Confessions of a Community College Dean

Someone told me recently that the median age of college presidents is 60. He suggested that a massive wave of retirements is upon us, and things will change dramatically when that happens.

(Of course, this could be like the "massive wave of retirements" I was promised before entering grad school...)
 

Interestingly enough, my father-in-law asked me at dinner night before last if I thought that golf was a generational thing. I am also a dean (and a dad) and of about the same age as DD. Part of my job is fund raising so I am on the road and meeting with folks who have a LOT of disposable income.

While I think there is some generation gap I think it is primarily a function of having the time to play golf, the time that a large income affords people. We have several donors (7 figure amounts) who are in their late 30s and early 40s. They all play golf, not because that is where business is done, but because it is what they do in their spare time.

I also believe that as people get older they have more time to take up golf. It is a "low impact" sport and so suitable for many as they get older when basketball is no longer an option.

Finally, I have to say that I think you are as out of touch with the rest of the world as you accuse those older than yourself. So often on this blog you rail against people who have a different perspective are experience on life and are older than you. Your response is that they are out of touch or too old to be engaged in today's academic (or real) world. I think you need to remember that we academics are the ones who are in a privileged place. I am not suggesting that you should always agree with their views but to dismiss and mock them based upon their age is as nearsighted as the "Bigwig" to whom it never occurred that you did not know how to play golf. A little humility is what I am suggesting.

All of that said, I do NOT play golf. Well, I have, but my approach is to take a dozen balls and when they are gone, I am done. Consequently we don't make meetings or events around a golf outing.
 

I should also add that many of our students, of very modest means, are playing golf. Again, I think the commodity necessary for golf is time. Something most of us in our age range do not have because of our work and family commitments, but in the future you never know, we might be swinging a set of our own clubs.
 

All the guys that I know who I grow up with golf in some fashion or another. They took it up in college/early 20s. I agree with CB that this is about disposable time more than anything else, as the only guys in mid- to late-30s who still golf every weekend don't have kids.

I should also probably admit that I know guys in their 30s who belong to things like the Moose lodge, I've been to weddings and retirement parties at VFW halls, and any number of things that you would probably classify as 1973. Maybe it's less being in a time warp than being in/from a certain area of the country? I'm reluctant to say that certain areas of the country are all in time warps...
 

er, "grew" up with. I should clearly proofread before hitting post :)
 

It's also a function of milieu, I think. Many of my age-peer friends who function in the business world are golfers, and I've been to a number of pubs with 30-something clientele that have golf on one of the television screens. My husband has been told he ought to take up the game, since he's management.

I think golfing is something that academics, artists, and self-identified techies don't do. It's not part of the culture. Businesspeople, even those with doctorates or serious technical chops, golf.

Me? I bowl. It confuses the heck out of everyone.
 

In my college days there were two must-take Phys Ed courses for business majors: Golf and racquetball.

Try this one on: "Of course, there will be racquetball." Huh? They don't even make racquetball courts anymore and the ones that are still around are storage rooms.

Or they've been replaced by indoor rock climbing walls.

Imagine this exchange 30 years from now:
"Of course, there will be rock climbing."

C1
 

I have a niece, a mid 20s history BA, who plays golf with her coworkers in an office league. The others are of a similar age, and all are planning to move up in the company. It's really not all that different from going clubbing while in college.

I think our CC even recommends a PE golf class to future business majors. The real skill is in knowing how to lose to a big client.
 

Just wait. It won't be long till "let's do the time warp again" doesn't bring to mind transvestites from Transylvania, but cute old blue-hairs. :-)

Time warps evolve.
 

CB -- I admitted that I should have responded differently. However, the accusation of routinely railing against people unlike me deserves a fuller response.

I have no problem with anybody's age or hobbies. What I have a problem with is constantly being outnumbered, and having that held against me. That's where 'fit' is relevant.

Dicty -- I bowl sometimes, too. It's much more kid-friendly.
 

I guess what confused me about your response was not that you should have censored yourself more effectively, but why you think playing golf is such a crazy idea for someone your age.

I'm about your age, and I got into playing golf in college (mostly on very cheap public courses). I played through grad school and after with friends whenever I could. "Whenever I could" became less and less often when I had kids.

I haven't played since I took my current t-t job (4 years ago), but it's not because I don't want to anymore!

But it seems there's a segment of people in every age range that likes golf...
 

I started to respond to this, and I started penning a love letter to affordable golf instead. So let me erase everything and make sure I stick with the point.

