Catchphrase of the Day

I have several "Kathea catchphrases". Some of them only apply to my child like "you get what you get and you don't throw a fit" or "don't yuck someone else's yum". At work, I do have several go-to things that I say:

1. I'm better at a rescue mission than a recovery mission
2. It's better to have accommodations on file and not use them than to need them and not have them
3. Do you need a hug?

Ok, so the last one isn't really a catchphrase but I do say it a lot. I do have a new catchphrase courtesy of all these doc classes I've been taking and thinking I've been doing about my dissertation. My new saying is "we built it, so we can burn it down". All the rules and red tape with which we've decorated higher education are man-made (yes, primarily men). We beat the drum of student success and retention and graduation outcomes and yet we keep all the rules that truly inhibit those things.

What things would I burn down?

1. The whole bookstore monopoly. Maybe if I say "Amazon should take financial aid book credits" enough near my Alexa then it'll eventually get to the right ears.
2. Academic policy that encourages persistence at the cost of student mental/physical/financial health. We talk about 15 to finish or accelerate in the summer. That's great for some students but not all and given the demographic shifts, I'd say that it doesn't work for most students. If my students only make it through as a shell and with debt then they didn't really make it through.
3. Allowing/encouraging students to register for classes AFTER they start because of a need for enrollments. Look, I get it. We still have to make our budgets but doing so at the expense of our students is educational malpractice. The pool of potential students is getting smaller and smaller. How we set students up for success (or failure), especially those who are already struggling academically, speaks to the character of our institutions.

I've done some initial data digging and I know that #3 does not promote good outcomes. God help me but it sounds like that's maybe where my dissertation may head and it'll be quantitative. All of that to say, just because you've always done something that way doesn't mean you need to keep doing it that way.

To borrow a catchphrase from my high school band director (trumpet section represent!), "If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always gotten."