61–70 of 449 posts
The explosion of administrative staff is crazy universities keep cutting teaching positions and increasing admin.
It seems like there should be a market for low overhead small schools with high paid teaching staff.
For those who have university degrees, this should be a difficult read. Next time you say to yourself, "Sure, I went to college. I know that's a privilege, but I worked hard there and made it because of my hard work and nothing else!" Remember this article. This isn't a new phenomenon, but it's a phenomenon that's becoming more acute. Even if we ignore the adjuncts, the brilliant folks who taught us all what we know…
In parts of Europe there the expression: "That's Texas." It roughly means "That's crazy." but with a 'Murica flavor to it. Lately, I've been finding myself frequently thinking: "That's Texas." Let me get this straight. Take a course load of 4 double semester courses per year with 200 hours of class time total in the given year. Let's double it to 400 hours just to be safe to include exam marking and office hours. A s…
Reminds me of the former Eastbloc countries where you will find scientists as janitors and living in terrible conditions. Not that people who are not scientists don't live in terrible conditions but you would never expect a maths or physics professor to be unemployable. Even here in NL there are niche websites that pretend to be dating sites but that actually are sites where students are hooked up with 'sugar daddy's…
Don't even need to go east. Cuba is that way right now. Bartenders, cab drivers, and prostitutes with PhDs.
https://gizmodo.com/5671062/there-are-5000-janitors-in-the-u...
The explosion of administrative staff is crazy universities keep cutting teaching positions and increasing admin.
I wonder what percentage of the admin is dedicated to chasing money. While I was working as an undergrad assistant the grant writing process was insane and I rarely saw the professor overseeing research. He was walled off in his office writing grant proposals. I learned that for the budget of most research projects, 50% was administration. That is 50% wasn't for researchers, the lab, labor, or equipment. Part of the…
At the university level, arguably the second most important person in the administration is the President of the Foundation and they don't even technically work for the university as the foundation is a separate legal entity. This person has a massive private army of fund-raising staff that shakes the alumni money tree looking for gifts large and small.
But, that doesn't mean that universities don't also have money chasers. My former uni had a special division in the recruiting/admission office that focused on high-value future alumni, aka, children of rich and famous parents. These kids were brought in for tailored events, private meetings with faculty and admins, and received a general red carpet treatment to try and lure them to the university.
Related, Malcom Gladwell has done some great work dissecting the money making machines of the administrator class who go after $100M+ gifts (far more money than 99.99% of researchers could acquire in a lifetime of grants). And, how this gift giving continues to pile on at elite schools while starving everyone else of gifts.
http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/06-my-little-hundred-...
What is the inherent value that lecturers offer anyways? All the material they teach in classes has been available online for the last 20 years. It makes sense (going by market needs) that they have been driven to such levels of poverty. The only value universities offer is that one can meet other like-minded and driven people at universities. If some other social structures can offer the same, i.e. a place where one…
Not so much lecturers but curriculum. I can't tell you how many developers I've met that don't know much about designing relational database models, which is arguably the most important, if not the longest lasting part of business application development.
When you are self taught, the stuff you decide to learn, you can really master. It's the stuff that you decide to put off that is actually important that hurts you.
I'm surprised to see adjunct's make so little. When I was in school the full-time professor's salaries were public (since it was a public university). They were all making over 100k/year, and this was some time ago. Many were high 100's or low 200's. Even the lecturers were pulling in 70k or more, and this was in a midwestern state with low cost of living. Why do the adjunct's put up with this? You can make more bein…
Adjuncts are a cost for the university, their salary is a liability on the budget line. Professors are a net positive. They have high salaries but they bring in millions of dollars in grants and attract talented students who can be paid worse than adjuncts (and teach classes).
Adjuncts are space fillers. When a university can't goad a professor, post-doc, or grad student to teach the 101 class they farm it out to a Adjunct.
The skills needed to teach the entry level courses are basic, so there is a wide field of individuals who can fill that role. As a result the pay is not great.
For those who have university degrees, this should be a difficult read. Next time you say to yourself, "Sure, I went to college. I know that's a privilege, but I worked hard there and made it because of my hard work and nothing else!" Remember this article. This isn't a new phenomenon, but it's a phenomenon that's becoming more acute. Even if we ignore the adjuncts, the brilliant folks who taught us all what we know…
In parts of Europe there the expression: "That's Texas." It roughly means "That's crazy." but with a 'Murica flavor to it. Lately, I've been finding myself frequently thinking: "That's Texas." Let me get this straight. Take a course load of 4 double semester courses per year with 200 hours of class time total in the given year. Let's double it to 400 hours just to be safe to include exam marking and office hours. A s…
Bernie can't come soon enough.
Perverse incentive structures will not be repaired with a power grab
Ways to fix perverse incentive structures:
* civic power generally reshaping incentive structures
* build something else parallel around different incentives, avoiding all the misteps that caused similar institutions to bake in the perverse incentives they have now
Neither one sounds particularly easy to me. Let me know if I left anything off the list.
The explosion of administrative staff is crazy universities keep cutting teaching positions and increasing admin.
I wonder what percentage of the admin is dedicated to chasing money. While I was working as an undergrad assistant the grant writing process was insane and I rarely saw the professor overseeing research. He was walled off in his office writing grant proposals. I learned that for the budget of most research projects, 50% was administration. That is 50% wasn't for researchers, the lab, labor, or equipment. Part of the…
What is the inherent value that lecturers offer anyways? All the material they teach in classes has been available online for the last 20 years. It makes sense (going by market needs) that they have been driven to such levels of poverty. The only value universities offer is that one can meet other like-minded and driven people at universities. If some other social structures can offer the same, i.e. a place where one…
Second, shared resources like laboratory equipment or an auditorium can be of value. A university could develop unique offerings there, that other entities wouldn't willing to provide.