
The Disneyfication of a University - jseliger
https://academeblog.org/2020/01/30/the-disneyfication-of-a-university
======
Seenso
Several years ago, I had to attend a full day "culture training" session given
by Senn Delaney (a division of Heidrick & Struggles) [1]. It was also a
_massive_ waste of time. Our company actually has a really great culture, and
what I remember of the training amounted to a somewhat subtle attempt to
indoctrinate employees to be more blindly obedient to management change
initiatives. There was some other stuff, but I honestly can't recall anything
else. Maybe some simplified Meyers-Briggs type thing.

The only time I've heard _any_ of the concepts cited since the training push
has been in the context of some mid-level executive type pushing an unpopular
top-down change, and even then, they seem to be at the bottom of their
rhetorical sack. My co-workers' reaction ranged from neutral to eye-rolling,
and as far as I can tell, no one has explicitly employed the trained culture
concepts and the whole experience has mostly been forgotten.

I have no idea how much the my employer paid for all this, but the cost must
have been _enormous_ ( _every_ employee had to attend a course that took
between one and _three_ whole work days, with _no_ multitasking allowed).

[1] [https://www.senndelaney.com/](https://www.senndelaney.com/)

~~~
bitwize
Not long ago at $JOB I sat through what I call "mandatory psychobabble day".
The particular psychobabble being peddled to, or rather, imposed on, us was
the DISC system -- a variant of which was recently outed on Hackernews as
pernicious hucksterism which somehow held much of Sweden in its sway. It was
supposed to make us better collaborators, under the rubric that understanding
the traits of both your own star sign under this 20th century horoscope and
those of your coworkers will enable you to formulate better communication
strategies. Oddly, the most fruitful discussions that day, or at any time at
$JOB, were held without reference to DISC at all.

My single moment of satisfaction was in trolling the interlocutor at the end.
He still recognizes and smiles to me in the halls, which tells me my trolling
was sufficiently subtle.

~~~
throwaway3849
You must have more tact than me. I caught the ire of the iridologist when I
asked 'What if we disagree with the chart?' Could not find a more
uncomfortable way to spend a morning.

~~~
throwaway3157
What did the instructor do to you for the remainder of the morning?

~~~
throwaway3849
I was used as the example for the rest of the session. Either I could take it
in stride or dig in. That was not the hill I wanted to die on so I sucked it
up. Still find it hard to let go of it though.

------
riyadparvez
As someone who is not from North America, this positive/good vibe culture
really baffles me. You are a human being. Negative emotions are part of life.
World is full of pain and sufferings. You are supposed to feel empathy for
other people and feel bad for their misfortune even if you have the good luck
of not going through suffering. I just don't understand this obsession of
feeling good all the time. I don't know how people can just brag about
themselves with things like "good vibes only". If you have never felt sadness,
pain, shame, or embarrassment, is it something to brag about?

~~~
JackFr
A saying I learned from a Russian coworker: "The only people who smile all the
time are idiots and Americans."

As an American, I find that quite amusing. I'd say it brings a smile to my
face, but there's likely one there already.

~~~
zweep
The flip side is when Lisa Simpson asks a Russian man for directions to the
bus and he politely answers her but she mistakes his gruff Slavic manner for
hostility.

~~~
thaumasiotes
There are two Russian men playing chess. After frightening Lisa away ("My
pleasure! It's six blocks that way!"), one checkmates the other, to which the
response is upending the chessboard accompanied by the subtitle "Good game!
How about another?".

The joke isn't really Lisa mistaking a "gruff Slavic manner" for hostility,
it's more the Slavic manner being actually hostile.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyVMiE7jAJo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyVMiE7jAJo)

------
cs702
It's part of the ongoing "corporatization" and "MBA-ization" of US colleges
and universities.

GW's attempt to institute a "culture" using techniques developed at Disney is
just one of many possible examples, although I will admit it is a particularly
easy one to mock. (Quoting the OP: "The GW culture initiative can be summed up
in two words: Mickey Mouse.")

Much of higher education in the US is now controlled by an administrative
bureaucracy that thinks in terms of corporate strategy, corporate culture,
financial incentives, business processes, and so on. These people don't teach
or conduct research, and in many cases have never taught or conducted
research. They think of academics as "human resources" that must "add value"
to the organization, i.e., produce benefits that can be readily measured.

At the top of this growing administrative apparatus are college and university
presidents earning seven figures a year, but typically they also earn
additional income from sitting on corporate and non-profit boards. Presidents
tend to have illustrious academic pedigrees, but their involvement in day-to-
day academic matters is at about the same level as the involvement of a
burger-chain CEO in the operations of a single restaurant in the chain.

Below presidents, there are multiple layers of bureaucracy that have been
growing for quite some time, with no slow-down in sight. According to federal
figures, as of a few years ago, the number of non-academic administrative and
professional employees at US colleges and universities _has more than doubled
in the past quarter century, outpacing the growth in the number of students or
faculty._ [a]

Perhaps the most salient example of this ever-expanding bureaucracy is
Stanford's shiny new 35-acre campus in Redwood City, which houses _only_ non-
academic administrative staff -- that is, people who work in departments with
names like Finance, Planning, Facilities, Human Resources, Business Affairs,
etc.[b]

Whether this corporatization proves a good or a bad thing in the long run, it
remains to be seen. (I doubt it will prove to be a good thing.)

[a] [https://www.necir.org/2014/02/06/new-analysis-shows-
problema...](https://www.necir.org/2014/02/06/new-analysis-shows-problematic-
boom-in-higher-ed-administrators/)

[b] [https://redwoodcity.stanford.edu/](https://redwoodcity.stanford.edu/)

