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Monday, August 8, 2011

The New UT


5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is higher ed due for a downgrade?

An excerpt from “A Tottering Technocracy: Here and in Europe, the financial meltdown exposes the hollowness of our elites,” by Victor David Hanson – NRO Online

“Higher education is no longer affordable for many families, and does not guarantee well-rounded, well-educated graduates. A university debt bubble, in Fannie and Freddie fashion — together with the rise of no-frills private online certificate-granting institutions — is undermining traditional higher education.

The symptoms are unmistakable: tuition spiraling far ahead of inflation; elite faculty excused from teaching to publish esoteric articles in little-read journals; legions of poorly compensated part-time instructors and graduate-student assistants subsidizing the privileged class; political orthodoxy as an unspoken requisite for membership in the club.

An administrator is deemed successful largely for promoting “diversity” — rarely on the basis of whether costs stabilized, graduation rates increased, the need for remediation declined, or post-graduation jobs were assured on his watch. This warped system, which grew out of the bountiful 1960s, is now a vestigial organ, an odd-looking thing without an easily definable purpose.

When will the bubble burst? If the four-year university cannot ensure its graduates that they will necessarily have a better-paying job and know more than the products of an upfront credentialing factory, why incur the $200,000 cost and put up with the political indoctrination?”

Linda Rouillard said...

"Who cares if it works?" Certainly not Kasich and Petro. Have you read about their latest attempt to piratize, I mean privatize universities? This is their SB5, Plan B, just more of the same. Goal: as little accountability as possible.

Read the following article from Insidehighered.com: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/08/09/ohio_could_see_legislative_fight_over_charter_university_plan

Don't forget to follow the link to Petro's proposal: http://www.hannah.com/ShowDocument.aspx?ItemID=121120

The following link is a great dramatization: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLd8W7E6VlA

And this link will give you more info about charter universities and their consequences such a tuition increases, among other things: http://ocaaup.org/charter_toolkit

And this link is an editorial from the Columbus Dispatch on this topic.
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/editorials/2011/07/30/ohio-should-stop-playing-games-with-higher-ed.html

Finally, send an email to: hotline@regents.state.oh.us or call 619-466-0887 to voice your opinion.

Anonymous said...

Did anyone notice in today's Blade that UT boasts that its' University Press " isn't academic. " Seems appropriate since the new UT isn't academic either.

Anonymous said...

Here's a link to an AAUP analysis of the recently revealed "Charter" university gambit:

http://ocaaup.org/news/story/584/20110814/Preliminary-Analysis-of-Final-Charter-University-Proposal

Particularly of note: language that would restrict or prohibit unions was not included. However, all faculty, from adjuncts and par-timers to full profs will likely find themselves teaching more/much bigger courses as caps on classes are removed in this model. Of course I'm sure if your in a discipline the admins think "relevant" you will be given fewer classes with less students. In other words, it will likely crated an additional class system (in no particular order): adjuncts/graduate TAs/part timers/junior fac/tenured fac & and then faculty in disciplines and doing research deemed important (the BOW TIE faculty).

Anonymous said...

By now everybody should know that Kasich is trying to privatize everything from the state government - JobsOhio, the prisons, the turnpike, secondary and now higher education. What's next?