Failure analysis

The information herein was discovered as I was investigating the wrongdoing done to me. The information herein is shocking and points to widespread collusion and corruption within University Administration.

Failure analysis is the process of collecting and analyzing data to determine the cause of a failure, often with the goal of determining corrective actions or liability. (Wikipedia)

I worked at the University of Alberta. I saw the inner workings of University Administration at the department and institutional level. I have had time to reflect on how the University operates. With this information, it is increasingly clear that there is one primary cause of the dysfunction at the University of Alberta: research faculty as administrators.

Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Research faculty

Research faculty are hired because of their passion for research. It is their work, their hobby, their life. Many spend every waking moment engaged in research: reading papers, discussing research strategies, overseeing research students, and conducting research projects. Their friends are fellow researchers. Their vacations involve going to conferences to discuss their research. I applaud their passion and their commitment to research. They are doing what they love, and contributing to the betterment of society.

However, research faculty also run every aspect of the University. Research faculty are every department Chair, every Dean, every Vice-President, and the President. For the few directors who are not research faculty, they all report to a senior administrator who is research faculty.

While most Canadian universities have research faculty in administrative positions, those administrators recognizes the importance of teaching, student services, facility services, etc. UAlberta Administration has lost that objectivity. The dysfunction is that University of Alberta Administration siphons money and resources from everything that is not research to fund and bolster research.

Institutional dysfunction

If I were to identify an origin to the dysfunction, it would be former UAlberta President Indira Samarasekera. Samarasekera was exceedingly passionate about research. One of her initial ideas was to turn the University of Alberta into a research institute. She proposed shutting down the undergraduate program and making the University of Alberta a research-only institute. Samarasekera saw undergraduate programs as a waste of time, space, and money.

When Samarasekera was informed she couldn’t shut down the undergraduate program, she started siphoning money from the undergraduate program, student services, facility services, etc., to expand research programs. That siphon has become a torrent. In ten years as President, Samarasekera established a culture of research supremacy. Everything else was subservient and sucked dry to fund research. Once they had proven themselves by getting tenure, a research faculty member was omnipotent. They could do no wrong.

Samarasekera institutionalized the awarding of pay incentives for research awards. Any form of internal or external research recognition resulted in a research faculty member receiving a substantial pay increase. The Faculty Salary Scale already had merit increments that ranged from 1300 to 2000 $. Samarasekera ignored these, and awarded increases that were often 10 %, 20 %, or larger fractions to their current salary. (10 % corresponds to between 12,000 $ and 20,000 $, depending on the current salary.)

  • The Faculty Salary Scale compares favorably with other Canadian universities. Research faculty are guaranteed annual increases of 2600 to 4000 $, plus exceptional benefits, plus occasional merit increments. A research faculty member on today’s salary scale will earn 235,000 to 250,000 $/yr by age 65.
  • Under Samarasekera, many research faculty were earning over 300,000 $/yr! Some were earning over 500,000 $/yr! Even today, over 120 research faculty on the UAlberta Compensation Disclosure List earn over 250,000 $/yr.

During her term as President from 2005 to 2015, Samarasekera prioritized research over everything else. She created a bloated research program and elevated research faculty to demi-gods. Understandably, this resonates with research faculty, and they continue to demand the same level of research funding and same level of privilege. The current University Administration — all research faculty — is doing whatever it can to accommodate these demands.

Oversight

There is no effective oversight.

To be independent, universities have generally been left to run themselves. Government oversight is seen as interference. Universities are given a pot of money to do with as they please. There is little accountability.

Samarasekera abused this freedom to increase her pay as University President to a million dollars per year.

Samarasekera abused this freedom to starve undergraduate instruction, student services, facility services, etc. She created a bloated research program at the expense of everything that wasn’t research.

Administrative corruption

While the University of Alberta is pleading poverty, Administration continues to fund bloated research programs and continues to ignore the Faculty Salary Scale when paying research faculty.

The omnipotence of research faculty is illustrated on www.SPPIC.ca, where a new department Chair engaged in misconduct, collusion, cover-ups, and general abuse of power that resulted in irreparable harm and psychological trauma to an instructor and thousands of students. The Chair breached the Collective Agreement, University policies, provincial and federal statutes, and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. University Administration was informed of the wrongdoing, then participated in the wrongdoing, and is now aggressively denying and covering-up the wrongdoing. Administration has repeatedly threatened legal action to suppress the issue. Textbook reprisal. The issue at www.SPPIC.ca isn’t the first of its kind in recent history. Another issue was publicized a few years ago. On that issue, Administration also did everything it could to deny and cover-up wrongdoing. How many other issues has Administration successfully suppressed?