I'm not sure I agree with cb on the commodities necessary for golf. I did work at a CC where golf was a popular activity among the less well-to-do students. It was also a place where there was a golf course three miles away from campus that sold month-long memberships - all the golf you can play for $40. Where I work now, I can't FIND a place where I can even GET ON THE COURSE for $40 unless I drive 20+ miles away. Surprisingly, fewer of my students play golf 'round here. And as much as I have played in the past, I won't play golf around here pretty much ever - I can't afford it.

If you can get on a course on a regular basis, few games are as good at building relationship and community. And I mean REAL relationship and community, not merely the stereotypical back-slapping you normally associate with such things. I totally get why deals are sealed on a golf course, as far removed as I am from that place in my own life. But not all places in the country are as well suited to that type of entry as others.

DD: if you're ever in my neck of the woods, I will gladly take you out for a round. You will not have to worry about me embarrassing you. I am AWFUL. But there's still a good bit of joy in the game.
 

Disc Golf! Easy on the wallet and kid-friendly.
 

Ah, yes, disc golf! Sport of the future! The students here play disc golf (just started their own club--they let me play in their tournament!).

Other nice things about disc golf are that:

1) There's a lot of vocabulary cross over, so you can "fake it" with the ball golfers (makes for good "fit")

2) A round of 18 holes can be done in 1-2 hours, not 4-6 (esp. if you're a complete freakin' novice at ball golf like me).

3) It's much easier to see improvement in disc golf than ball golf.

Of course, the downside is that you have to contend with the stereotype (if they even know what disc golf is) that you're a hemp wearing, pot-smoking, hacky-sacking hippie! Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it doesn't help with "fit." ;)
 

"But it seems there's a segment of people in every age range that likes golf..."

A SEGMENT, yes, but DD's point was the assumption that EVERYONE plays golf. It's partly generation, and it's partly regional, but in most places it's no longer a valid assumption that EVERYONE plays. When my dad was a young lawyer, there were CONSTANT "get your game good enough for meetings on the course" classes running everywhere, all the time. My husband's lawfirm still does golf outings, but crappy play is the norm, not the exception, and there's now ALWAYS a parallel event that far more of the younger attorneys attend.

(As a regional example, in Chicago, and places nearby, it's a given that "everyone" plays softball and virtually every company fields a team. Not as given today as it was 10 years ago, but still.)

When I was in high school, we had a gym unit called "Life Sports" (Illinois being the only state in the union requiring daily PE K-12, they started getting kinda creative there near the end), the point of which was to teach recreational games that you may want to play later in life as a business thing, and get you reasonably good enough at them to not make a total ass of yourself. The options were tennis, golf, and badminton.

And I gotta tell you, of the three? Competitive badminton RULES! Too bad I've never, ever, ever seen it as an option at a business event. :P
 

Oh, wow. You should try teaching art at a CC. Any of you do will know that in addition to the aforementioned time warps, for art faculty, if you're brave enough to have (another) conversation about your area of specialty, you're most intelligent colleagues time warp you straight back to the 19th century. The rest of you can only imagine the effect this has on hiring committees/ candidate choices...
 

A SEGMENT, yes, but DD's point was the assumption that EVERYONE plays golf. It's partly generation, and it's partly regional, but in most places it's no longer a valid assumption that EVERYONE plays. When my dad was a young lawyer, there were CONSTANT "get your game good enough for meetings on the course" classes running everywhere, all the time.

Indeed. I got the sense that the problem wasn't so much the golf as the "of course" that came attached to it. It was the kind of wink-wink-nudge-nudge boundary maintenance thing that makes me grind my teeth and roll my eyes (mentally, anyway. As a serial EA/AA, doing so where others could see would be less than a great idea).

If the guy had said: "And there will be golf, too!" it probably wouldn't have grated so hard. (At least for me; I don't live in DD's head, so I can't say categorically) It's just that assumption that of course everyone (who's anyone) wants to play golf, and that's what really makes the event... yuck.
 

This is one of those things that isn't about what it's about. It is not about golf – it’s about other people assuming that you are like them when you are not. Most of the people that I work with are women in their mid to late 50s. They make jokes relevant to their age, including many about menopause which are lost completely on me (I’m a good couple of decades from "having my own private summer" etc.) They assumed that I would stay home with my kids when I got pregnant because that’s what they did. Some of them have even been so blunt as to tell me that I’m too young to have the position that I do (to which I reply with a bemused tone that my boss hired me despite my youth and it seems to be working out.) I am the same age as their children and sometimes treat me like a kid – metaphorically patting me on the head. It’s hard to earn their respect. It’s similar to what my bilingual friends experience when their unaccented English prompts people to assume they were born in this country or when people assume that if you want to socialize you’ll be heading out to the nearest bar for beers. To express that no, you learned English in Belize from Catholic nuns or that you don’t drink produces an awkward pause as they realize that you are in fact not their carbon copy. A fit problem indeed – my question is do we all have to be the same in order to work together? Can we all just agree to respect each others differences?
 

