Governor Good Hairs war on Universities

[kaeneth]

the money to keep the lights on has to come from somewhere.

If 'keeping the lights on' is the priority then explain this;
..

http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2009/ ... he-ladder/

For a host of reasons — from economic efficiency to the need for full-time teachers for introductory classes — Yale has been hiring non-permanent teaching faculty at a higher rate than it has been hiring tenured and term professors over the past several years. This nationwide trend, known as “casualization,” has drawn criticism from many in the academic world, who point to the lack of job security in these positions and argue that it lowers the quality of education.
...
Although both faculty and administrators said they believe Yale has managed to resist excessive casualization, the proportion of non-ladder faculty has increased over the last decade.
...
“It’s economically efficient,” Frances Rosenbluth, deputy provost for faculty development, said. “We can’t just balloon the faculty [when there is enrollment pressure].”
...

[HankSolo]

the money to keep the lights on has to come from somewhere.

If 'keeping the lights on' is the priority then explain this;
..

http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2009/ ... he-ladder/

For a host of reasons — from economic efficiency to the need for full-time teachers for introductory classes — Yale has been hiring non-permanent teaching faculty at a higher rate than it has been hiring tenured and term professors over the past several years. This nationwide trend, known as “casualization,” has drawn criticism from many in the academic world, who point to the lack of job security in these positions and argue that it lowers the quality of education.
...
Although both faculty and administrators said they believe Yale has managed to resist excessive casualization, the proportion of non-ladder faculty has increased over the last decade.
...
“It’s economically efficient,” Frances Rosenbluth, deputy provost for faculty development, said. “We can’t just balloon the faculty [when there is enrollment pressure].”
...

I think the impact of non-ladder/part-time faculty is overstated. Adding them in doesn't change the overall picture. A much larger growth in headcount has come from the management and full-time clerical categories.

Code: Select all

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA/BERKELEY
                                            Year 1993     Year 2011     Pct Change 
Full-Time                    
     Regular Teaching Faculty-Ladder Ranks      1,183      1,194        +1%
     Regular Teaching Faculty-Acting Ranks      18            15        -17%
     Lecturers                                  69           170        +146%
     Other Teaching Faculty                     49           103        +110%
                    
Part-Time                    
     Regular Teaching Faculty-Ladder Ranks      87            69        -21%
     Regular Teaching Faculty-Acting Ranks      -              -        +0%
     Lecturers                                  187           438       +134%
     Other Teaching Faculty                     89            107       +20%
                              =================================================          
Total Teaching                                  1,682         2,096     +25%
                              =================================================          
                    
Full-Time                    
     Fiscal, Management & Staff Svc            643            1,536      +139%
Part-Time                     
     Fiscal, Management & Staff Svc            198            237        +20%
                              =================================================          
Total Management                               841            1,773      +111%
                              =================================================          

Full-Time                    
     Clerical & Allied Svc                     404            920        +128%
Part-Time                     
     Clerical & Allied Svc                   4,789            4,876      +2%
                              =================================================          
Total Clerical                               5,193            5,796      +12%
                              =================================================     

http://www.ucop.edu/ucophome/uwnews/stat/

Even where headcounts have stayed stable, nonteaching staff has become increasingly full-time. In 1993 the ratios between full and part time employees for academic and non academic employees were 1:2.2 and 1:3.1. In 2011 it is 1:1.8 and 1:1.2.

[Starglider]

I think the impact of non-ladder/part-time faculty is overstated. Adding them in doesn't change the overall picture. A much larger growth in headcount has come from the management and full-time clerical categories.

Thanks for posting that, it actually looks even worse in financial terms due to higher manager salaries vs faculty, overall admin costs have almost tripled in real terms over that time frame.