Related to pay, I looked up the pay of the four research faculty involved in www.SPPIC.ca. Given their age, these research faculty should earn around 200,000 $/yr. There are anomalies with all their pay!

  • Rik Tykwinski was hired years after Samarasekera left the University. He made 255,997 $ in 2023 — 28 % higher than what he should earn on the Faculty Salary Scale.
  • Steven Dew is still being paid the VP Academic’s salary, despite returning to faculty a few years ago. He continues to earn over 400,000 $/yr — 419,584 $ in 2023.
  • Tammy Hopper received pay increases of ≈23,000 $ in 2021, ≈41,000 $ in 2022, and ≈25,000 $ in 2023. The Faculty Salary Scale states that her pay increases are 2,623 $/yr. (41,000 $ corresponds to a 19 % salary increase.)
  • Alex Brown received pay increases of ≈15,000 $ in both 2022 and 2023. The Faculty Salary Scale states that his pay increases are 2,623 $/yr. (15,000 $ corresponds to a 10 % salary increase.)

The four people I looked up have pay anomalies in their favor, how many others do? As noted above, over 120 research faculty earned from 250,000 to over 500,000 $ in 2023 as research faculty — no administrative appointment. Regarding annual increases, the maximum allowable increase on the Faculty Salary Scale is 5944 $ (standard increment plus merit increment). Using the Compensation Disclosure List, looking specifically at compensation pay (not other benefits) and only considering faculty who are not changing appointment (not getting promoted or taking an administrative appointment), I discovered the following number of research faculty with pay increases above the Faculty Salary Scale:

Yearabove 6000 $above 20,000 $above 50,000 $above 100,000 $percentage of total faculty
20192241385118 %
2020158244013 %
2021189343016 %
2022223524121 %
2023256496227 %
Number of research faculty receiving pay increases above the Faculty Salary Scale.

Post COVID, around 25 % of research faculty are getting raises above that stipulated in the Collective Agreement! Of the research faculty who received increases above 20,000 $, 26 received more than one increase from 2019 to 2023. The spirit of Samarasekera still pervades University Administration.

The University of Alberta keeps pleading poverty and demands austerity from employees and departments. Austerity obviously doesn’t apply to research faculty salaries.

At the same time as they are paying well above the Faculty Salary Scale, the University slashed the maximum instructor salary by 16 % in 2024! Teaching is obviously not a priority at the University of Alberta. (see below)

Another example of research faculty corruption occurs with administrative appointments. When a research faculty member accepts an administrative appointment, they get paid an administrative stipend. This is reasonable, given the additional responsibilities. When the administrator is done their appointment, they receive a one year sabbatical to rebuild their research program. This is also reasonable. What isn’t reasonable — the corruption — is that the research faculty member retains the administrative stipend for years afterwards, possibly for the remainder of their career.

Another example of research faculty corruption is that some research faculty wind down their research programs after obtaining tenure and years before retirement. Maybe they get tired of doing research. Maybe their research area is outdated. Maybe they aren’t applying for or receiving research grants. Maybe they didn’t rebuild their research program after an administrative appointment. Research is normally 80 % of the research faculty workload. Teaching and service are 20 %. These research faculty get paid their full salary to do only 20 % of their workload! For some, this has been going on for over a decade.

Another example of the imbalance between research and teaching is in their pay. At other Canadian universities, instructors are considered teaching faculty. At the University of Alberta, they are teaching staff. At other universities, teaching faculty are paid comparable to research faculty. At some universities, it is a 1:1 correlation. That is, a full teaching professor is paid on the same scale as a full research professor. At other universities, teaching faculty are one step down from research faculty. That is, a full teaching professor is paid on the same scale as an associate research professor. At the University of Alberta, teaching staff are on their own scale, which is below that of all research professors. Adding insult to UAlberta teaching staff, the University just cut the maximum teaching staff salary by 16 %.

An example of how teaching has been negatively impacted is the move to multiple choice questions on term and final exams. This is because funding cuts to teaching makes it impossible to hire teaching assistants and markers. Multiple choice questions are unable to assess the higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomy and fail to assess the student’s work. They assess only the answer, not the reasonableness of the method used to get the answer. Multiple choice questions do not accurately assess a learner’s higher-level understanding — exactly what post-secondary is suppose to be teaching. Many courses now have term and final exams that are 100 % multiple choice.

In summary, corruption is rampant within UAlberta Administration. The mindset of research faculty and Administration is to maintain the bloated research programs and above-contract pay increases at the expense of all other institutional functions: teaching, student services, facility services, etc.

