By Yunshan Li

As a department in a higher education institution, Student Life’s working habit is quite different from that of academia. According to our professor, there is no clear hierarchy of faculty in academia. Of course, some professors are more reputational, but there is no such concept as superior and subordinate. Furthermore, the work handover of faculty is mostly oral, which means that there is barely any document given to a professor when they start working in a university to tell them what to do. Rather, if faculty encounter a problem in their work, they usually go ask other professors or staff. The general working style in academia is freer and faculty members are highly autonomous regarding their work.

However, in Student Life, it is a completely different style. There is a more obvious hierarchy. One interviewee said when they propose a general plan for next year, it needs to be examined by all her leaders to be approved, which takes a long time. Also, during our interview, she showed me an “anchor document”, which is an extremely detailed document about a specific program, including the aim, the target population, the detailed process, and the staff members involved. Student Engagement has a dozen of this type of documents. This interviewee said even though now she does not often use them, when she started this job, she literally read all of them, which helped her get familiar with her job quickly. She made the joke, “If I quit this job tomorrow, someone will be able to come in and read this document, and they’ll have to run it.”

Even though Student Life staff and faculty both work in the same university, there is a remarkable difference in working style between staff and faculty. I analyze this difference from two angles. Firstly, Compared to the emphasis on innovation in academia, as the example of the anchor document shows, the administrative work in higher education is much more structured and efficiency-oriented. It could be considered that, for non-faculty working in a university, higher education is an industry, there is no big difference compared to those who work in private companies, including the structure and the working process. 

Secondly, there is a high mobility of employees in Student Life. It is due to several reasons, including promotion, job transfer and dissatisfaction with the salary. In comparison, due to the policy of tenure track and the essence of academic work, professors’ job is usually considered more stable. Anyway, because Student Life is a huge system, and a huge amount of knowledge is required to work in this position including familiarity with various programs, services, buildings, etc., it is actually hard to learn so many trivial things merely by talking. In conclusion, to ensure the efficiency of Student Life’s work, a more structured working style in various aspects is necessary.