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Colleges Serve the People Who Work There, Not the Students

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Re: Colleges Serve the People Who Work There, Not the Students

#41

Post by neilc »

Vivtek wrote: post #34
neilc wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the president of the university, who arguably contributes nothing whatsoever, earned a cool $425,000 and had a free luxury house on campus. University presidents may well be overpaid, but it is simply uninformed to claim that they "contribute nothing whatsoever." Besides setting the direction of the entire institution, an effective president will raise far more income for the school via fundraising than the cost of t…

Great. That's a wonderful justification for paying the majority of their actual instructors less than minimum wage with no benefits at all - then they can attract that guy to raise more money than they pay him. Sooner or later, America will have to start funding its research and its education as two separate services; the current model isn't working. It's just taking a very long time to be obvious.

It's not a "justification": the pay of instructors and the pay of university presidents are just two very different things. I don't really see what the point of comparing the two is.

Sooner or later, America will have to start funding its research and its education as two separate services

Well, this is at least partly the case today: NSF, NIH, and similar funding bodies support research. At most top research schools, very little (if any) of the money from undergrad tuition goes to support research.

BTW, what about this is specific to the American education system? As far as I know, non-tenured instructors teach classes in many countries, and are usually poorly paid.

Re: Colleges Serve the People Who Work There, Not the Students

#42

Post by [deleted] »

zeynel1 wrote: post #12
alexandros wrote: post #4

"A glance at scholarly journals or university-press catalogs might make one wonder how much of this "research" is advancing knowledge and how much is part of a guild's need to credentialize its members." A glance? Really? Judging the life's work of a few thousand people who got into academia to do research is easily judged in a 'glance'? It's interesting that some would like universities to be little more than vocati…

just a glance is enough at this table of contents of academic journal - classical and quantum gravity- http://iopscience.iop.org/0264-9381/27/17 to wonder how much of this -research- is advancing knowledge and how much is --about advancing the career of the authors--

[deleted]

Re: Colleges Serve the People Who Work There, Not the Students

#43

Post by jacquesm »

wake_up_sticky wrote: post #37
jacquesm wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eight ? Or Eighty? Eight seems terribly small! edit: I just read on and you mention her new salary is $35K and it's a huge improvement but I find it still hard to believe that someone would actually go to work 15 hours per day for a $8K pay per year. That works out to be substantially less than minimum wage.

She didn't work fifteen hours a day. She taught fifteen credit hours.

Ah ok, I'm sorry I thought the '15 hour load' referred to the number of hours per day.

Re: Colleges Serve the People Who Work There, Not the Students

#44

Post by jargon »

locopati wrote: post #7

There have been a lot of articles recently attacking higher education. Maybe there's some merit there, but one might also ask 'who is served by denegrating higher education as an option for the people? who benefits by a less educated public?'

1) The students who are currently being misled into believing $125k in debt and a piece of paper are a sure ticket to financial freedom.

2) Startups who want students to eschew school for lower salaries at the startups because they don't have the credentials to get into the Fortune 500.

3) Bitter students who are now $125k in debt with no chance of bankruptcy to alleviate that debt and no job to pay it off, but want an outlet for their frustration and evidence of a community with a common predicament.

4) Community colleges that are cheaper and often provide a better more focused education with smaller class sizes, less elitist student populations, and shorter times to degrees.

5) Students who are well served by attending colleges that aren't filled to the rafters by rich kids who need 4 more years of baby sitting or who go, because well, you are supposed to, meh.

6) A society that is better served by a real focus on the quality of education provided for its citizens who benefit from the products of a well educated work force which is increasingly diverging from useful and practical skills into a grade inflated joy ride through 4 years of drunken debauchery.

Re: Colleges Serve the People Who Work There, Not the Students

#45

Post by pragmatic »

alexandros wrote: post #4

"A glance at scholarly journals or university-press catalogs might make one wonder how much of this "research" is advancing knowledge and how much is part of a guild's need to credentialize its members." A glance? Really? Judging the life's work of a few thousand people who got into academia to do research is easily judged in a 'glance'? It's interesting that some would like universities to be little more than vocati…

See another article currently on the front page:

Realtime Linux: academia v. reality http://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/397422/27eef125e03b8a2d/

"I actually took the time to spend a day at a university where I could gain access to IEEE papers without wasting my private money. I picked out twenty recent realtime related papers and did a quick survey. Twelve of the papers were a rehash of well-known and well-researched topics, and at least half of them were badly written as well. From the remaining eight papers, six were micro improvements based on previous papers where I had a hard time figuring out why the papers had been written at all. One of those was merely describing the effects of converting a constant which influences resource partitioning into a runtime configurable variable. So that left two papers which seemed actually worthwhile to read in detail. Funny enough, I had already read one of those papers as it was publicly accessible in a slightly modified form.

That survey really convinced me to stay away from IEEE forever and to consider the university ranking system even more suspicious."