Ahh, yes, the "assumption that EVERYONE plays golf."

Interesting for me, since I a) don't play golf, and b) never will, and c) found that in the Air Force officers of all ranks (er, ages) play golf. They have regular outings. The whole deal. Did it bother me? Nope.

Did I worry that I was somehow losing out? Nope. "Why not?" you may ask. Simple. I found that I often have many things "in common" with people of all ages, if I am willing to look for them. Occasionally I may have picked up a new thought/idea/hobby that not only enhanced the fit but interested me.

Of course, most importantly I found that the senior officers rewarded competence in the job more than golf. Funny thing, that. If you work hard, and (as Garrison Keillor constantly encourages us in the "Writer's Almanac") "do good work" that will be recognized and rewarded.

All that said, I would echo the words of CB, and ask that you (DD) do some self-reflection. It seems to this reader that your tone when dealing with those older than yourself is consistently that they need to get outta the way. In a sense that is ironic, since most of those that need to "move on" were Baby Boomers who argued to "never trust anyone over 30." Seems they now are being asked to "eat their own dogfood."
 

I am sure some of it is where you are, too. Here in Central State, a lot of business does get discussed and settled on the golf course. PrettyGood even owns one.
 

Why don't you take up Wii golf? That will give you a "generational" answer! Or adopt the often valid standby that golf hurts your back.

I agree that the problem is more in your tone than in the topic. Your written version of the conversation conveyed a certain sense of academic elitism, as if you are above the management types who play golf.
 

Ahh CCPhysicist, it's not just that he (DD) feels he is above those who play golf--it's the whole ageist thing. And I, for one, find that just as offensive as any other '-ism' one can espouse.

And the way I figure it, DD acknowledges his long standing bias against the older generation in the very first line when he writes "Reason #456 we need to hire the next generation of administrators"

Apparently, he has 455 other reasons, as well (and a regular reader could easily identify a distinct thread over the years.)
 

I would agree with TerminalMFA who said: "I guess what confused me about your response was not that you should have censored yourself more effectively, but why you think playing golf is such a crazy idea for someone your age."

It is not your response, DD, that I was critiquing. I did suggest that you have a regular habit of dismissing people you disagree with who are older than you by referring to their age and (implicitly or explicitly) that they are therefore out of touch. To my implied comments you said, "I have no problem with anybody's age or hobbies. What I have a problem with is constantly being outnumbered, and having that held against me. That's where 'fit' is relevant."

Being outnumbered still does not warrant this sort of dismissivness. As I mentioned in my first post, I am also a dean about your age. I will be more specific. I am the dean of an honors college and a Big Ten uni (not trying to be obtuse, feel free to look it up). This means that all of my peers within this university are easily 15+ years older than I. I am certainly "outnumbered" but I don't feel that they hold this against me. Personally, I take it as an opportunity to learn from those with far more experience than myself. In turn, I am often looked to as one who can provide some insight into our students not only because I am closer to them in age but because of the nature of my job (academic and student affairs components) I am in much closer contact with the students on a daily basis than the other deans who have associate deans to handle that stuff. My point? We need to be truly "open minded" and learn from other's differences and experiences, even when that comes from their age. "Fit" isn't about sameness it is about presence, being there not being them.

One final gripe. Why is it "inexcusable" that it should take "us" some time (and effort and demonstrating our worthiness) to move up into higher roles of leadership? Or, to put it another way, that we should assume that folks who are now in such positions do not have a right, so long as they are doing their job well and properly, to maintain their own position? There are presidents and provosts that I know who are in the 60s and the fact that they are still at it is a great benefit to their institutions and to those of us who are willing to learn from them. They will retire soon and then, if we have learned our lessons well, we can hope to take up the mantel and do as good a job as they did, and perhaps even better. "To everything there is a season." (Qohelet, not the Doors, btw.)
 

C'mon. Deam Dad was reacting--and I think he's right--to all the presuppositions behind Bigwig's "Of course, there'll be golf" comment. It's not about golf.

What if Bigwig had said "Of course, there'll be wife-swapping"?
 