Motivation

In psychology, there is the concept of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is a desire to complete an activity for the inherent satisfaction of the activity — for the challenge and joy of success. Extrinsic motivation is a desire to complete an activity for an external reward or to avoid punishment. Intrinsic motivation is always better than extrinsic motivation. Take the extrinsic motivator away, and the desire to complete the activity drops. Money is an extrinsic motivator. Take the money away, and people become disgruntled and vengeful. Performance decreases.

It is much harder to remove intrinsic motivators. For example, my passion for quality teaching and for education-based research remains, despite the University of Alberta’s denigration of undergraduate instruction and despite all Tykwinski and the University have done to me. Instructors can be as passionate about instruction and improving instruction as research faculty are about their research.

For optimum performance in any activity and any career, a person must be intrinsically motivated. At right is Mazlow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Extrinsic motivation limits a person to esteem. Intrinsic motivation takes a person to self-actualization. This is not to say that payment is not necessary: earning a reasonable and comparable wage for the position is critical to satisfy other Needs. (image source: public domain)

  • Samarasekera is extrinsically motivated by money.
  • Samarasekera conditioned research faculty to be extrinsically motivated by money.
  • The challenge of discovery, the freedom to innovate, and the joy of success are all intrinsic motivators. For quality research, these must be the primary factors driving research faculty. These must be the factors instilled by research faculty in their research students. This is the only way to self-actualization and sustained quality research.
  • The University cutting instructor salaries to well below other universities negatively affects every level of Mazlow’s Hierarchy. Instructors realize the University’s disdain for them and undergraduate instruction, and are demoralized by it. Without stabilized lower levels of Needs, it becomes impossible to reach self-actualization.

Solution

The current governance of the University of Alberta is not sustainable. There are numerous examples of harm to students, student learning, and the student experience because funding is being siphoned to fund research and above-contract pay increases.

To address the rampant corruption within University Administration, to address the financial issues at the University of Alberta, and to rebalance the teaching, research, and service, I recommend the following:

  1. The government suspend the Faculty Collective Agreement, reset research faculty pay to the Faculty Salary Scale for all faculty, and put the recovered funds into undergraduate instruction and student services. (This would recover at least 35 million dollars annually.)
  2. The government order an independent external party to investigate and reset the funding balance between teaching, research, and service. This will put the University on a path to long-term sustainability.
  3. The University require that all employees — faculty, staff, administrators, etc. — be paid in accordance with the appropriate salary scale. Market-value correction factors should be banned. The pay, benefits, stability, and freedom being a university academic are ample. Research must be intrinsically motivated (the passion for knowledge and advancement), not extrinsically motivated (money). Note: nothing prevents a research faculty member from engaging in complementary activities that generate personal revenue (patents, consulting, commercialization, textbook writing, etc.), but these activities must not interfere with their primary employment as a university researcher and instructor.
  4. The University establish fixed stipends for each administrative role, and clarify that administrators only receive administrative stipend while active in that role.
  5. The University apply “publish or perish” throughout a research faculty member’s career. If a research program stalls or winds down, the research faculty transitions to teaching staff, with the pay and instructional responsibilities of teaching staff.
  6. Administrative positions be equally available to teaching staff and research faculty, with the goal that 50 % of administrative appointments be to teaching staff and 50 % to research faculty. The one exception being that the VP Research must be a research faculty member and the VP Academic must be a teaching staff member. (In assessing the distribution of appointments, “teaching staff” does not include “research faculty” who have transitioned to “teaching staff”.)

These recommendations remove money as an extrinsic motivator of research faculty. If a research faculty member is in research only for the money, they can resign or retire. Intrinsically motivated people are more passionate and more productive.

These recommendations target research and research faculty — the people who control the University. They will not voluntarily implement these recommendations. These recommendations must be forcibly implemented by an outside body.

A reset is required to address the dysfunction in governance, research, instruction, service, and financial management at the University of Alberta. The sooner this occurs, the better for students, honest faculty and staff, the University, and society.

I learned that research faculty are pleading for support so they can continue abusing students, abusing instructors, abusing employees, and fleecing the government.

Tell the Alberta Government, UAlberta Board of Governors, and the Review panel that ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! Tell them to step in and implement the recommendations at the end of this article. There needs to be a full reset of administration and research faculty at the University of Alberta.
“Rajan Sawhney, Minister of Advanced Education” <ae.minister@gov.ab.ca>
“Kate Chisholm, Chair, UAlberta Board of Governors” <boardchair@ualberta.ca>
“Jack Mintz, Chair, Alberta Post-secondary Review Panel” <jmmintz@ucalgary.ca>