated.

Then there are those who are tired. If they can lay low, things will get better. Yes, indeed, they will get better the same way they got better in Nazi Germany. Many faculty are notorious for getting along. They are the new Gnostics who desire to live above the world with their secret wisdom. After all, they are intellectuals, not actors on the stage of history. They know the good, but should never be relied upon to do it. They hate the union and only tolerate it the way any nuisance is tolerated. In the final analysis, the union will support the mediocre. If you step out of line by achieving any kind of excellence, be prepared to have your colleagues turn away.

A STRAW POLL The City Colleges of Chicago is a public institution paid for by tax payers and dedicated to higher education. It is clear that this institution of higher education should be centered on producing virtuous American citizens. But imagine for a moment that the City colleges is actually a factory making widgets in old Rumania. The widgets are supposed to be made from clay, but all they send is straw. That factory now has standardized production goals set by some fat bureaucrat of the Communist Party who slouches behind a big desk in the Kremlin, smoking Cuban cigars. What can you do as a worker when the bosses are all Neanderthals and the raw material coming from the provinces is shoddy at best? Well, you try to meet the production goals and drink a lot of vodka to forget the nightmare at work. Maybe you go home and beat your dog or kids or your wife, too. I have always maintained that if you want to understand how the City Colleges of Chicago works you have to either know about life in Eastern Europe under communism or you must read the stories of Franz Kafka.

UNIVERSES COLLIDE The first thing the Cook County Teachers Union must do in order to chart a new course is to remove Norm Swenson from office. But be careful, like many things at the city colleges, we are dealing with matters that are archetypical and Oedipal in nature here. Because Swenson has officially retired from teaching, he should also officially retire from being president of the union. Nevertheless, he hangs on like winter in March, while the younger faculty try to imagine their Prague spring. We hear that Norm Swenson says this new contract was the hardest he has ever negotiated because Chancellor Watson was so recalcitrant. We also hear that Watson, like so many before him, will be shown the door soon. Yet was it not the same Norm Swenson who told the union chapter chairs not too long ago that you have to get along with Watson, that he is a good man and just follow my lead?  Please! Part of the problem is that Swenson cannot imagine anyone else leading "his" union. That is the rub. It is not "his"union to begin with. It is "our" union.

Yet what can be done? How can anyone with 15 years to go in the system ever hope to end up like the senior faculty who sell them out after each new contract? Those retirees getting their fat checks from SURS think Norm is great. Between raising their horses in New Mexico and golfing, they will tell their friends what a dedicated union leader Swenson is. I say, let us test Swenson's idealism. If he can't do anything for those part-time faculty struggling to make a living on $1,700 a course, or those with 15 years to go before retirement, then at least Swenson can serve as president of the union and not collect a salary! After all, he does have his check from SURS now, too.

THE BIG, BAD WOLF I know a woman who is on the faculty of a conservative Bible college. She is worried that she might lose her job because the administration wants all the faculty to sign a statement agreeing that only men have the ability to speak with authority about scripture. She does not believe that. I asked her what she will do. "I really need this job" she said. "So, I will sign it even though I don't believe it is true."

I know another man who lives in a big house in a wealthy suburb. He told me one day he earned his mansion. "Every brick of this place was paid for by a lie," he said. There is a board of trustees that supposedly runs the city colleges. Of course, they are all paragons of virtue, even though in the past some of them haven't even gone to college. They know enough, however, to do what the mayor wants. This one is from the law firm where the mayor used to work, that one went to high school with the mayor, yet another knows the mayor's wife, and so it goes. The money and the influence stays within the party, but remember, they were all selected after an exhausting nationwide search for the most qualified candidates.

I keep telling people, just like in Nazi Germany, if change is going to come to the City Colleges, it will have to come from the outside. It is time that the mayor no longer appoints these board members. We need to elect a countywide board of trustees to run the city colleges. The same partners have been dancing together far too long, but because each one props up the other, neither has fallen down yet. They keep doing the same steps, the same music plays, around and around they go, a dizzy whirlwind of corruption surrounds them and sweeps up all the dead leaves and scraps of paper in its wake.