~~~
smacktoward
_> Perhaps the most salient example of this ever-expanding bureaucracy is
Stanford's shiny new 35-acre campus in Redwood City, which houses only non-
academic administrative staff._

The idea of a separate campus just for administrative staff feels like a real-
life version of Douglas Adams' Golgafrinchan Ark B:
[https://everything2.com/title/B+Ark](https://everything2.com/title/B+Ark)

~~~
protonfish
Except we can't ship them into space.

~~~
mattkrause
On behalf of the science departments: "We're willing to try!"

------
makerofspoons
[https://web.archive.org/web/20200210163448/https://academebl...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200210163448/https://academeblog.org/2020/01/30/the-
disneyfication-of-a-university/)

~~~
siberianbear
Thank you! I presume you were getting the same "500 Internal Server Error"
that I was.

------
Animats
The funny thing is that Disney actually could teach a university something,
but that's not it. Disney is really good at a few things, like line, crowd,
and parking management. Disney could probably make a school's football stadium
and parking run better. Disney creates the illusion that they're better than
they are by over-maintaining the visible stuff. So they could help create a
culture that makes a school look less run-down, like making sure the bathrooms
are clean, functional, and never out of supplies. Disney is good at
maintaining heating, ventilating, and air conditioning standards. So they
could help with indoor air quality.

But "mad about the Mouse" training? No.

~~~
downerending
Actually, just got back from a trip there and was absolutely shocked at the
lack of cleanliness of one of their restaurants (Oga's). Maybe it was a one-
off.

~~~
tatersolid
Oga’s was spotless when the fam went in October, other than the “decorative”
grittiness literally painted on the walls so it looked like the movie.

That said, most of the Disney World “quick serve” cafeterias are covered in
food waste by the end of the day. I suppose there’s only so much you can do to
keep up with 20,000 toddlers times three meals a day.

~~~
downerending
I'm okay with the "decorative" plague--I just don't want to catch the real
kind. I've been in cleaner drug-deal bars. The only comp I can think of is the
White Castle down the street from the Port Authority bus terminal.

------
keenmaster
The main problem I see here is not with the culture training or Disney
consultants. It’s the lack of leadership. The president of the university
should inspire cultural change in his own institution, in cooperation with
faculty and staff. That’s part of his job. The irony is that there are
probably multiple professors at GWU who teach about organic change. They would
have offered their consulting services for free.

------
chishaku
AKA the corporatization of higher education.

 _[Corporatization] has saddled us with a higher-education model that is both
expensive to run and difficult to reform as a result of its focus on status,
its view of students as customers, and its growing reliance on top-down
administration._

 _Not surprisingly, those administrators who occupy the highest ranks in our
college and university bureaucracies are those who have professionally
benefited the most from corporatization._

[https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/the-
corporatization-...](https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/the-
corporatization-of-higher-education)

~~~
Loughla
I've worked in higher ed for decades, and I can say (anecdotally obviously)
that the number one negative change agent was the switch from simply calling
them students to 'consumers' or 'customers' depending on which institution
you're examining. Many campuses, in my experience, have even just boiled it
down to credit hours, instead of even talking about the human people involved.

It has devalued the real purposes of education, and has had the most draining
impact on higher education culture that I have ever experienced. It has led to
more PR and Marketing dollars, and less dollars for professional development
for people who actually impact student success.

I hate it.

------
tdons
Well written piece.

I've been subjected to these kinds of 'workshops', and, like the author I too
resent them. What's interesting is that many people (a majority?) in my
organisation hated it too.

Why do sessions like this keep getting organised? Why don't employees unite
and speak up? What's in it for management? Deep down they must know that for
most people attending, it doesn't add any value (it detracts).

