UVA Computer Science professor resigns over incompetence of board

Post by sophacles » Wed, Jun 20, 2012, 5:57 PM UTC

excuse-me wrote: post #127

sophacles wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a University's job to educate students, and to expose them to many fields of study that will give them a grounding for later study and inquiry. Basic instruction in many different topics at least gives the students enough grounding to ask good questions. Education in foreign languages has far reaching affects on many aspects of life and cognitive abilities - this is a documented fact. The analogy to Exchange is…

There is teaching and training. If they have a German lit prof who has published nothing for years, has no research students, no enrollment and the justification for keeping them is "learning German is useful" - then it makes sense to close the dept, buy some language tapes for the library and pay some German grad students to help. Rather than fire 10% of the post-docs in semi-conductor physics because you are making…

Post by dredmorbius » Wed, Jun 20, 2012, 9:21 PM UTC

chernevik wrote: post #100

dredmorbius wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. I may have to look her up. The most interesting things I've seen written about debt in the past 20 years comes from an anthropologist, David Graeber. Debt, the first 5000 years . Insights I've never seen from an economist. I'm curious as to what a sociologist has come up with.

What I've seen of Graeber's stuff is interesting. Economics is too important to be left to the economists. But I've always regarded sociology as undisciplined and people studying it unrigorous. I haven't missed much by those rules of thumb. A number of Sullivan's books were written with one Elizabeth Warren. When other academics tried to examine their data they came up short. Look her up if you like, but you're more…