Colleges and universities are like little countries, rarely answer to anyone and focused on their own insular practices.
That's true of a lot of things. You really can't allow a system to police itself. Once you allow that, you've essentially given them carte blanche to run a fiefdom.
Right but it doesn’t lessen it being true about this space.
Bureaucracies anywhere they exist tend to lean this way, in their own special way. Whether it’s enterprise, healthcare, government, education..
That's true of a lot of things. You really can't allow a system to police itself. Once you allow that, you've essentially given them carte blanche to run a fiefdom.
"To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem." -Douglas Adams. Insularity is both the strength and weakness of academia. Unfortunately, I feel we are sliding toward the worst of both worlds: an administrative "ruling class" that is insulated from consequences, but also allowed to constrain and control the educators/researchers.
I am not so sure of that anymore.
There is some real case for institutionalization and being out of touch with the real world.
Add to that where those who can’t do but talk instead moving up in management to stand over the academics who are capable and immensely talented.
Harvard's top management seems to be caving in to donors a lot lately.[1][2] Those were over the Israel/Palestine war. Now it's over Facebook. [1] https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/06/business/harvard-antisemitism... [2] https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/02/business/law-firms-antisemiti...
You know, donating money to Harvard is weird. They've got a $50 billion endowment. They have enough money to do anything they want. What good would donations do in the first place? And yet, Harvard receives something like $500 million per year in donations. Why?
You can always spend more money, especially at an academic institution, where the money spent is not directly tied to a concrete, specific product. The staff can always go to one more conference a year, or take one more sabbatical, or buy newer computers more frequently, hire more people (whether they are needed or not; takes some weight off seniors’ backs), organize more events, spend more with communication, outreach, build something, or improve existing buildings, create a new research group, raise some salaries, etc.
My partner works at a major U in the US. Top 200ish. They are solely focused on revenue. Teacher pay rarely raised, but that new upgrade for the stadium at a cool $120m, seems like a great idea. FFS, her dept went past the paper budget for one semester, about 5 years ago. The resolution? Do without paper until the next semester. That's what students insane tuition prices bought them. Apathy over education.
> Teacher pay rarely raised There's an oversupply of most PhDs, so there's no need to raise their pay. And that's for professors. Grad students that teach are practically free.
> Grad students that teach are practically free.
UCLA recently got hammered on this, after people shared a bunch of job posting for teaching posts for grad students with the disclaimer: "Note: this is an uncompensated position".
That's true of a lot of things. You really can't allow a system to police itself. Once you allow that, you've essentially given them carte blanche to run a fiefdom.
But all the other systems are just systems too, and even a system of systems is just a system... Unless we have a God at the top there's no escape from the fiefdoms
Systems for the many, vs the few can be quite different.
It can be different than systems designed for the few instead of the many
It was only in the last few years did I realize the massive endowments many universities have make them ripe targets for bad actors to make their way into administration.
The few very large unis i looked into all made massively more money off investment returns than any operational income. the year i reviewed for the university of texas system showed they could have charged zero tuition that year and still make a profit there are absolutely kickbacks for people in control of those endowments choosing specific investment options with their many billions of dollars
> there are absolutely kickbacks for people in control of those endowments choosing specific investment options with their many billions of dollars
This is a form of corruption that is present whenever anyone manages an investment fund, and not only specific to school endowments. This is why investment managers are licensed, and taking this kind of bribe could result in criminal penalties.
Somehow the human brain by default conflates the concepts of "being prestigious" and "having integrity". It's difficult to fight this cognitive bias that, I think, we all carry—but we must.
On the other hand, I have a Grimm's Fairy Tales including a story that tells how the hero visits a petty king's court and receives a promise conditional on accomplishing something impossible. Off he goes and does the thing, and the narrator makes an aside saying "Now the king would gladly have blown off the promise, but he was trapped because other people in the court had heard him make it."
Regicide, and even just murder in general, is highly frowned upon these days. Back then it was de rigueur when the concept of fealty required reciprocity in the keeping of one's word.
Yeah, that adjunct "professor" gets $3000 themselves for all their hard work
i can't tell if this is sarcasm or agreement? i mean it's probably more than $3k but it's still a very small portion of $200k+
I worked as an adjunct about 10 years ago and ~$2k per class was the pay. With a full class load that came out to a little over $2k per month. Definitely more work than 90mins per week per class though. 4 courses per term was definitely a full-time job.
So yeah, not a lot of tuition is making it to the low rung teachers.