An F for effort on holding down tuition

washington post ^ | 12-31-12 | charles lane

[The_Reader_David]

I agree with you about tenure in the K-12 schools, or for that matter at community colleges or even those four-year colleges where there is no expectation of scholarship or research on the part of the faculty. The point of tenure exists only in a university or a college in which a major part of the faculty’s job description is the conduct of new scholarship and research. Does it still work as designed? Well, I don’t get any grief from my Department Head or colleagues about doing research in the algebraic deformation theory of k-linear pasting diagrams and k-linear monoidal categories, even though there’s no grant money for it and probably a dozen folks world-wide who directly care about my results (though I *can* make a case that there are applications to both physics and other parts of mathematics lots of mathematicians care about). Alan Kors still has his job at Penn, generally a hot-bed of leftism, despite being well-known for his conservative views.

However, you are wrong that tenured faculty do not object to the squandering of resources, we do so loudly and often bitterly at every opportunity. Unfortunately our objections are moot at all but a handful of private universities (mostly in the Ivy League or among other older institutions that modeled themselves on the Ivys) where administrators serve at the pleasure of the faculty. At public universities, the faculty have very little say over the allocation of resources which is handled almost entirely by professional administrators, who as the article notes, without using the phrase, have their own guild interests. For example, most faculty I know, with or without tenure, would be delighted to bounce ill-prepared, lazy students out of the university by failing them, but administrators uniformly want to coddle them and throw great amounts of money at programs to “improve retention”.

[stanne]

Thanks.

I might add that I am quite sure student loans cannot be forgiven in bankruptcy.

These kids are so straped with debt, plus the natl debt burden, plus the education neglect and th moral neglect.

They are so forgotten.

Who is taking care of them?

They are just so dumped on.

A lot of them are pissed having noticed the rampant abortion which killed their brothers and sisters

The do not have a voice.

But bankruptcy will not be a luxury they can use here. They are just so used.

[The_Reader_David]

And university administrations have been expanding faster than university faculties both in numbers and pay-rates for a long time.

Actually, there is another contributing problem besides the guild interests of university administrators and the third-party-payment system the Feds have established with student loans and grants: the absurd notions that a university education is appropriate for the vast majority of the populace and that a university education is primarily job-training.

We really need to have a system of polytechnics — educationally more substantial versions of trade-schools with apprenticeships as part of their curricula — and a good proportion of students now attending colleges and universities (the ones whose motivation, either native or from their parents, is to “get a good job”, rather than to get an education) should be attending them instead.

[stanne]

Agree. A classic education in high school and job training after, pay as you go on line edis a bodel some in my community are doing and talking about. I’m talking about Greek & Roman ancient lit, Shakespeare, Ancient hx, basic algebra chem, latin and keeping kids busy, paying for it so they don’t have extra for gadgets and silly clothes, just pointing them to their future then seeing what they come up with. They know the competition for jobs and they see the older kids looking at unbelievable debt NO ONE should have allowed them to incur.

Tehy are thinking job and with a clasisc knowledge with skills of writing and analyzing plus socializing withthe same, they are going to be ahead, gaining job skills while their peers are clunking around some stupiid U incurring hundreds of thousands of dollard debt. While fighting off liberal mind numbing.

A complete waste of time and money.

They don’t need to have any part of it.

This is being done, and the smoart kids are on top of it.

[stanne]

Whoa. Aside form the other typos, bodel is model.

I just think, say no. to this.

I get kind of crazy when parents I know throw up their hands and say, of well to U instructors speaking unintelligable English for being non American and as such non integrating.

One thing that can be done, effective in a lot of cases I see, to help the child is to tell them they themselves are responsible for financing their college education. But while they’re in like 8th grade.

It gets them thinking and making decisions. After a while they acccept it and then have fun with creativity in planning, paying attention to current events, discerning who is and who isn’t an idiot adult (with all due respect) and they do enjoy planning their future. It keeps them out of trouble.

This is the way many people ought to be thinking anyway, as retirement planning is where their tens to hundreds of thou should be going so as not to further buden the futures of these kids whose peers fifty five million have been killed through abortion, who would otherwise help them take care of the idiot baby whining baby stupid boomers (yes that includes me, to an extent).