~~~
koboll
It might have something to do with

>A select group of faculty and staff, those identified as opinion leaders, are
being offered all-expenses paid trips to the Walt Disney World Resort in
Orlando “to gain first-hand insight into Disney’s approach to culture.”

~~~
hartator
Well. That explains a lot.

~~~
bjd2385
Maybe everything.

------
Consultant32452
The most common reason people leave companies is not compensation. It's
usually about relationships, primarily with the boss but also coworkers. I'm
on the spectrum, so I function a bit like an automaton which places little
value on the social aspects of work, but most people aren't like that. This is
how "on the spectrum" I am. One time I was on a team that did a team building
exercise where we went to a local charity for sick kids and performed manual
labor all day. I calculated how much that cost the company and made a
presentation to my boss about how much more we could have done by hiring
minimum wage workers to perform the same manual labor for the same $ they paid
us. I genuinely did not understand that was a weird/socially unacceptable
thing to do. Anyways, I'm digressing a bit. Most people were more interested
in how it made them feel to do something nice for sick kids. I didn't
understand that, I thought the goal was to perform the maximum amount of good
for the kids. And taken one step further, people like working for the type of
company that would let them do things like help sick kids instead of their
normal work tasks. For the social people on the team, it's all about the
feels.

~~~
alasdair_
Your story reminds me of an anecdote in The Economist where an econ professor
wondered why it was socially unacceptable to hire someone to help his friends
move house rather than helping directly himself, when he didn't want to.

~~~
bumby
This made me genuinely chuckle. I love economic theories applied to real life
when they border on absurd because they assume everything is about maximizing
utility.

I'll be sure to farm out all my spousal duties if I have better things to do
and I'll report back on how that went.

~~~
Consultant32452
One time my wife explained to me that she didn't feel like I appreciated her
doing my laundry. I responded that she should stop doing my laundry. I didn't
feel like it was her "job" to do the laundry and if it was the source of some
emotional problem, it could easily be avoided. I thought I had solved the
problem. She's my ex-wife now.

~~~
magduf
This reminds me of some web article I read a while ago complaining about how
women suffer more "emotional labor" in relationships. It was of course written
by a women, but to me, it really seemed like a lot of whining, which amounted
to "I think all this stuff is necessary, so if my husband doesn't pitch in and
do half of it, it's unfair." So, for instance, if the wife insists on having
an immaculately clean house, and the husband doesn't do his share on keeping
the house up to her level of perfection, then he's a slacker. But from his
perspective, he doesn't care about the house being that spic-and-span, so why
should he be responsible for that much work? There was more to it than that; I
think another big example was keeping up with social engagements. Again,
something where the woman somehow thought these things were absolutely
necessary, volunteered to do them, and then complained that she was having to
do all this unpaid labor, while the man really didn't care about doing these
things at all.

~~~
jimbokun
It might show, though, that those two people aren't very compatible and maybe
not a good match for marriage.

~~~
magduf
I believe that's absolutely true, however the people whining about "emotional
labor" never seem to see this, they just blame the husband.

Honestly, I'm starting to think that very few married couples are really all
that compatible in the first place, and that the institution isn't a very good
deal for most people involved. Considering just how many marriages end in
divorce, plus how many people simple stay single these days, it seems like
marriage really isn't workable. It only worked in "the old days" because women
were 2nd-class citizens who rarely could get good jobs, and social pressures
just forced people to get married, and stay married, even if they were
miserable together.

------
wrs
Company culture and values training is useful to _inform_ people of what the
culture and values are. You can’t _impose_ or _change_ culture and values
through training.

“Culture” is just a summary of what people do — the way to reinforce it is
just to do it. If people are visibly rewarded day-to-day for acting a certain
way, and visibly not rewarded (and let go) for doing the opposite, that’s
going to be what determines the culture.

~~~
TremendousJudge
I think this has a name, but I can't recall it -- Workers always end up doing
whatever that the higher ups reward, not what they say they want. They can
parrot about culture however much they want, but in the end if being an
asshole is what get you bonuses and promotions, that's the employees they'll
get

~~~
homonculus1
The word is "incentive"!

------
reggieband
When I was a high-school student I hated pep rallies [1]. The entire school
was dragged into our gym, sat on the bleachers while the football team ran
into the room through a paper banner and various students on the pep squad
would juggle, dance and force everyone to make some noise. It felt like a
gigantic waste of time. Nearly 30 minutes for 450+ people.