I find this annoying on a personal level because I am personally trying to support critical research. However I didn't have the option of getting a university or government to pay me to spam papers, or rather I could probably have gone down that track but the chances of getting actual useful work funded were poor. I went into poverty and brushed with personal bankrupcy trying to research without funding, and when it became obvious that wouldn't work I spent three years working 60 hour weeks to start a company, and then another two years of 60 hour weeks breaking into the finance sector. There is plenty of unfocused hate for banks / the financial sector on this board, but it is just talk. Despite the fact that it is incredibly frustrating having to waste time on commercial stuff instead of doing research, I have personally gone into the belly of the beast and extracted a six figure sum from the finance industry to fund blue-sky research - hopefully it will be up to seven figures in a couple of years. I am happy to donate that to other useful AI projects as well as hiring researchers myself, but I will not be releasing it to any academics who show Alyrium's attitude. Meanwhile he expects the money to keep him in coffee and donuts to just magically appear; one wonders if he agress with this colleague;

Debt-hit students urged to sell their kidneys
Published Date: 03 August 2011
By Jenny Fyall

STUDENTS should be able to sell their kidneys for tens of thousands of pounds to pay off university debts, according to a Scots academic.
Sue Rabbitt Roff believes making it legal to sell the body part would boost the number of organs available to save lives and help students struggling with money.

She argues that donors should be paid the average UK annual income of around £28,000.

It is currently illegal to sell organs and tissues in the UK under the Human Tissue Act (2004) and across the world apart from in Iran.

The National Union of Students (NUS) in Scotland described the idea as "ludicrous" and said students should not be expected to lose a body part to pay for their education.

The Dundee University academic makes the controversial comments in an article in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) today. Mrs Roff, senior research fellow at the university's Department of Medical Sociology, told The Scotsman: "We are allowing young people to undertake £20,000 to £30,000 of university fee payments.

"We allow them to burden themselves with these debts. Why can't we allow them to do a very kind and generous thing but also meet their own needs?"

Ethics organisations argue changing the law would exploit poor people desperate for money.

However, Mrs Roff wrote in the BMJ article: "One reservation that many people express about such a proposal is that it might exploit poor people in the same way the illegal market does now.

"But if the standard payment were equivalent to the average annual income in the UK, currently about £28,000, it would be an incentive across most income levels for those who wanted to do a kind deed and make enough money to, for instance, pay off university loans."

She pointed out that three people on the kidney transplant list die in the UK every day.

However, Robin Parker, president of NUS Scotland, said: "Although the lack of available kidneys for transplant is truly tragic given the need, it's ludicrous to suggest that selling body parts is a viable solution to alleviating student poverty.

"Young people, particularly from disadvantaged backgrounds, are already being asked to take on huge debt to afford an education. They shouldn't be expected to remove a body part as well."

Dr Calum MacKellar, director of research at the Scottish Council on Human Bioethics, said the move would be exploitative.

"To place a financial value on human beings or parts of human beings undermines the inherent dignity of the human person and the innate as well as immeasurable worth of all individuals," he said.

"A legal, regulated market in human body parts would end up exploiting those who have very restrictive financial means such as many students and foreigners."

Dr Tony Callan, chairman of the British Medical Association's ethics committee, agreed such a move would be wrong and instead called for a system of presumed consent when a person dies.

"Organ donation should be altruistic and based on clinical need. Living kidney donation carries a small but significant health risk. Introducing payment could lead to donors feeling compelled to take these risks, contrary to their better judgment, because of their financial situation."

In the past year, the Human Tissue Authority (HTA) approved 1,200 cases of donated organs and bone marrow, a six per cent increase on the previous year, including 40 donations between strangers.

A spokeswoman for the HTA said this showed increasing numbers of donors were coming forward and added that "the HTA must continue to ensure that living organ donation is something people enter into freely and without financial reward".

However, Mrs Roff does not think her article, entitled "We should consider paying kidney donors", is particularly controversial.

"We allow family members and friends to donate to each other even if they are not genetically related," she said.

"So I don't think it's a very big step to offer the same level of medical service but also make a payment. The only difference is the issue of money. So what's so problematic about money?"