Re: Colleges Serve the People Who Work There, Not the Students

#46

Post by Aaronontheweb »

jbooth wrote: post #23
mapleoin wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, I'll bite. What are the other 2?

Well, the number 3 was arbitrary, but let's say.. 2) Spending 8 years advocating "deficits don't matter", then changing their opinion 180 degrees within 24 hours of a new President being inaugurated. 3) Writing screeds castigating liberals for being coastal elitists and out of touch on an iPad from the back seat of the author's car service, while drinking a latte on the way to yoga class.

Why are people voting up this idiot? Is it time for yet-another "this isn't reddit" admonishment?

Re: Colleges Serve the People Who Work There, Not the Students

#47

Post by Vivtek »

jacquesm wrote: post #33
Vivtek wrote: post #6

Oh God yes, I can't agree with this more. My wife worked as an adjunct at Indiana University, killing herself with a 15-hour load for eight thousand bucks while the president of the university, who arguably contributes nothing whatsoever, earned a cool $425,000 and had a free luxury house on campus. This year, she's got a real job (for a year as a visiting professor) for $35K and benefits; it's going to feel like we'…

Eight ? Or Eighty? Eight seems terribly small! edit: I just read on and you mention her new salary is $35K and it's a huge improvement but I find it still hard to believe that someone would actually go to work 15 hours per day for a $8K pay per year. That works out to be substantially less than minimum wage.

Yes, right, as noted in the other responses, 15 credit hours, not 15 hours a day. It just felt like 15 hours a day, given preparation and grading and the fact that two of her five classes were in the next town over and so there was four hours of driving per week in there as well (and no, no mileage).

I can't ... well. I can complain, clearly, but income is income, and she paid for our summer in Europe this year, and it was good prep for the visiting professorship, but ... it's still wrong. With all the time she actually spent, I doubt she hit minimum wage.

Re: Colleges Serve the People Who Work There, Not the Students

#48

Post by woodall »

I go to a state funded college. This is my last semester and was lucky enough to get a great internship. I wanted to start early, however, I live pretty far away. I decided I would just live in the dorms.

I started negotiations and was surprised at how much it would cost me to stay there for 20 days- 1/2 of what it cost me to live there for a whole semester! After some digging- first they told me that it was not allowed(rooming early)- I find out that they do this on purpose to keep kids from bunking early.

Normally I wouldn't have a problem with this but, I am a senior meaning I've spent a ton of money at that school. I have also served on the housing board for the dorms I was going to live in- volunteer work for the school. They were also very rigid and would not really help me- a future alum.

Needless to say I couldn't afford the amount and as a result I start my internship later which makes my schedule even more cramped. I know what I will be doing when they start soliciting money.

Re: Colleges Serve the People Who Work There, Not the Students

#49

Post by harry »

baddspellar wrote: post #26
harry wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The long term studies of technical degrees vs 'soft science' hasn't been looked at in depth on a national scale with relation to earnings and salary. These studies are just beginning. From AACRO: after 10 years the earning potential for an engineering degree drops below someone with an English degree. Technical degrees are way more valuable out of the gate while soft science take time to develop. To put it into other…

Do you have a link to back this claim up? I don't believe it. If you look at PayScale.com, for example, you'll see a ranking of undergrad majors, with starting and mid-career salaries, where mid-career is defined as "full-time employees with at least 10 years of experience in their career or field who hold a bachelor's degree and no higher degrees." ref: http://www.payscale.com/best-colleges/degrees.asp English Major…

I do not have any reports to back this up as the transcript from the meeting is yet to be released. I've been curious to dig into the distinctions and locations used for the selection populations.

The discussion I paraphrased was made at an AACRO tech conference during a talk about the creation of a federal student tracking database - the speaker was Barmak Nassirian who is a lobbyist in DC for higher ed. I'm going off of the data presented in that talk.

On the same note, I've never used payscale.com for more than a glance. Their methodology sounds valid, but I don't know how they make their money.

Re: Colleges Serve the People Who Work There, Not the Students

#50

Post by krschultz »

baddspellar wrote: post #28
alexandros wrote: post #4

"A glance at scholarly journals or university-press catalogs might make one wonder how much of this "research" is advancing knowledge and how much is part of a guild's need to credentialize its members." A glance? Really? Judging the life's work of a few thousand people who got into academia to do research is easily judged in a 'glance'? It's interesting that some would like universities to be little more than vocati…

Some years ago, I saw a 60 minutes episode on issues in higher education. The reporter picked a biology journal off a shelf, read its arcane title, and exclaimed "who actually reads this stuff?" to back up her claim about how useless journals are... as if she were somehow qualified to judge the importance of a paper by its title. I couldn't help but imagining what she would have said if she picked up a paper titled "…

Wasn't that an Andy Rooney sound bite? I.e. a comedian's opinion on the world.
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