When I joined in the corporate drudgery I hated all of the equivalent rituals.
I worked at a game company that did a literal equivalent of a pep rally for
the 100+ employees who were in the process of finaling a game. Quarterly all-
hands meetings are usually veiled pep rallies where making some noise is
replaced by polite applause as division managers tout rose-color tinted
bullshit.

Nothing alerts my cynicism quite as much as this fake-it-till-you-make-it
forced optimism and team building. I've been through a dozen flavours of team
building including learning my MBTI, my DiSC color and more. I've gone on day
long retreats/field trips and I have been forced to awkwardly mill about every
Friday for flat beer and microwaved appetizers. I cringe at the very thought
of this stuff.

I wouldn't be able to count the number of company value presentations I've
been subjected to. Core values, OKRs, and a host of company culture defining
paradigms I don't even remember. I've seen laminated principles posted in
break rooms and hallways only to be usurped by some new systems within months.

And yet I truly and deeply believe it is not only worth the effort - I believe
that things like these are essential to build high-functioning teams. It is a
bitter medicine but once I wipe away my cynicism I must admit it works. Just
like advertising - that stuff sinks into your subconscious whether you like it
or not. Only stubborn fools will insist it doesn't work on them, as if they
have some kind of mental fortitude/resistance unlike all other humans.

IMO, aligning people to a small number of shared values is maybe one of the
most important and powerful things we can do.

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pep_rally](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pep_rally)

~~~
nkrisc
It works, for better or for worse, because most people do believe in it. Most
people like pep rallies (however hard for me to understand why). Most people
like seeing their name in a powerpoint near a bunch of exclamation points and
showered in clipart confetti.

I never understood why we celebrated product launches. Half the time it seems
the thing quietly dies a year later. Why don't we celebrate things that go on
to actually provide value instead of just celebrating that labor was done?
What's the point of labor that doesn't produce value? Should that be
celebrated?

Because for most people social recognition makes it worth it, regardless of
how meaningless it really is.

If you can't tell, I don't really care much for celebrations.

~~~
jimbokun
Product launch marks going from zero provided value to greater than zero
provided value (assuming the product doesn't somehow subtract value from the
customers). And it is also easier to iterate and respond to customer requests
after launch. And launch is often the development milestone requiring the most
concerted effort to overcome.

So I think having a party to anticipate is a way to emotionally incentivize
pushing through that barrier.

~~~
nkrisc
I'm not arguing that products shouldn't be launched, just that launch alone is
too early to celebrate.

It's exactly after that early iteration after launch that you might have
something to celebrate.

------
heleninboodler
Oddly enough, there are lots of people who truly believe in this "10 core
values" pap. I once was going through my annual review cycle at Microsoft,
grumbling about having to go through the useless exercise of documenting how I
live up to completely generic "core values" like "integrity" and I bitched to
my wife about it. She works in social services and was appalled that I could
be so cynical and didn't find this sort of guidance helpful. We finally had to
agree to disagree on whether the whole concept was mindless garbage. I mean,
come on, when "excellence" is one of your core values, you might as well just
say "we like things that are good." Big thumbs up, Mickey.

------
riazrizvi
Unpopular opinion... you can make almost anything sound awful with the right
tone of cynicism, and the intended substance of this article is just a cynical
tone. Looking at the observations presented I'm inclined to side with the
university president.

1\. The university staff were mostly sullen at a culture workshop, enthusiasm
was low.

2\. Disney is an entertainment world leader.

3\. Disney attributes its leadership position to its corporate culture,
evidenced at Disney sites which are in a world of their own compared to other
entertainment sites - if you've ever been to a Six Flags (USA) or Alton Towers
(UK) you'll know that they don't compare to the all around experience at
Disneyland.

4\. Disney is selling a consulting service to other enterprises to improve
cultural coherence, it costs millions.

5\. The author objects to the suggested focus of culture. In their words:

> We were introduced at the beginning of the workshop to the university’s
> brand new slogan: “Only at GW, we change the world, one life at a time.”
> Hold on. We change the world only at GW? And we achieve this absurd ambition
> how? The answer, it turns out, is pretty vacuous—by being nice. “Care,” we
> were told, is one of our three “Service Priorities.”

The author shows no evidence of understanding the purpose of a mission
statement, which is a guiding principle that cuts across all aspects of an
organization's basic deliverables, to help guide all staff on what service
delivery would look like if more than the bare minimum service were to be
offered. "Only at GW, we change the world, one life at a time". How is this
not vacuous? i) it helps you understand you are looking to create change that
is remarkable and identifiable to GW, not just any old university, ii) it
reminds you the changes being made are to change a young student's life, it's
not just to teach them factoids, iii) it reminds you that the goal of GW is to
change the world through it's teaching, not train people to pass exams and get
certificates.

6\. The author is combating the university's efforts to get a common
aspirational purpose, instead they are trying to create a common rebellion
against leadership, so they must want something else that leadership is
offering. Because no alternative aspirational purpose was offered, the author
is de facto trying to rally people behind ... nothing, inaction, rebellion for
rebellion's sake.