She pointed out the procedure only carried the same risks as an elective Caesarean section.

However, Mrs Roff said she would not sell one of her kidneys. "I don't feel the need or the pressure for money. I'm a middle-class person and I'm not in that situation. But we shouldn't legislate for other people.

"Isn't it very patronising for those of us who are well-off to make decisions for those of us who are not? People must be allowed to make their own decisions.

"Why don't we put the question to the British public and see how they respond?"

She has two grown-up daughters and said she would support them selling a kidney "for the right reasons", but added she would probably just give them money so they did not have to.

[cosmicalstorm]

Is that for real?

[Thanas]

I think the impact of non-ladder/part-time faculty is overstated. Adding them in doesn't change the overall picture. A much larger growth in headcount has come from the management and full-time clerical categories.

Thanks for posting that, it actually looks even worse in financial terms due to higher manager salaries vs faculty, overall admin costs have almost tripled in real terms over that time frame.

I find this annoying on a personal level because I am personally trying to support critical research. However I didn't have the option of getting a university or government to pay me to spam papers, or rather I could probably have gone down that track but the chances of getting actual useful work funded were poor. I went into poverty and brushed with personal bankrupcy trying to research without funding, and when it became obvious that wouldn't work I spent three years working 60 hour weeks to start a company, and then another two years of 60 hour weeks breaking into the finance sector. There is plenty of unfocused hate for banks / the financial sector on this board, but it is just talk. Despite the fact that it is incredibly frustrating having to waste time on commercial stuff instead of doing research, I have personally gone into the belly of the beast and extracted a six figure sum from the finance industry to fund blue-sky research - hopefully it will be up to seven figures in a couple of years. I am happy to donate that to other useful AI projects as well as hiring researchers myself, but I will not be releasing it to any academics who show Alyrium's attitude. Meanwhile he expects the money to keep him in coffee and donuts to just magically appear; one wonders if he agress with this colleague;

So this is pretty much your own personal tirade against big mean universities? I get what you are saying about increased clerical costs, however these are more of a result of Bologna and increased competition for third-party funds.

[Thanas]

How about you show how universities are just bad scams instead, idiot? The administration costs have risen overall due too an increase in non-teaching roles due to QA programs, rankings, marketing and political impact. Case in point - university programs in Europe are supposed to be comparable due to each other now. Guess how that works? You hire somebody to keep track of that and coordinate it with the other universities. Voila, a full position is now created.

Meanwhile, it is not as if administrators are completely useless, nor do they not face stiffer reductions in time of crisis.


But hey, here is the Budget of the University of Virginia. Now go find those parasites.

[Starglider]

So this is pretty much your own personal tirade against big mean universities?

Obviously I am supportive in principle of the existence of universites. The historical and ongoing value to humanity of univerisites as a whole is indisputable. On a personal level I would not be in a good position to do anything useful without my formal computer science education. However the incremental value of specific insitutions, courses and individual faculty is highly variable, quite often marginal and sometimes negative given the costs and trade-offs.

However as with everyone else here, my opinion on the value of universities has effectively zero impact on the sweeping trends and historic social shifts now impacting education. When I say that mediocre universities are going to be bushwacked, that is just a simple extrapolation of current economic and political trends, which now have so much momentum as to be virtually unstoppable. I don't need to be an expert on university finance to see the basic problems here any more than I have to be an economist to see the basic problems with first world sovereign balance sheets. These events will happen regardless of whether I or anyone else here approves or not.

What I can do is generate and disburse enough funding to support at least tens, hopefully hundreds of researcher-years in a critical emerging technology area. While it isn't a huge amount of money, it is frankly a great deal more than what 99% of people complaining about lack of adequate science funding actually do. As I said I will donnate that funding to any university-run projects that strike me as useful, but I refuse to support anyone who is dismissive or contemptuous of the sacrifices made to keep them funded (by taxpayers, students paying tuition fees or private benefactors).