What If Administrator Pay Were Tied to Student Learning Outcomes

The recent negotiation in Chicago ("Performance Pay for College Faculty") of a tie between student performance and college instructor pay brought this accolade from an administrator:  it gets faculty "to take a financial stake in student success."

It got me wondering why we don't hear more about directly tying administrator pay to student success.  If we did, I'll bet the students would have a lot more success.  At least, that's what the data released to the public (and Board of Trustees) would show.  There'd be far less of a crisis in higher education.

Thought experiment. What would  happen if we were to tie administrator pay to student success -- much the way corporate CEOs have their pay packages designed -- especially administrators of large multi-campus systems.

Prediction 1.  The immediate response to the very proposal would be "oh, no, you can't do that because we do not have the same kind of authority to hire and fire and reward and punish that a corporate CEO has."  But think about this...

1. Private sector management has a lot less flexibility than those looking in from the outside think.  Almost all of the organizational impediments to simple, rational management are endemic to all organizations.
2. Leadership is not primarily about picking the members of your team. It's about what you manage to get the team you have to accomplish.
3. Educational administrators do not start the job ignorant of how these educational institutions work. It is tremendously disingenuous to say "if only I had a different set of tools."  People who do not think they can manage with the tools available and within the culture as it exists should not take these jobs in the first place.
4. This, it turns out, is what some people mean when they say that schools should be run like a business. The first impulse of unsuccessful leaders is to blame the led. The second one is to engage in organizational sector envy: "if I had the tools they have over in X industry...."  What this ignores is the obvious evidence that others DO succeed in your industry with your tools.  And plenty of leaders "over there" fail too.  It is not the tools' fault.

Prediction 2.  Learning would be redefined in terms of things produced by inputs administrators had more control over.  And resources would flow in that direction too.

Prediction 3. Administrators would get panicky when they looked at the rubrics in the assessment plans they exhort faculty to participate in and that are included in reports they have signed off on for accreditation agencies.  They'd suddenly start hearing the critics who raise questions about methodologies.  They would start to demand that smart ideas should drive the process and that computer systems should accommodate good ideas rather than being a reason for implementing bad ones.

Prediction 4. In some cases it would motivate individuals to start really thinking "will this promote real learning for students" each time they make a decision.  And they'll look carefully at all that assessment data they've had the faculty produce and mutter, "damned if I know."

Prediction 5. Someone will argue that the question is moot because administrators are already held responsible for institutional learning outcomes.   Someone else will say "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose."