FCC Guy compares higher ed to the music industry

admin July 02, 2008 administrative computing, vision 4 Comments

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Check it out. I feel so dirty. Maybe we can threaten kids who download other college’s course info? That’d be cool. But let’s note that the demise of higher ed has been predicted before.

Meanwhile, today our call accounting software puked and then died. Nice. I asked why we didn’t have a service contract for it and was told that was because the vendor went out of business a couple of years ago. It runs on Windows 98 just to complete the picture. The good news is that long distance has gotten so cheap, who really cares about call accounting? We’ll see what the finance vp has to say.

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4 Responses to “FCC Guy compares higher ed to the music industry”

  1. Kyle said:

    Jul 02, 08 at 6:29 pm

    Our call accounting software is so old I don’t think it can even be upgraded to a newer version at this point, and nobody actually knows how exactly it manages to talk to our Cisco VoIP system (but it does).

    We don’t charge for long distance, so it shouldn’t be a big deal, except that we STILL send out paper statements EVERY MONTH to EVERY DEPARTMENT. When I asked if we could just stop sending them all together, my staff looked at me like I asked if we could go outside and kick kittens.

    I think I’ll address that issue next year…

  2. rufusb said:

    Jul 03, 08 at 5:44 am

    Are you making this stuff up?!?

  3. Kyle said:

    Jul 03, 08 at 11:36 am

    rufusb, I don’t know about our host (well, I’m pretty sure, but still), but I’m not making this up. I think if asked, many “c” level folks at small colleges could tell you similar stories.

    At smaller colleges you often find one individual who is the Keeper of All Knowledge (TM) for a given subject. Nobody questions them because (a) nobody knows what they do and (b) everyone is afraid they will get mad and leave. So you end up with processes continuing through sheer will of personality.

    I know I have decided to question every one of these. If folks leave, that’s fine with me. Then we can sit down, look at the process, and decide the right strategy, resources, and staffing to meet the need.

  4. admin said:

    Jul 03, 08 at 2:38 pm

    Yes, Kyle, once you free yourself from the tyranny of personality, you find doors start flying open… If you’ve ever run systems yourself, you have a lot less fear. In fact, this lack of fear may be one of the few things we have going for us. That and our tyrannical personalities.

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