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Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Two questions

The blog is attempting to obtain other dean evaluations as well as what has already been posted below. If and when we obtain such information, it will be posted. The blog encourages you to continue to respond to what is already here.  Until then there are two questions that I personally would like an answer to:


1.  How come we have fewer students today than we did twenty-five years ago and almost 50 percent more administrators?


2..  What were the six year graduation rates in the early 90s?  Since that time we have instituted a significant number of ambitious and expensive(?) programs to aid our students.  Have they worked?  The easiest way to determine this is to see if we are graduating more of our students than we used to.  I do not have access to such numbers, but I am hopeful someone will.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Please define "administrator". Do you mean VPs? Do you mean everyone in PSA? Is a lab-tech in Chemistry who is a PSA member making $45K/yr an administrator?

Anonymous said...

I define "administrator" as deans, associate deans, VPs, Provosts, Vice Provosts, most of whom are more concerned with their careers and next positions than they are about UT and its students. There are exceptions. For instance, I would consider Karen Bjorkman as someone who works for the greater good. Most of the other people that I would label as "administrator" are always looking out for their raises, bonuses, and next promotion or next job. Most of the PSA individuals that I know work for the greater good.

Anonymous said...

I don't have an answer for you but I hope the new president and her staff conduct a qualitative and quantitative data review of the success coach program, its personnel, org structure, and both student and institutional impact.

Anonymous said...

20 years ago this country had not yet been seduced by the "college for all" mantra coming from the Higher Education Industrial Complex. Career training programs that led to good paying jobs were dismantled in sacrifice at the alter of the bachelor's degree. The fact is, many kids don't finish because they had no place being there in the first place. Unlike Lake Wobegon, not all children are above average.

Anonymous said...

April 9, 6.26 PM. It wasn't 20 years ago, it was more like 50, beginning with the Vietnam Era GI BILL, which compensated vets, all vets, for their service with college tuition. And the "Higher Education Industrial Complex" didn't wake up one day and decide everyone in the US needed a degree, American white collar businesses across the board started requiring degrees, any degree, for advancement and even hiring. And so today, virtually every white collar job in the US requires a degree of some sort for promotion, or those with degrees are promoted first, etc. And all of this was the product of cultural forces, many and diverse ones, and not just the product of a single government institution that thought it up one morning.