VP Chews Out Faculty Advisor For Inquiring About An Issue, And It Ends Up Costing The University $25,000

Another ego driven VP, what’s new?

This woman took to Reddit to share her story.

A few years ago I was the primary faculty advisor and chair for admissions to a highly competitive health science program at a small public college.

While that may sound impressive, it’s basically a way of saying I was the lowest on the totem pole, but had all of the responsibility overseeing admissions for this program.

The health science program at the college added a new degree.

In order to try and make the department even stronger, they added a new degree option to that health science program that largely overlapped with existing classes. In fact, the only change they had to make was to add one 8-credit hour course to make the new degree option.

Since I was so low on the totem pole, I had no part in the process for this, but as the lone advisor, I had to learn all of the ins and outs of it so I could advise students and potential applicants.

In doing her job, the woman stumbled upon a problem.

Because of this, I found a problem where the new class was added to the course schedule and added to the college catalog, but it was not officially added to the new major.

This would cause trouble for financial aid and, down the road, when they apply for graduation. (It may seem like a small thing, but if it’s not officially required for the major financial aid won’t pay for it.)

I pointed this out to my supervisor who thanked me for catching it and asked me to inquire about how we correct this.

The woman reached out to the higher ups to resolve the issue.

So I sent an email to someone (middle management) who might be able to help, asking questions and proposing possible short term solutions until the curriculum committee could meet to make the changes official.

After the email there was silence for a week.

Therefore, I sent a follow up email.

Instead of receiving the support needed, the email was met with anger.

The next morning I received an email from one of the VPs, chewing me out for overstepping my bounds, trying to make changes I didn’t have authority to make, and a reminder that they know how to do their jobs and that I was expected to “stay in [my] lane.” (This email included my supervisor, multiple deans, two department heads, and another VP.)

Fine.

I dropped it. I was already looking for other jobs (and ended up leaving the following year) so what do I care?

As feared, the problem went unresolved.

Fast forward 3 months: we were about 10 days away from this new class starting with the first cohort of 10 students in this new degree and I started getting phone calls and emails from all over the place.

The problem I pointed out still hadn’t been fixed.

There was an uproar from affected students.

Now the Financial Aid and Registrar’s Offices are dealing with angry students who just found out each will have to pay for an 8-credit class out of pocket. Both departments were reaching out to me asking for help to get this fixed before the VP found out about it.

I just forwarded the email I received from the VP with a message that I was instructed to stay out of this and that their bosses were aware that I was not to be involved.

It’s officially not my problem.

(And to anyone who might say I should have helped helped and not screwed over the students. You’re right. Unfortunately, there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING I can do at that point. That’s why I tried to address it months ago, when I could have helped.)

It would be tedious to fix the issue this late.

The proper way to make this happen involves making the proposed changes to a committee, then those changes would have to be approved by the executive board. For various reasons, this could not happen between then and the start of the class. So the VP contacted the state chancellor’s office to see what kind of work around the state would approve to get this done now.

However the college was denied any exceptions.

Thankfully, the students weren’t held responsible.

In the end, the college ended up having to swallow the cost of this course for all 10 students. I don’t remember how much it was but it was no less than $25,000.

Reddit users shared in the writer’s anger.

One person said the VP should be solely responsible to pay for his mistake.

Another reader loved seeing the VP shoot himself in the foot.

This person simply applauded the writer.

I’m here to applaud the writer, too!

If you liked that post, check out this one about an employee that got revenge on HR when they refused to reimburse his travel.