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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/RhondaTheHonda on 2024-01-18 15:15:56.

A few years ago I was the primary faculty advisor and chair for admissions to a highly competitive health science program at a small public college. While that may sound impressive, it’s basically a way of saying I was the lowest on the totem pole, but had all of the responsibility overseeing admissions for this program. In order to try and make the department even stronger, they added a new degree option to that health science program that largely overlapped with existing classes. In fact, the only change they had to make was to add one 8-credit hour course to make the new degree option.

Since I was so low on the totem pole, I had no part in the process for this, but as the lone advisor, I had to learn all of the ins and outs of it so I could advise students and potential applicants. Because of this, I found a problem where the new class was added to the course schedule and added to the college catalog, but it was not officially added to the new major. This would cause trouble for financial aid and, down the road, when they apply for graduation. (It may seem like a small thing, but if it’s not officially required for the major financial aid won’t pay for it.) I pointed this out to my supervisor who thanked me for catching it and asked me to inquired about how we correct this.

So I sent an email to someone (middle management) who might be able to help, asking questions and proposing possible short term solutions until the curriculum committee could meet to make the changes official. After the email there was silence for a week. Therefore, I sent a follow up email. The next morning I received an email from one of the VPs, chewing me out for overstepping my bounds, trying to make changes I didn’t have authority to make, and a reminder that they know how to do their jobs and that I was expected to “stay in [my] lane.” (This email included my supervisor, multiple deans, two department heads, and another VP.)

Fine. I dropped it. I was already looking for other jobs (and ended up leaving the following year) so what do I care? Fast forward 3 months: we were about 10 days away from this new class starting with the first cohort of 10 students in this new degree and I started getting phone calls and emails from all over the place. The problem I pointed out still hadn’t been fixed. Now the Financial Aid and Registrar’s Offices are dealing with angry students who just found out each will have to pay for an 8-credit class out of pocket. Both departments were reaching out to me asking for help to get this fixed before the VP found out about it. I just forwarded the email I recieved from the VP with a message that I was instructed to stay out of this and that their bosses were aware that I was not to be involved. It’s officially not my problem.

(And to anyone who might say I should have helped helped and not screwed over the students. You’re right. Unfortunately, there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING I can do at that point). That’s why I tried to address it months ago, when I could have helped.)

The proper way to make this happen involves making the proposed changes to a committee, then those changes would have to be approved by the executive board. For various reasons, this could not happen between then and the start of the class. So the VP contacted the state chancellor’s office to see what kind of work around the state would approve to get this done now. However the college was denied any exceptions. In the end, the college ended up having to swallow the cost of this course for all 10 students. I don’t remember how much it was but it was no less than $25,000.