~~~
jimbokun
> i) it helps you understand you are looking to create change that is
> remarkable and identifiable to GW, not just any old university, ii) it
> reminds you the changes being made are to change a young student's life,
> it's not just to teach them factoids, iii) it reminds you that the goal of
> GW is to change the world through it's teaching, not train people to pass
> exams and get certificates.

This is still vacuous and not very applicable.

"remarkable and identifiable to GW" which means what?

"change a young student's life" in what way?

"to change the world through it's teaching" to change the world how?

~~~
riazrizvi
It seems that ‘vacuous’ is being used here to indicate questions-remain-
unanswered/instructions-are-not-explicit-enough? All high-level/aspirational
objectives leave room for interpretation. The question, How is our service
distinctive to GW as opposed to any old university will help all staff strive
for a higher goal. That’s as vacuous as a question like, What do you want your
life to have looked like on your deathbed, ie not at all IMO

------
ghostbrainalpha
I've worked at places that have really great culture. And places that just
wasted everyone's time like we all have.

The key for me was seeing people consistently let go for breaking "core
values". Or having it be a basis for someone's promotion. Obviously that is
never going to work well in a University context where tenure is a thing.

If your company is doing that... AND you actually agree and like the Core
Values they are promoting, I'm kind of into these workshops and the extra work
that goes into maintaining a strong and specific work culture.

~~~
aidenn0
I think part of the point of TFA is that it wasn't specific; the core values
they suggest would make just as much sense for McDonalds and for GWU.

~~~
kthejoker2
A good rule of thumb: if you can't imagine a company adopting the opposite
position of a "core value", it's not a value at all.

"Honesty" is not a value.

"Move fast and break things" is a value.

~~~
Johnny555
There are plenty of companies that have embraced the opposite of "honesty"
(Enron, Arthur Anderson, and Theranos are a few that come to mind).

~~~
kthejoker2
Arthur Andersen's value statement began "We believe in integrity."

Enron's core value statement included " Integrity – We work with customers and
prospects openly, honestly, and sincerely."

So my point stands.

------
smoyer
Hey GW ... I hear that "Don't Be Evil" is available again and seems like it
would be suitably generic.

On a more serious note, I'm on staff at a relatively major university having
spent the previous 30 years in private industry. One of the things I (now at
least) appreciate is that the university isn't supposed to have a corporate
culture. There isn't a profit motive, it provides a safe-haven for "new
thoughts", and should be altruistic in ways even a non-profit corporation
can't be. (Note - not all "new thoughts" end up being right). As we work on
the university's infrastructure, we commonly ask ourselves how we (as staff)
can make the student's experience and/or education better. We're not directly
interacting with students (most of the time) like the faculty but I feel the
pain of this GW professor - perhaps their president needs to ask the same
question.

~~~
ahi
I am an '05 alum of GW. GW disqualified itself from using "Don't Be Evil" a
long time ago. e.g. [https://www.propublica.org/article/george-washington-
univers...](https://www.propublica.org/article/george-washington-university-
has-for-years-claimed-to-be-need-blind.-its-no)

But GW isn't really an academic institution. It's a real estate developer that
uses rich kids from Long Island to fill it's square footage.

~~~
cafard
Universities do that. I have lived in Washington, DC, for many years, and have
seen all of the local universities sprawl. I'm not sure American University
had reached to the west side of Massachusetts Avenue yet: now it has a
building or two on Connecticut Avenue. Catholic has expanded up along the
train tracks. Howard briefly had a dorm on 16th St. Georgetown is trapped in
an expensive neighborhood, and has publicly considered what it might do to put
some facilities in Maryland.

If you want to meet a real estate behemoth have a look at Harvard...

------
bobthechef
On a related note, I worked with a guy once who actually said that perks like
free snacks were more important for him than a raise because "it's nice" and
that it shows the company appreciated you.

Now, I'm not saying having snacks is bad, but you must have drowned in the
koolaid to think that a couple of bags of chips in place of a raise shows the
company appreciates your work.

One in a while I meet a poor guy like him.

~~~
magduf
The free snacks help with morale, and cost the company very little.
Personally, I'd rather have more money so I can buy my own snacks, but I've
never heard of a company offering employees an actual choice between free
snacks or a raise, so in reality it really comes down to free snacks vs. no
free snacks.

------
geerlingguy
A quick summary: the employees at a university had to attend seminars put on
by the Disney Institute to try to instill in them the 'values' that the
university should adopt.

I vaguely remember the corporate culture workshops we had to attend at a
couple previous employers, and yeah, it's annoying and boring, but someone had
to justify spending X million dollars on a new slogan and spiffy "these five
words summarize who we are and what we do for the world".

Apparently that wasn't (isn't?) the norm in university settings?

~~~
sharkmerry
It is the norm, but the author is questioning the effectiveness.

Also, your summary hit the nail well but missed,

>A select group of faculty and staff, those identified as opinion leaders, are
being offered all-expenses paid trips to the Walt Disney World Resort in
Orlando “to gain first-hand insight into Disney’s approach to culture.”

Which makes the situation more insidious.

~~~
geerlingguy
Yeah, definitely not effective in the least. The only thing I remember from
those trainings was it was nice to not have to be on-call (at all, another
team took over) for a full day, and we got donuts and tasty boxed lunches, so
I guess that was nice.

But I can't remember any of the content of the seminars, because I'm not sure
I was fully conscious through them.

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
A good rule of thumb is that the more a corporation talks about "culture", the
more the employees should be wary that they are getting fleeced.

A lot of companies have realized that they get employees to work harder for
less if they are able to get the employees to develop some sort of emotional
attachment to the company. If you as an employee are getting a lot of push
about "company culture" and the company is trying to push various experiences
to make you feel good about the company, you should make sure you take the
time to seriously look at your compensation and what the market compensation
is, and see if they are trying to underpay you relative to your value.

~~~
bitwize
> A lot of companies have realized that they get employees to work harder for
> less if they are able to get the employees to develop some sort of emotional
> attachment to the company.

This is the kind of bullshit I inoculate myself against by telling myself:
This is not your life. These are not your best friends. This is you farming
gold out of a megacorp so you have the means to advance the story-driven
missions that are your real life.

~~~
dweekly
And yet, as the place where you spend more than half your waking hours, it
_is_ your life. If you have the option to connect with the people you are
spending your hours with personally and authentically instead of holding them
at arm's length with cool detachment, why not? We are all humans. And if you
have the chance to drive a mission in the work that you do, then even moreso
is there no reason to throw up a false barrier.

More broadly, people are lacking third place institutions like churches,
fraternal service organizations, or neighborhood clubs to connect - when their
coworkers throw up barriers to connecting, folks get awful lonely awfully
quickly.

------
333c
Wow, that's… gross. The university is treating its employees like young
teenagers. There are always better things for schools to spend money on, such
as faculty and staff salary. One wonders why they instead buy silly services
like this.

~~~
webkike
Believe me, young teenagers find these meetings just as abhorrent

~~~
333c
Of course; I didn't mean to imply they enjoy them. I just meant that they're
often subjected to them.

~~~
Mirioron
Why are teenagers subjected to this kind of stuff anyway? It's usually pretty
apparent that they don't like this stuff. They won't tell you outright,
because they're trained to be compliant and taught to never entirely disagree,
but it should still be apparent to those who understand teenagers, no?

~~~
daveslash
As the parent of a teenager, I now realize just how hard it can be to get some
messages to really land with a teenager. Unless the message that you're trying
to get through, no matter how important, is already something that's of
interest to them, most things end up feeling like a lecture to them. Upon
reflection, I was the same way. As a result, you (the parent) sometimes try to
make things _" fun"_ as a way to engage with them and drive home a message.
(spoiler: it often turns out lame and not fun...)

------
duxup
I suspect there just aren't many good leaders out there, and accordingly a lot
of leadership out there sort of struggles along and then for some reason ...
just reads their latests leadership book or whatever AT the people they're
supposed to be leading.

Leadership is what you do with / for people, not talking at people, but
talking AT seems to be the easier / more frequent route.

------
jostmey
Quote about George Washington University: "Our president is rumored to have
forked over three to four million dollars to the Disney Institute to improve
our culture (he refuses to reveal the cost)"

------
Mirioron
How can universities afford things like this, when, at the same time, there
seems to be a big student loan problem in the US?

~~~
lolc
In a monetary sense, universities can afford this shit exactly because of the
huge loans taken up by students. In an ethical sense, they can afford it
because people don't care enough to dump them over it.

