Zooze the Horse roams around the pasture near Lamar State College. Zooze thinks about problems in academia. Zhe wants proffies to submit posts (blog posts, not fence posts).
Monday, July 24, 2017
Big Hungry
If you could ask your school's president anything (and actually get an honest answer), what would it be?
Without listing the six colleagues who hold campus-wide administrative positions, how many faculty members from my department—in other words, those of us who are “just teachers” a phrase you recently used—can you name?
When you take the advice of (expensive) outside consultants for increasing revenue (admittedly a major issue for our state-funded institution, and one imposed from outside), do you ever consider the likelihood that they're offering the same advice to several dozen other, similar institutions, and that if even 50%-75% of those institutions follow that advice, that in itself will change the currently favorable-to-us market conditions they describe?
Also (and I've asked you this one directly, more than once, without a satisfactory, or even a lip-service, answer): what *do* you think the role of teaching faculty in a research institution is (and/or should be)? (And why do you think anybody would go to grad school in disciplines in which the Ph.D. is primarily a teaching credential, given the job prospects your policies help create in those disciplines? Should be we creating Ph.D. programs at all in those disciplines at all, regardless of whether that helps with our quest to achieve R1 status? And whether or not we produce them, where do you think new teaching faculty are going to come from, long term, if current conditions persist?)
Also, *why* do we want to be an R1?
And finally, why do you apparently consider bringing in outside research funds the greatest measure of a department's value to the university, when you admit that administering those funds actually costs the university money (overhead doesn't actually cover the overhead), *and* dependence on government funding makes such departments/research programs vulnerable to political vagaries (see: present political situation, and also the role of a certain very rich family with a very clear political agenda in determining the direction of several of our departments/programs)? [Mind you, I'm not questioning the value of the research funded in such ways -- okay, at least not the government-funded research -- or the need for such funding (ditto), just wondering why those of us who can do research relatively cheaply don't get a bit more respect. I suspect this has something to do with the ability to write "managed x million dollar budget" and/or "increased endowment by x million" under "present position" at the top of one's c.v., with larger values of x being considered better, but I'd love to learn that this isn't, as a I suspect, one of those "mine is bigger than yours" things).
We are scheduled to take our president up to our observatory in the mountains. It's a highly scenic, hour-long drive each way, and will will be taking one of the university's vans. That's right, he will be a captive audience for a handful of physics faculty: we will be able to hotbox him, and he CAN'T GET AWAY from us!
MUUAA-HA-HAAA! It is SO much fun to be an EVIL mad scientist!
How could you let them get away with it?
ReplyDeleteDo you know what the Dunning-Kruger effect is?
ReplyDeleteHow many lawsuits were filed against you and your "team" last year? How many times did you settle?
ReplyDeleteIn your own mind, do you distinguish between truth and falsehood?
ReplyDeleteWhat's the big deal about having your name on a building?
ReplyDeleteWithout listing the six colleagues who hold campus-wide administrative positions, how many faculty members from my department—in other words, those of us who are “just teachers” a phrase you recently used—can you name?
ReplyDeleteIf (s)he is saying "just teachers", I think we both know the answer to the question, sadly.
DeleteWhen you take the advice of (expensive) outside consultants for increasing revenue (admittedly a major issue for our state-funded institution, and one imposed from outside), do you ever consider the likelihood that they're offering the same advice to several dozen other, similar institutions, and that if even 50%-75% of those institutions follow that advice, that in itself will change the currently favorable-to-us market conditions they describe?
ReplyDeleteAlso (and I've asked you this one directly, more than once, without a satisfactory, or even a lip-service, answer): what *do* you think the role of teaching faculty in a research institution is (and/or should be)? (And why do you think anybody would go to grad school in disciplines in which the Ph.D. is primarily a teaching credential, given the job prospects your policies help create in those disciplines? Should be we creating Ph.D. programs at all in those disciplines at all, regardless of whether that helps with our quest to achieve R1 status? And whether or not we produce them, where do you think new teaching faculty are going to come from, long term, if current conditions persist?)
Also, *why* do we want to be an R1?
And finally, why do you apparently consider bringing in outside research funds the greatest measure of a department's value to the university, when you admit that administering those funds actually costs the university money (overhead doesn't actually cover the overhead), *and* dependence on government funding makes such departments/research programs vulnerable to political vagaries (see: present political situation, and also the role of a certain very rich family with a very clear political agenda in determining the direction of several of our departments/programs)? [Mind you, I'm not questioning the value of the research funded in such ways -- okay, at least not the government-funded research -- or the need for such funding (ditto), just wondering why those of us who can do research relatively cheaply don't get a bit more respect. I suspect this has something to do with the ability to write "managed x million dollar budget" and/or "increased endowment by x million" under "present position" at the top of one's c.v., with larger values of x being considered better, but I'd love to learn that this isn't, as a I suspect, one of those "mine is bigger than yours" things).
We are scheduled to take our president up to our observatory in the mountains. It's a highly scenic, hour-long drive each way, and will will be taking one of the university's vans. That's right, he will be a captive audience for a handful of physics faculty: we will be able to hotbox him, and he CAN'T GET AWAY from us!
ReplyDeleteMUUAA-HA-HAAA! It is SO much fun to be an EVIL mad scientist!
Why don't you actually ever DO anything?
ReplyDeleteWhat do you really think ordinary academics do all day?
ReplyDelete