"One final gripe. Why is it "inexcusable" that it should take "us" some time (and effort and demonstrating our worthiness) to move up into higher roles of leadership?"

DD identifies a valid problem that's recognized across the employment world -- that the Baby Boom is very large and has been sitting at the top of the heap "blocking" advancement for quite some time. I put "blocking" in quotes because it's obviously not deliberate (and a lot of it has to do with the small size of the generations right after the boom), but the effect of this is that we have a lot of senior management AND middle management who are ALL Baby Boomers, and in a lot of corporations (and academia, and non-profits), there has been very little move-up of anyone who is NOT a Boomer, because the Boomers are all still in those jobs. A more typical (and desireable) progression has similarly-sized cohorts moving "up and out" to allow similarly-sized cohorts below to GRADUALLY take on increasing responsibility. A lot of corporations are starting to get a little panicked when they realize their senior management AND middle management are retiring, and they haven't groomed anyone under 50 to take on those positions.

(And in many cases, they've lost a lot of managerial talent in the age cohorts right behind the Boomers because those people became stalled in their careers because management was static.)

USA Today was an interesting example of this, because it was founded by editors who were so young. (I don't recall the exact ages, so I shall invent.) For example, the founding editors were 30, the staff they hired was all about 22, and 20 years later, when your typical editors would be retiring, these guys were only 50, and their senior writing staff was 42 and pretty furious about being stuck with no hope of advancement because nobody was retiring. USA Today lost a LOT of talent in a certain age cohort because their editorial staff was so young and so stayed static for an unusually long period of time. In that scenario, those talented writers were able to go to other publications and move up. But in THIS scenario, it's the entire workforce where people are stalled behind the Boomers and there's often not a lot of places to go.

(And yes, I realize plenty of you haven't run into this problem individually; plenty of other individuals have, and it's a general (if not universal) problem that most corporations that do any strategic planning are starting to look at with more than a little panic.)

In a worst-case scenario, a company that's been VERY static in its management will be leaping right from baby boomers in senior management to the echo boomers who are all of 25 right now and still on the lowest rungs. That's a LOT of dislocation.

Academia has much the same problem, and it has many ways been reinforced by a) tenure and b) the fact that academics tend to retire later (it's work you can keep doing well past retirement age, and many people love it and don't want to retire). So you've got a sort of blockage that's preventing people from reaching tenure or achieving management positions, and that leads to a lot of attrition in age cohort after age cohort that is blocked. In a worst case, colleges will find themselves without anyone with any management experience being pushed into upper academic management levels (with equally inexperienced management below them and all around them). That's a recipe for catastrophe.

And in the VERY worst-case scenario, we replace all the deans and faculty with a huge bunch of people in their late 20s and early 30s, and then THEY make a whole new blockage 20 years down the line and recycle the process.

Again, this isn't something anyone's done DELIBERATELY or MALICIOUSLY, but some companies, some colleges, some non-profits are being very head-in-the-sand about it, and the problems are already starting to occur. I think DD is correct in that colleges (and companies and everyone else) need to recognize that the next generation of leadership doesn't groom itself, and that the situation here is unusual and will require some action on the part of management that'd different from how things have gone in the past.
 

Eyebrows makes some good points. I am even willing to accept that, except that I find the fundamental (unspoken) assumptions flawed.

1. All companies promote from within--and apparently prefer to do that. I think we are finding that the total workforce dynamic is far more fluid, and responsive, than that. It actually has been in corporate America's best interest to hire from outside the company, infusing new ideas and styles. These new ideas come from young, AND older/seasoned employees.

2. That when the younger folks (faculty, writers, etc) leave the company they are somehow "lost." The implication is, lost forever, never to return. That is an unfortunate outcome of (false) assumption 1, above. Hey, people leave, they get other jobs, better jobs, diversity in experiences. They then are actually better choices when they have the opportunity to come back.

So, in a sense, McGee is right. Any college/univ that sticks their head in the sand, and feel that the "only" people who can be hired for administration are academics, and specifically academics from within. And what is worse then, are the faculty that feel that they are somehow more qualified for the position than an outsider because "they have paid their dues/been there waiting" etc... They are most likely the least qualified to move an organization forward and implement change.
 

I can't help but notice that only CCPhysicist included women in the idea that "everyone" plays golf. And only CB seems to specifically mention class. I skimmed some of the comments, so it's possible I missed something, but this isn't strictly a generation gap.

It's the "of course," not the golf, that gets to me.
 

