This commentary is by Dr. Jonathan Spiro, who lives in Rutland. He resigned the presidency of Castleton University in 2022.
Have you heard of Deloitte? Perhaps you should have. With over 400,000 employees and annual revenues of $59 billion, it is the largest professional services network in the world and the third-largest private company of any kind in the entire United States.
In early 2021, an official with Deloitte sent a 20-page report titled “The Hybrid Campus” to the leaders of the Vermont State Colleges System. The thesis of the Deloitte report was that universities should take advantage of the Covid shutdowns and quarantines to create “fully hybrid” campuses that would permanently digitize “everything an institution offers, from academic advising, to courses, to career services.”
It may be a coincidence that, if universities go digital, outside consultants like Deloitte stand to make a fortune. But it is not a coincidence that over the past two years the chancellor’s office has devoted all of its resources to imposing the Deloitte blueprint onto the unwilling campuses that comprise the Vermont State Colleges System (Johnson, Lyndon, Vermont Technical College, and Castleton University).
First, they pondered creating a virtual university in one fell swoop by closing the dorms and eliminating intercollegiate athletics at Castleton. Those efforts were stymied, so now they are trying a more gradual approach by closing the libraries as we know them and hauling away the books.
Their pretext is an unsubstantiated claim that firing the library staff will save the system $500,000 a year. But I suspect that their primary goal is not to save money. After all, in the last two years, they have accepted tens of millions of dollars from the Legislature and created scores of new positions in the central office (vice presidents, assistant vice presidents, directors, executive directors, etc.), many of whom are paid well over $100,000 a year.
If saving money is their goal, allow me to submit two facts for your consideration:
1) President Grewal — who was on the job just eight months when the staff and faculty took the unprecedented step of voting “no confidence” in his leadership — is paid $270,000 a year (plus a free house and a free car).
2) The librarians he fired “because the system must save money” earn $40,000 a year (no free house; no free car).Â
So why — in the face of universal outrage — are they arrogantly determined to throw out the books whether or not it saves money? Because they are ideologically committed to creating a hybrid university, complete with e-books, remote instructors, and virtual classrooms.
I recognize that there is a place in higher education for a digital university. But that place is not in Vermont, for the obvious reason that online learning — contrary to the claims of the “experts” at Deloitte — is not what our students need in order to thrive.
Of equal importance, there is the insuperable obstacle that a number of quasi-respectable institutions (University of Phoenix, Liberty University, Western Governors University) have already achieved dominance in the hybrid world by investing billions of dollars in technology and in national advertising campaigns. They are decades ahead of us, and any consultant who claims that we can catch up does not have the interests of Vermont’s taxpayers at heart.
By the way, the Deloitte executive who circulated the report in 2021 advocating that “everything” a university offers should be digitized? She is now the influential vice chair of the board of trustees of the Vermont State Colleges System. (This is the place, dear reader, where you gasp.)
She is also chair of the board’s EPSL Committee, the powerful group that oversees educational policy. She also chaired the search committee that hired Parwinder Grewal to be the president of Vermont State University. They imported him from Texas (where Deloitte is headquartered) and he is the man who announced last month that he is firing the librarians and discarding the books.
Let me be clear that I am not accusing anyone of doing anything illegal or even unethical. To the contrary, all the members of the board of trustees are public-spirited citizens who give generously of their time and do not profit financially from the board’s decisions. Furthermore, corporate executives are welcome to join the board and lobby for their views.
My point is not that anything unseemly has occurred. My point is that they are stuck in groupthink and heading over the falls because they have imbibed the “hybrid” Kool-Aid from out-of-state consultants. They have the right to do that. And we — the folks on the ground who actually teach Vermont’s students— have the right to oppose their scheme to build a Brave New World here in New England.
One day, business students will read about the Deloitteization of Vermont as a case study in how to dismantle public education. In the meantime, what can we do to prevent this coup?
1) If you are a voter, ask your state representatives to support Sen. Collamore’s bill directing the Vermont State Colleges System to keep the libraries open.
2) If you are an alum, decline to donate money to your alma mater until the trustees affirm that future students can live on a vibrant campus where they interact with in-person professors, participate in the arts and athletics, and — yes — eagerly go to the library to engage with stimulating books.
3) If you are a member of the board of trustees, be aware that nothing requires you to rubber-stamp, without debate, every request from the chancellor’s office. Resist the administration’s propaganda; challenge their made-up statistics; and put the needs of our students ahead of the interests of the third-largest company in the country.Â