{"id":4605,"date":"2019-11-16T22:42:18","date_gmt":"2019-11-16T22:42:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/?p=4605"},"modified":"2019-11-17T03:42:42","modified_gmt":"2019-11-17T03:42:42","slug":"word-of-the-day-officious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/2019\/11\/16\/word-of-the-day-officious\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Day: Officious"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Mirriam-Webster Word of the Day is officious<\/em>, which means \u201cvolunteering one’s services where they are\nneither asked nor needed\u201d or \u201cmeddlesome.\u201d Mirriam-Webster provides a second\ndefinition, \u201cinformal, unofficial,\u201d but I have never in my life heard or read\nthe word used in that sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mirriam-Webster also gives this as an etymology: \u201cDon’t\nmistake officious<\/em> for a rare synonym\nof official<\/em>. Both words stem from the\nLatin noun officium<\/em> (meaning \u2018service\u2019\nor \u2018office\u2019), but they have very different meanings. When the suffix –osus<\/em> (“full of”) was added to officium<\/em>, Latin officiosus<\/em> came into being, meaning \u2018eager to serve, help, or\nperform a duty.\u2019 When this adjective was borrowed into English as officious<\/em> in the 15th century it\ndescribed dutiful people and their actions. That use shifted a bit semantically\nto describe those eager to help or serve. By the late 16th century, however, officious<\/em> was beginning to develop a\nnegative sense describing a person who offers unwanted help. This pejorative\nsense has driven out the original \u2018dutiful\u2019 and \u2018eager to help\u2019 senses to\nbecome the predominant meaning of the word in modern English.\u201d The website www.etymonline.com<\/a> says that the\npejorative meaning \u201chad emerged by 1600 (in officiously<\/em>).\u201d\nEtymonline.com also says that \u201cAn officious\nlie<\/em> (1570s) is one told to do good to another person (from Latin mendacium officiosum<\/em> or French mensonge officieux<\/em>).\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the big concerns in our country these days is student\ndebt. We are hearing how students are taking on so much debt that it is making\nit hard for even those who graduate to start an adult life, one that includes marrying,\nhaving children, and (most significantly) buying a house. We even have begun to\nhear pundits arguing that going to college may not be the best option for young\npeople today. And, to some extent, these pundits may be right, though I would\nsay that it is impossible to know, definitively, which students should and\nwhich should not go to college. I have a brother who dropped out of high school\nduring his second tour of the tenth grade, but today he has a Master\u2019s degree,\nhaving passed the GED and then gone to college. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the reasons that student debt has become such an\nimportant issue, important enough to be included in the presidential debates of\nthe Democratic Party, is that college has been getting more and more expensive.\nAccording to a recent study reported upon in U. S. News and World Report<\/em>, tuition and fees have far outpaced\ninflation for other things (https:\/\/www.usnews.com\/education\/best-colleges\/paying-for-college\/articles\/2017-09-20\/see-20-years-of-tuition-growth-at-national-universities<\/a>).\nWhile inflation of goods between 1999 and 2019 was 54%, that for private\ncolleges was 154%, and for public colleges, inflation for out-of-state fees was\n181% and for in-state fees 221% (these numbers are for schools labeled \u201cNational\nUniversities,\u201d so regional colleges and universities may be a little bit\ndifferent, but probably not that much. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why has tuition increased so much? There are quite a few\nreasons. Faculty is not one of them. In fact, there has been a national trend\nto reduce the number of full-time faculty and replace them with adjunct\n(part-time) faculty. Some people blame the increases on the reduction of state\ngovernment funds, but that would not explain the increase in the cost of\nprivate colleges. Some people blame the ever-fancier dormitories and amenities,\nand those people might have a point. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But many of us agree that at least one of the reasons the\ncost of college has increased at such a rate is the increase in the number of\nnon-teaching \u201cadministrators,\u201d most of them with no experience as faculty, and\nmany with the Education Doctorate (Ed.D.), often in something called higher ed\nadministration. A quick look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a government\nagency, will give you an idea (https:\/\/www.bls.gov\/ooh\/management\/postsecondary-education-administrators.htm<\/a>).\nThe page says, \u201cThe median annual wage for postsecondary education\nadministrators was $94,340 in May 2018.\u201d A lot of faculty members make far less\nthan that, and faculty salaries have been essentially flat (https:\/\/www.chronicle.com\/article\/Administrator-Hiring-Drove-28-\/144519<\/a>).\n It also says, \u201cEmployment of\npostsecondary education administrators is projected to grow 7 percent from 2018\nto 2028, faster than the average for all occupations.\u201d Higher ed administration\nis a growth industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, what do these administrators do? How do they improve the\nlives and educations of students. Well, the truth is, not much. The essence of\na university is the classroom. That is where the meaningful things happen. Oh,\nyes, it is important for students to have a life outside the classroom, but\nthey would also have a life outside the classroom if they were not in college.\nYes, they need emotional support, but they also would need emotional support if\nthey were not in college. All of those things provided by administrators are\nextraneous to the central mission of any and every college.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, not all of those administrators are focused on\nstudents. The newer trend is to have administrators who \u201chelp\u201d faculty. At my\ninstitution, we have \u201cfaculty development\u201d and \u201cfaculty training.\u201d Of course,\nwhat these Ed.D.s don\u2019t realize is that faculty feel not need to be developed\nby them. \u201cProfessional development\u201d to faculty is going to conferences,\nlistening to papers and presentations, and engaging in conversation with peers.\nThe kinds of things that \u201ccurriculum coordinators\u201d and other administrators try\nto do are usually quite pointless. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These administrators are a problem because they cost\nstudents a lot of money. They are a problem because they think they are in\ncharge of the faculty. But perhaps the most annoying thing about these\nadministrators is how they think they are doing us such good. As C. S. Lewis\nonce said, \u201cOf all the tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of\nits victims may be the most oppressive. \nIt may be better to live under robber barons than under the omnipotent\nmoral busybodies.  The robber baron\u2019s\ncruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but\nthose who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do\nso with the approval of their own conscience.\u201d These modern administrators are\ntruly officious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The image is from the MLA (https:\/\/mlaresearch.mla.hcommons.org\/2016\/11\/17\/trends-in-the-higher-education-workforce\/<\/a>).\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Mirriam-Webster Word of the Day is officious, which means \u201cvolunteering one’s services where they are neither asked nor needed\u201d or \u201cmeddlesome.\u201d Mirriam-Webster provides a second definition, \u201cinformal, unofficial,\u201d but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4606,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-word-of-the-day","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4605"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4605\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4607,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4605\/revisions\/4607"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}