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University of Austin Draws over 3k Employment Inquiries in Four Days

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Re: University of Austin Draws over 3k Employment Inquiries in Four Days

#41

Post by chmod600 »

seoaeu wrote: post #22
chmod600 wrote: post #10

At universities, ideas which were once countercultural and revolutionary have become the mainstream orthodoxy. I'm not sure anyone has quite confronted that reality yet. It seems almost like an army that won much more easily than they expected, and now doesn't quite know what to do off the battlefield. I hope this university is able to balance these ideas into more of a discussion and less of a battle.

> ideas which were once countercultural and revolutionary have become the mainstream orthodoxy In the abstract, isn't this a good thing? Like this true of lots of scientific advances. Germ theory or whatever initially being seen as a fringe idea, eventually being adopted as the leading explanation

That's not good or bad in the abstract. It's good for good ideas and bad for bad ideas.

What is bad is that the tactics seem to still be battlefield-like tactics. Not literally of course, but major downsides for saying the wrong things, which has a chilling effect on intellectual discourse.

Re: University of Austin Draws over 3k Employment Inquiries in Four Days

#42

Post by mattkrause »

karaterobot wrote: post #26
mattkrause wrote: post #12

It’s not obvious to me that this reflects anything special about this particular model for a university. Instead, I think it reflects the utter horrow-show that is the academic job market and, to some extent, the terrible matching in the rest of the job market as well. Individual job postings at “regular” mid-tier universities attract hundreds of applicants, many of whom are extremely qualified.

> Individual job postings at “regular” mid-tier universities attract hundreds of applicants, many of whom are extremely qualified. But if this is an order of magnitude more job inquiries than average, might that not reflect something different about the model? Maybe something as banal as "it attracted a lot of attention", but surely a 5x or 10x difference is indicative of something.

They’re presumably hiring for multiple jobs though, which knocks that number right back down.

I’ve heard of individual tenure-track jobs attracting 750 full applications. Low hundreds is probably more typical, depending on the school, year, and field (and 2020-1 has been absolutely bonkers), but it still wouldn’t take many to get to 3k total. This is especially true if counting informal “inquiries” rather than a complete application, which often involves quite a bit of customized writing (research plans, teaching statement, etc).

Re: University of Austin Draws over 3k Employment Inquiries in Four Days

#43

Post by chrisseaton »

djbusby wrote: post #29
chrisseaton wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they don't have any land whatsoever Vast majority of organisations don't own any land - they lease office space.

University generally has some land they built on, granted by the State (UCB, UW, UMass, VT) or some rich guy (Stanford, Harvard, Yale, etc)

Right but you don’t need any of that really - you just need normal office space.

Re: University of Austin Draws over 3k Employment Inquiries in Four Days

#44

Post by shukantpal »

wyldfire wrote: post #19

> DOESN'T IT TAKE SOME UNIVERSITIES A DECADE TO RECEIVE ACCREDITATION? > Our conversations with our accredited partners lead us to believe that we'll have a much shorter time frame than that. But we're not waiting for accreditation to get started on our programming. Until it is accredited, UATX will offer ... If you are graduating high school soon, I'd recommend not betting on this University until/unless they're acc…

They aren’t offering degrees.

Re: University of Austin Draws over 3k Employment Inquiries in Four Days

#45

Post by dragonwriter »

jdhn wrote: post #3

I'm really curious to see if this experiment works out. Looking at their website, it seems that they don't have any land whatsoever, so does that mean this is going to be 100% virtual for now? They also don't offer degrees, so is this basically a glorified Khan Academy for the time being? Also, it remains to be seen if they can resist the same forces that they say have overrun other universities in the country.

[flagged]

Re: University of Austin Draws over 3k Employment Inquiries in Four Days

#46

Post by kodah »

evgen wrote: post #17
jitl wrote: post #15

It’s frustrating how much culture wars content is posted and upvoted on Hacker News these days. I feel like we can’t go a single day without these dog-whistle style articles.

[flagged]

... alt-right? Would that not be pretty neo-nazi and white supremacy esque? This story hardly seems that.

I do get tired of low-key culture war content, but we're always surrounded by it. The left or the right trying to push their perspectives on the masses. It's gross, annoying, and probably bad in the long run but people love the left and the right like it's their favorite football team. They get buzzed on how the decisions the other has made disproportionately affect each other's groups. They love calling out the gotchas, embarrassing their opponents, and brewing on how short-sighted and stupid they are. It weirdly gives some people a sense of community, and they rally around it. It's like fusion in that way. It feeds itself.

Re: University of Austin Draws over 3k Employment Inquiries in Four Days

#47

Post by ianleeclark »

kodah wrote: post #46
evgen wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

... alt-right? Would that not be pretty neo-nazi and white supremacy esque? This story hardly seems that. I do get tired of low-key culture war content, but we're always surrounded by it. The left or the right trying to push their perspectives on the masses. It's gross, annoying, and probably bad in the long run but people love the left and the right like it's their favorite football team. They get buzzed on how the…

> alt-right? Would that not be pretty neo-nazi and white supremacy esque?

I don't really want to engage in the shit-slinging that this thread will inevitably turn into/has turned into, but: alt-right, by many accounts, is a response of neo-reactionary thought and neo-reactionary writers were a common part of online silicon-valley-adjacent communities. It's not just tiki torches.

> I do get tired of low-key culture war content, but we're always surrounded by it.

I would suggest you log off then because:

> They love calling out the gotchas, embarrassing their opponents, and brewing on how short-sighted Android stupid they are.

Not even you can control yourself. This is the culture war: people burning their Nikes on Twitter, people posting their RBJ commemorative mugs on Insta, and you falling into the vortex yourself to kvetch about both sides--no doubt someone will show up to say how their _not like those other people_.

None of us can help ourselves. We love to post

Re: University of Austin Draws over 3k Employment Inquiries in Four Days

#49

Post by poulsbohemian »

“…committed to ideological diversity and academic freedom.”

I mean… isn’t that a way to describe the charter of many universities? It’s practically a definition of the tenure model. Perhaps they are arguing that’s been lost in many universities, to which I would question why they believe a new university is a) the answer to the question and b) likely to somehow do any better. Smacks of someone who simply has a different perspective on diversity and freedom rather than a goal of increasing it.

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