Thread regarding DeVry Inc. layoffs

1pcmi: All good points you made regarding the potential futility of all of the FT professors still hoping for “the package,” although back when the first, and best, deal was offered I’m not so sure management truly believed this was ever coming back. Those first professors to head for the exits may have just been the first phase in the plan for a long, slow, orderly wind-down of DVU within the broader Adtalem organization. We’ll probably never really know what management was actually strategizing. However, back to the point, for many good reasons some of us are also waiting for the announcement of a teach-out, adding another dimension to this ordeal. IF this were to happen, the process would undoubtedly take some time, with some current professors needed to stay on board through the denouement up until the very end, and with this a contract promising a final severance payout to those willing to supportively ride down with the ship in the final months. This sounds like a lot of perverse hope and fantasy, I know, and says a lot about the pitiful state of our daily plight as faculty here. We’ve become a laughingstock in this industry, occupying the lowest levels of academic he**. As you said, management will do everything possible to avoid any payout to the wretched souls who years ago naively tied their cart to this horse. Right now, most professors I’ve spoken with just have their eye on December as the next “gate” to pass through. If we’re all still here in January, with no new big reveal between now and then, wouldn’t that be something?! As I read here somewhere in an earlier post, “they shoot horses, don’t they?

1pu jc–"the package"–reminds me of Chancery Lane–Jarndyce and Jarndyce–the hope for "the settlement" that never materializes.

I think we can all be sure that if there is a way to wiggle out of providing any "package," it will be found. That's what I think the new IPPs are designed to do: either force people to quit (as I did, simply refusing to play)–hooray no package; or finding cause to fire people–again, hooray no package.

If there is no absolute, airtight, legal requirement to offer a package, they won't.

The old (first) package was offered to pay people to leave as fiscally more sound than retaining faculty or firing them and dealing with wrongful termination suits. It was also provided in the hopeful context that once right-sized, DeVry would pick up steam. When it didn't, the packages disappeared...and firings became more impersonal...

1obyo - you pretty well summed up the life of a DVU professor, and in some ways the environment in Academics feels even more toxic and dysfunctional than a few years ago, if you can imagine that. The only improvement, if you can call it such, is that we’ve not recently seen one of those inane, insulting employee engagement surveys that used to precede meetings with management asking id–tic questions as to why we don’t feel there’s any job security here or why we cringe when an acquaintance asks us where we teach. I think there have been other posts alluding to more recent faculty departures (voluntary) and that many of us are now just waiting for “the package.”

I left after Best Faculty Forward–what a joke! We who had survived many layoffs were then treated as the Worst Faculty Possible–more work, service, lecturing, technologies to use, training, micro managing, with supervisors continually dismissive or our degrees, preparation, teaching records...and IPPs ever-increasingly used to conjure the case for firing. End course evaluations leading their cause...

I am so sorry for faculty strapped to the paycheck, too young to retire, in an impossible job market, with kids to put braces on, educate, mortgages and bills to pay....you are ever in my heart!

As former faculty, you know us and it should not be surprising to you that the process is largely the “artifice” you recall. As you also know, the few FT faculty remaining are quite capable, seasoned and extraordinarily hard-working people, but in this environment it won’t much matter. Recent initiatives in Academics are making the job even harder to balance and navigate, and in the end will not fix what was long ago broken here. The question now, as you pointed out, is whether there’s another planned purge coming soon, possibly as January approaches. This has been the topic of much rumor recently and we continue to look for indications. Trust has long been destroyed here, and since the summer several more FT faculty have simply quit. Meanwhile, some of those left are waiting (in some cases really hoping) to be let go soon, rather than leave voluntarily, with the prospect of a severance package that could be worth up to six months of pay, accompanied by the opportunity to apply for unemployment. No one is really sure whether we will get anything at all on the way out the door, though hope springs eternal. Can you imagine if they offered us a good voluntary separation deal similar to what was given to the earliest faculty departures? The rush to the doors would probably be like a theater on fire.

Is it IPP time? How are full-time faculty faring in the IPP process? I quit before my last IPP. After decades of teaching, creating fair and rigorous course assignments, lecture material, and working many hours (way above 40/wk) on behalf of DeVry and its students; after fulfilling service nationally, and at the local level; after publishing, editing, and conference work–after all that, I was not going to subject myself to an IPP with someone of inferior training, education, and time-on-the-job to pretend to narrate my value or to "help me develop." No. I wasn't having any of it.

So, how is the IPP process these days? Is the process fair? Do faculty enjoy the support and understanding of their supervisors? Are there supervisors qualified to judge their accomplishments or pedagogy? Or is the process merely an artifice to lay a foundation of trumped-up inadequacy, a presumption of failing to achieve standards–a lawyerly assembly of "evidence" to haul out in January before termination?

So this is crazy, about a month ago. Home Office wanted to see, what would happen if Advisor got calls directly and have no OSC involvement. The percent was so good, that the OSC position didnt mean anything...

Guess what, a large amount of OSC's were let go this week. Someone in the prior threads stated this. He or she was spot on!!!

And soon an OSC clean house, to canpuses with more than 2 OSC.

Other than campus IT were laid off this week..

Other than canpus IT were laid off thia week....

well...no news is good news...

Well? Anything of significance discussed in this momentous meeting?

Today is July 3 and the meeting is occurring...I would love to be a fly on the wall...best wishes to my colleagues participating in the meeting...be sure to tell us what news!

it used to be that wednesday prior to the meeting was when the bloodbath occured and the meeting would be used to declare new era of transformation by RP

meeting tomorrow...

Zorek and Burks have all three characteristics.

While we're waiting for a shoe, the other shoe, or multiple shoes to drop...consider this from the Harvard Business Review: The most common type of Incompetent Leader. Here's the link;

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-most-common-type-of-incompetent-leader?utm_source=pocket-newtab

The key derailment characteristics of bad managers are well documented and fall into three broad behavioral categories: (1) “moving away behaviors,” which create distance from others through hyper-emotionality, diminished communication, and skepticism that erodes trust; (2) “moving against behaviors,” which overpower and manipulate people while aggrandizing the self; and (3) “moving toward behaviors,” which include being ingratiating, overly conforming, and reluctant to take chances or stand up for one’s team.

Sound like any leaders we know?

1gny: LOL. What education? Devry is a zombie school and has been for quite some time.

Is anyone actually enrolling for the education?

DV is testing the limits of endurance of mainly Vets who for some reason are willing to travel 150miles once each week to a campus that got their class just so they can hold onto their stipend. Devry also accepts/transfers maximum number of credits so these folks are willing to travel to campuses in a different city.

This is old news, but in 2016-17 Devry had a razor thin margin, with $466M in revenues and $460M in expenses. Why are they holding on to low population campuses (<200 students)? Isn't it a bait and switch for a student to go to a campus where most students will have to be completed online? DeVry knows that online ed has worse student outcomes.

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2018/06/20/online-education-gives-adults-access-student-outcomes-lag