~~~
downerending
So far. Perhaps it's my imagination, but I'm detecting a noticeable decline in
the quality of recent graduates, as compared to ten or twenty years ago. You
can't water down the booze indefinitely without people noticing.

~~~
Loughla
It is your imagination. And now I'm going to make a wild claim with no
citations because I'm on mobile, but. . .

Graduate quality and skill has increased since 1990 [citation here] for each
school individually. What you're seeing is an increase in the variety of
institutions you are seeing graduates from.

Not everywhere is created equal. Universities and graduates are all mostly
getting better, but they're not all as good as one another.

~~~
downerending
Well, there's two wild claims--one of 'em must be wrong. :-)

For context, I'm comparing graduates from a local name-ish school with my no-
name school back in the day. Back then, there was a lot of theory, math,
proofs, etc. These days it seems more like websites, apps, etc. Some ML,
though more because it's trendy, I suspect, and I don't think linear algebra
is required.

~~~
erklik
And most average graduates aren't using theory, math proof etc in every day
employment. Websites and apps however are bread and butter of the majority of
developers out there. Good schools still build a lot of fundamentals though,
and I'd argue people are better with data structures and algorithms mainly due
to their increase of usage in interviews.

~~~
downerending
I'm somewhat sympathetic to the "college should be trade school" approach, and
I think there should be some of this. Yet, you'll spend your entire career
learning new practical tech like "websites and apps". In my experience, if you
don't do the theory in school, you probably never will. It usually doesn't
matter, but it seems like engineers that lack this often have blind spots that
sometimes do matter, and they don't even realize it.

Beyond that, I spent a ferocious amount of time in the computer labs getting
the "trade school" part of my education on my own while I was taking the
theoretical coursework. Kind of two curricula for the price of one. I think
this is the best path for someone who really wants to be at the top of the
field.

------
bjornlouser
"The main purpose of this corporate culture initiative is to create a more
disciplined and compliant workforce."

Surely the main goal is to drive out older workers. Some number of them will
refuse to tolerate repeated exposure to such nonsense.

~~~
jressey
It is to reduce labor cost and ultimately increase the bottom line. Many
people will leave because they don't "fit." Many people will be attracted and
take a lower salary than they deserve in exchange for "culture."

------
reilly3000
I’ve always found the idea of having an external party being able to effective
both assess and modify culture as part of a service. How much time on the
ground does a good CEO need to get a sense of both the operation and the
people in it? Months to years. An outside party has no real sense of the
biases and assumptions that underlay the veneer of all members of the culture.
Therefore interventions end up being based on a commodity plan, executed
against a need that is strategic in nature.

I’m all for universities instilling a customer service attitude among staff,
and maybe a third party is the right tool to kickstart that process, but it’s
leadership from both management and staff on the ground that actually allow
these changes to take hold.

------
OldGuyInTheClub
I don't have enough adjectives. This is now SOP, everywhere. Current Affairs
had this scathing article about a different waste of money:
[https://www.currentaffairs.org/2016/06/the-unendurable-
horro...](https://www.currentaffairs.org/2016/06/the-unendurable-horrors-of-
leadership-camp)

And this 2003 article from the LA Weekly gives a jarring glimpse into Mouse
mentality: [https://www.laweekly.com/keepers-of-the-magic-
kingdom/](https://www.laweekly.com/keepers-of-the-magic-kingdom/)

------
datanerd
I get "500 Internal Server Error" when I visit this post.

------
mbostleman
It's interesting to me to see where, when there is something wrong, people
determine the problem is. So in this case there's an implied diss against
Disney and probably more generally against consultants. To me, both of those
are symptoms and are sure to be supplied by the market wherever the real
problem crops up which is a buyer. In this case, GW's president and/or the
board.

------
lsniddy
Can't wait for this college bubble to pop. I must give them credit though, as
an alum I can confirm GW does have a negative culture.

------
say_it_as_it_is
American universities lost that which used to make them special. There won't
be much to miss when they no longer exist, especially the debt.

~~~
xsmasher
I immediately thought of Pirsig's "two universities."

“The real University, he said, has no specific location. It owns no property,
pays no salaries and receives no material dues. The real University is a state
of mind. It is that great heritage of rational thought that has been brought
down to us through the centuries and which does not exist at any specific
location. It's a state of mind which is regenerated throughout the centuries
by a body of people who traditionally carry the title of professor, but even
that title is not part of the real University. The real University is nothing
less than the continuing body of reason itself.

In addition to this state of mind, 'reason,' there's a legal entity which is
unfortunately called by the same name but which is quite another thing. This
is a nonprofit corporation, a branch of the state with a specific address. It
owns property, is capable of paying salaries, of receiving money and of
responding to legislative pressures in the process.