The Professor, you are quite correct about my unspoken assumptions. :) Although I'd argue that in *some* cases promoting from inside brings you the MOST qualified people who have broad knowledge of institutional culture and procedures ... but of course it depends on what you're trying to accomplish. I think what I was thinking more of was that most people are hired or take jobs with the idea that they will have opportunities to move up within that organization, and that is explicitly or implicitly promised by the organization when they are hired.

I myself am a terrible golfer, incidentally -- all I learned from my golf lessons was a kick-ass 5-yard chip-shot to escape a sand trap. I'm great at that. I'm game to go if everyone else is going, but I don't think it's that much fun, and I always worry about getting everyone aggravated at me when I'm terrible and it takes me a dozen strokes to get down the fairway.
 

I do think it's a class thing. My wife's family and my own are both upper middle class, but mine is recently arrived, whereas hers has been there a while. Most everyone in her family golfs, nobody does in mine.

I try to be respectful to golfers, though, even if I think it's a stupid game, just because they often have money and power, both of which I may at some point want a piece of. Bwah, ha, ha!

An old friend and very serious golfer told me that I had completely the wrong temperament for golf, though. He thought I would find it incredibly stressful, so I've avoided it, and that's what I use as my excuse on the rare occasions it comes up.
 

Eyebrows said it better than I did, and Ivory nailed it, too. The "Of course" was the part that got me going.

CB -- I'm glad that you feel that you've been treated fairly. Just don't assume that this is always the case.

What some people apparently read as 'dismissiveness' or 'ageism' (!) is actually frustration at running into the same arbitrary barriers over and over again. I'm calling for some diversification of the ranks while the current veterans are still there precisely so the newbies CAN learn from them. The alternative is to wait until there's no choice, then throw in people who haven't been prepared. Adapt slowly now, or adapt much too quickly later. I vote for the former.
 

The assumption I find strange, and should have mentioned earlier, is that someone in their 60s is a boomer. Someone born before 1948 is on the leading tail of the bulge in the snake; the peak is around age 55 and extends down to someone in their late 40s.

This is complicated further by the demographics of academia, where most grads from the middle of the boom were looking for jobs when there were very few faculty jobs available. Few boomers finished a PhD before 1970. AIP statistics on age of physics faculty show an obvious minimum where a boomer peak should be.

A good example of what we see as a result is the president of Albany (SUNY), who spent 30+ years in the state bureaucracy (and none in academia) before being appointed president.
 

Those of us who are just post-Boom are quite used to being anonymous—even to having our own "Generation X" label appropriated by another age cohort.

What Eyebrows didn't mention is that we couldn't move up because the Boomers occupied the slots above us, and when the Boomers (finally) retired (often in a biggish wave) mange organizations looked for younger employees to 'rejuvenate' the place. In my school there are very few people my age in positions of authority: they are generally either half a generation older or half a generation younger.
 

This is off-topic, Dead Dad, but you mentioned Generation X and it reminded me that there's been a bit of a flair up between Gen X and "the Millenials" (a moniker I think sounds stupid, but, sadly, I apparently fall into) on the web recently, with some Gen X writer whining that the Millenials are coddled babies who are Ruining America and Gen X never got a fair shake and so on. Any thoughts or comments?
 

there's been a bit of a flair up between Gen X and "the Millenials"...on the web recently, with some Gen X writer whining that the Millenials are coddled babies who are Ruining America and Gen X never got a fair shake and so on. Any thoughts or comments?


Well I'd comment this "Robert Lanham is the author of the satirical anthropological studies The Hipster Handbook, Food Court Druids, and The Sinner's Guide to the Evangelical Right.
 

Cf. actual conversation overheard between students the other day: "Of course, there'll be the Wii."
 

I'd like to be in a job where people all retire at age 55 (which is around the median age of the boom). The only place that happens is on an assembly line or in medicine. No one who is over 63 is a baby boomer, and those that age are rare.

But I came back here to post a link to a Ms. Mentor column on whether you need to play golf to become a president. That should entertain you, Dean Dad!
 

DD you are right on the money with you post. As a 34 year old woman my response would have been exactly the same. I work with people that during holiday grab bag look at the itunes card with confusion. There had been much talk about how young startup companies were creating a different activity environment than traditional business models. Xtreme sports, video gaming, etc. As a woman I find the necessity to do business on a golf course offensive. I worked for a bank across from the WTC in the late 1990s and all the male college interns were learning to play golf. No one should be pressured to learn a sport to get ahead unless they are working in the sports field. I have worked for a very diverse prop. u. that came up with inclusive faculty development outings and were not centered on one particular interest.