Hiring more admins won't help educate UNM's current students

Editor,

President David Schmidly's "open letter to the UNM community" leaves me wondering if I am enrolled at an educational institution or a business franchise. In his entire address, education and research are mentioned only once, and they're seemingly obligatory asides.

While I realize economic issues are at hand, I find this letter insulting to the spirit of education and to the community at large. Schmidly discusses enrollment management such that we are led to believe that a consolidation of Admissions, Financial Aid and Registration has directly resulted in an increase in student applications, especially those with National Merit status. He states that in this way, UNM is able to "reach out to the most promising prospects" and give them "better service."

As a UNM honor student currently looking at graduate programs, I can say that I am not considering prospective schools on the basis of service but education (i.e. teaching faculty). I want to go to school in an environment wherein I am first and foremost a student and not merely a prospect to be mined for capital. Even if I were to be making my decisions according to a scale of best service available, I would look for more personal, rather than consolidated, administration clearly focused on student needs and would certainly not choose a school whose administrative offices were being moved off campus and whose administrative branches outweigh student-based programs.

Under the headline of diversity, Schmidly claims to have helped answer requests for more women and ethnic minorities in senior positions by hiring "five executive administrators, four women, two Hispanic." Again, when weighing options, I would presume that most students are looking at the teaching faculty rather than distant administrative positions held by minorities. And if Schmidly is truly concerned about minority representation reflecting the student population, perhaps he should reconsider the massive budget cuts to minority student programs.

It is my opinion that a university should focus on bettering the education of its current students, and I remain unconvinced that an increase in higher-ups can accomplish that, just as I remain unconvinced that prospective students and faculty would choose an institution on the basis of a plethora of vice presidencies rather than the availability of student bus passes and other such amenities aimed at student and faculty needs.

Jennifer Gammage

UNM student