It is the simulation of coordination — and simulations have a way of becoming the thing itself.
The inter-division programme coordination meeting is one of the most challenging processes in academic administration. It is reliably challenging not because the people in the room are incompetent, but because the process was designed for a different purpose than the one it is being used for.
The original purpose. When the meeting was first convened, someone needed to coordinate across divisions: to ensure that the course faculty were not teaching the same concept in incompatible ways, that the sequencing of prerequisites was sensible, that the capstone integration was not an afterthought. The meeting was the mechanism for that coordination.
What it may become. The meeting may become one that produces only attendance records. The agenda may not be circulated well in advance — or may be circulated just before the morning of, or not at all. The discussion becomes a reporting exercise: each division representative explains what their division has done. No one is positioned to act constructively on what they hear, or no one has the authority to change anything based on it. The minutes record what is said. The next meeting never reviews whether the previous minutes were confirmed.
This is not coordination. It is the simulation of coordination.
The mechanism. The simulation persists because the meeting produces compliance artefacts — minutes, attendance, agenda items ticked — that satisfy the process in a broad sense. The audit asks: is the meeting being held? Yes. Is it documented? Yes. The audit does not ask: is the curriculum more coherent now because the meeting was held?
The remedy. The remedy is not more compliance. It is fewer, better meetings: a Course Anchor with the authority to convene, a concept note circulated 72 hours in advance that specifies what decision is needed, and a Dean or Program Chair who reads the reflection every month and acts on it. The meeting should produce a decision or it should not be held.
If the meeting cannot produce a decision, the question is not how to improve the meeting. The question is who has the authority to act on what the meeting surfaces — and whether that person is in the room.