A SHORT LIST Here is a short list of what has to be done to make it worthwhile teaching at the city colleges and paying union dues to the CCCTU:

1. This election year the Democratic candidates for office have crisscrossed the country calling for educational reform and lower class sizes. Some faculty at the city colleges have been making the same call for years, but the Democratic administration that runs Chicago has not listened. Will they listen now? Hardly. The union has to apply pressure to get this done. There needs to be a maximum size of 20 students in a classroom.

2. Once class sizes are lowered, we will have to hire many new full-time teachers. This is essential to creating a community of scholars that is the nucleus of any real educational community.

3. Return control of tenure and contracts to the departments. Teachers are the best judge of who is a good teacher and has mastered the subject, not administrators.

4. Reduce the number of administrators. People who want exit tests and standardized test may have a good idea, but they have it turned around. They have the cart before the horse. First, you give the standardized test to the administrators, then you give them to the students. Those administrators who do not pass the test must go back to school, not run the school. Furthermore, we ought to have 2 year contracts for administrators. That way their performance can be reviewed on a regular basis and they will feel secure in their jobs and not beholding to political or personal authority. With a contract, good deans will be able to make courageous and wise, yet unpopular decisions without feeling they have to swallow their pride because a vice-president orders otherwise.

Furthermore, no college president or chancellor should be paid in salary and benefits any more than the highest paid faculty member. The working families of Chicago, and especially minority working families, must decide what they want. Do they want the illusion of high paid, foolish Affirmative Action administrators, or do they want the reality of good teachers and quality education for their sons and daughters?

Finally, sell the building at 226 W. Jackson. With few administrators to fill it, why will the taxpayers need to support this white elephant? The college can be run from a few offices rented in the Loop.

5. Return the full-time teaching load to 12 hours for all faculty. A two-tiered system where some faculty teach 12 hours a semester and others teach 15 is a recipe for union disaster. This way of working pits the young against the old, the tenured against the newly hired. Instead of fostering a mentoring relationship between colleagues it creates bitterness and strife. Get rid of this time bomb in your midst.

6. There should be no full-time outside employment for faculty. If people are hired to teach as a career, then that should be their career. The union should enforce this principal rigorously.

7. There should be no overtime for full-time teachers. How can we make the case that 12 class hours a semester is sufficient for good teachers when others go off and teach 3, 6, or even more overtime hours? On rare occasions, a faculty member will have to pick up the slack if someone is sick or incapacitated, and of course there is extra work available teaching summers, but it is not in the interest of the union or for the growth in the number of full-time faculty to have people working overtime.

8. The Cook County College Teachers Union must elect new officers that are midway in their careers, not ones on the brink of retirement.

9. I propose that the state legislature abolish the community college system in Chicago and merge it with the other community colleges in Cook County. This legislative action will take the city colleges out of the hands of the mayor of Chicago and help mend the city/suburban split. Furthermore, we can then negotiate one countywide contract for all the colleges in the system.

10. Establish a core liberal arts program at all the colleges that integrates technology with tradition, English with the study of a foreign language, and science and math with art and history. Let us remind our students that to be an American is to believe in the American revolution: "... when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security"

A LONG LIST
If you don't like my list, then make your own.
If you can't be bothered, then why continue to read?
If you want something more, then ask for it.
If you have the courage, then make the choice to do something for a change.

Remember, change for the better does not have to happen. Maybe the City Colleges of Chicago will not change. There will be no peristroka or glasnost, no reform and openness for this institution frozen in the past. Those who continue to work there will only give birth to desolation and ashes. People will walk by the ruins of the old Kennedy-King College to hiss and gesture with their hand. Remember the man who lived in the house that lies built. Many say he lives well there. He only has trouble sleeping. He is haunted by dreams. Those damn dreams!

( Over the years, Gloria Klein's articles have appeared in many Chicago newspapers and magazines. Her recent criticism of Gwendolyn Brooks may be found at: "Gwendolyn Brooks and the State of Poetry in Illinois Today," (Article)Vexibaf, November)