But this second university, the legal corporation, cannot teach, does not
generate new knowledge or evaluate ideas. It is not the real University at
all. It is just a church building, the setting, the location at which
conditions have been made favorable for the real church to exist.” ― Robert
Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainance

------
humanistbot
This is throwing 500 errors and the piece is relatively short, so I've copied
it below:

BY DANE KENNEDY

The George Washington University faculty and staff ain’t got no culture. Or
worse, we’ve got a negative culture. This was the verdict of the Disney
Institute, which the president of our university commissioned last year to
assess the culture on our campus. Fortunately, the institute, which is the
“professional development and external training arm of The Walt Disney
Company,” has a remediation plan. It has designed workshops to teach us the
cultural “values” and “service priorities” we evidently require.

The culture that Disney has crafted for us is not, it should be said, the high
culture of the arts that the poet Matthew Arnold described as “sweetness and
light.” Nor is it the anthropological notion of culture—a system of meaning
that shapes social behavior. Rather, it is corporate culture, a creature that
has become all the rage in the business world—and now, it seems, is burrowing
its way into universities. Its professed aim is to instill a sense of shared
purpose among employees, but its real objective is far more coercive and
insidious.

Our president is rumored to have forked over three to four million dollars to
the Disney Institute to improve our culture (he refuses to reveal the cost). A
select group of faculty and staff, those identified as opinion leaders, are
being offered all-expenses paid trips to the Walt Disney World Resort in
Orlando “to gain first-hand insight into Disney’s approach to culture.” For
everyone else, the university is conducting culture training workshops that
run up to two hours. All staff and managers are required to attend. Faculty
are strongly “encouraged” to participate, and some contract faculty, who have
little job security, evidently have been compelled to do so.

I attended one of these workshops. It was a surreal experience. About a
hundred mostly sullen university employees—maintenance workers, administrative
staff, faculty members, and more—filled a ballroom. Two workshop leaders
strained to gin up the crowd’s enthusiasm with various exhortations and
exercises, supplemented by several slickly produced videos. The result was a
cross between a pep rally and an indoctrination camp.

We were introduced at the beginning of the workshop to the university’s brand
new slogan: “Only at GW, we change the world, one life at a time.” Hold on. We
change the world only at GW? And we achieve this absurd ambition how? The
answer, it turns out, is pretty vacuous—by being nice. “Care,” we were told,
is one of our three “Service Priorities.” We were given “Service Priorities”
table-tent cards, conveniently sized for our pocketbooks and billfolds so we
can whip them out whenever we needed to remind ourselves how we change the
world. These cards offer a series of declarative statements—pabulum, some
might say—about our “care” priorities. Here’s a sample: “I support a caring
environment by greeting, welcoming, and thanking others.” To help us care for
others, the university has established a “positive vibes submission” website,
where we “can send a positive vibe to someone.” It was hard to detect many
positive vibes in the workshop itself.

The other two “service priorities” give us a clearer idea of the culture
initiative’s real agenda. One is “safety;” the other, “efficiency.” Both
exhort employees to improve their work performance. The very first “safety”
recommendation is an injunction to “keep areas clean, well-maintained, and
inviting.” An important measure of “efficiency” is a willingness to “embrace
change and [be] open to new ways of working.” One might wonder whether work
efficiency would be enhanced by redirecting the millions of dollars that are
going to the Disney Institute into staff salaries or bonuses instead. But that
misses the point. The main purpose of this corporate culture initiative is to
create a more disciplined and compliant workforce. Our workshop leaders
actually acknowledged that “compliance” is a central pillar of the project.

Lastly, we were introduced to “Our GW Values”—“ours” only in the sense that
they were being imposed on us. One might think that our president would be
interested in promoting and honoring the values that are specific to our
mission as a university, such as innovative research, teaching excellence,
critical inquiry, and new ideas. Think again. As crafted by the Disney
Institute and its administrative acolytes, “Our GW Values” are “integrity,”
“collaboration,” “courage,” “respect,” “excellence,” “diversity,” and
“openness.” All worthy values, to be sure, but is it possible to offer a more
generic and innocuous set of standards?

The GW culture initiative can be summed up in two words: Mickey Mouse.

Guest blogger Dane Kennedy is the Elmer Louis Kayser Professor of History and
International Affairs at George Washington University.

------
treebornfrog
Site seems to be down?

------
DrNuke
I would call that spade a spade and say Cretinisation but hey, I’m technically
a boomer, so who knows...

