Dear Folks who read the blog: (I can arrange counselling)
I have some questions that some of you may be able to answer.
1. First I want to know where negotiations are at this time. That has been answered in the post below although we don't exactly know who has what position and what exactly led to our needing to go to fact finding. What have we asked for that they consider too much and what have they asked for that we consider too much. Since I did not volunteer for this particular job, I'm not trying to place blame, merely get some infor for our 15 or 20 readers.
2. So, how goes the search for a new big cheese of the milky way? Are we to the point of actually meeting strange people in airports or are we still deciding what we're looking for. Along those same lines I would certainly be interested in a response by the BOT to those meetings that they insisted be taped. Did any of our wonderfully brilliant ideas make the cut? I have an idea. Why don't they just go over to our 36 million dollar simulator and create a president? Is that simulator operational? Can I get it to simulate my doing any work? Is it making any money?
3. Is it true we've guaranteed 90 percent occupancy for those nifty new dorms? New faculty might rent them; if they could afford them.
4. So, how's our Schoolcraft effort going? Any students? Any faculty? Any income?
5. Can we blame any of this on global warming? Look on the bright side, at least we'll all have ocean front property and the Indians won't have to play the Yankees anymore. I'll bet water polo becomes a big sport.
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29 comments:
H-e-l-l-o D-a-v-e (think Space Odyssey).
Thank you for your questions (though you might think to empty your honeypot of sarcasm off-site more often).
Especially annoying is your oft-repeated cynic's lament that Bloggie has "only 15 to 20 readers." I'm sure Bloggie has at least that many readers in a single day (even though his once-juicy rumor mill has all but dried up since Jacobs fled).
Granted Bloggie HAS lost a lot of mindful readers owing to his failure to stem the flow of all that clammy JsD rot. BUT, that loss has been MORE than offset by the readership suddenly GAINED by Bloggie after the Honey Boo Boo site went belly-up.
Bill Clinton and Noam Chomsky agree with JdS...
...and Millennials might just save the world after all...
“The greatest threat [to the future of America] is the poison of identity politics, that preaches that our differences are far more important than our common humanity.”
– Former President Bill Clinton speaking at The Human Rights Campaign Dinner, October 25, 2014.
Re Job's cat comment above...
Oh, SNAP!
Direct your whiny complaints to The Daily Beast if you can't handle the truth.
That piece (part of our comment in a recent thread here a couple of posts back) said it all and shines a blinding light of reality on all you deluded lame-o pseudo-academics, who can't distinguish fact from fiction or sense from nonsense or research from rationalization.
Here, have another look. Read 'em and weep:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/08/16/barbara-fredrickson-s-bestselling-positivity-is-trashed-by-a-new-study.html
You only WISH our intellectual performance art posts here have not had a widespread and devastatingly positive effect.
It's okay, we'll save the day while you doze, asleep at the switch.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E64OI0FTnwU
You have besotted yourselves at the public trough and poisoned the public consciousness for far too long already.
You stealthily rode in on the benevolent coat tails of brilliant intellectuals and scholars of decades and centuries past who came before you and built a great society and great universities - and then you went about summarily trashing the place.
But the Millennial Generation (what some are calling the next Greatest Generation - and we believe that may indeed be true) is far too wise, great-hearted and noble-minded to buy into your BS.
Millennials appear to be a perfect, just right Goldilocks blend of enlightened old world common sense and values - without the stodginess and blind spots about women, minorities, sex, etc. - and Baby Boomer free-spirited idealism - without the excessive narcissism, gullibility, delusion and debauchery.
Three cheers for The Millennial Generation! We wish you members of the younger generations all the very best! We have great faith in you.
You tenured radical academics on the other hand - though we give you the benefit of the doubt for meaning well and for being genuine in your idealistic delusions - your days are nonetheless fast coming to an end and The Academy of truth, merit, nobility and beauty will arise like a Phoenix once again from your ashes of mendacious postmodern mediocrity.
Presented for your edification - we offer the following as only one more example of the vast amount of overwhelming evidence (much already presented here at great length previously) that proves our case:
Noam Chomsky: Contra Postmodernism
http://www.openculture.com/2013/07/noam-chomsky-calls-postmodern-critiques-of-science-over-inflated-polysyllabic-truisms.html
JdS
Why do we keep building more and more dorms for less and less students?
Regarding dorms, Carter East and West may get torn down or at least mothballed. The Academic House is currently closed for renovations, but there is some question about its future.
Any thoughts about the state of the university address?
Fewer and fewer students, actually. Not less and less students.
I personally think the university has become all about money. Bringing it in, keeping it, trying to get more, trying to keep from losing it. It is the motivation for learning information and being trained, certainly not education, it has become everything. It has become the focus of all and each person and program spends all their time in a vain attempt to justify their existence and value to a board and statehouse that by default sees no value in them and seeks to minimize, eliminate, and destroy them.
Well said!
To 5:27am:
You are right on the money! (Sorry!)
And what's even worse in this scenario is that those who are making the financial decisions and the board which authorizes those decisions take no responsibility and are not held accountable for their poor decisions. And to make it worse, the administrators who make the wacky decisions have to be paid high salaries to keep them at UT and take all these risks with taxpaper money and student tuition.
Anonymous 5:51. You ask: "Any thoughts about the state of the university address?"
I have some thoughts: I wanted to hear Nagy say "The business model is no way to run a state public institution of higher education. The Board of Trustees agrees with me. Welcome to a new UT, where achieving quality academics and ensuring high ethical standards are my first priorities."
But he didn't say this. The address was mainly milquetoast over boilerplate. Nothing has changed even though President Jacobs slipped out-of-town under a cloud. Vamoosed.
See you on the picket line.
Actually I thought his "We are an academic institution" was precisely the point you seem to pine for.
Also, just to be clear, are we against graduates getting jobs after graduation? Does getting a job mean the student was merely "trained" and not "educated?"
All students who graduate from UT are taught be our colleagues... which of these majors have we decided don't merit respect upon completion? Can I get a list?
B.L. Bertha, you must have missed President Emeritus Lloyd Jacobs sitting in the front row of Nagi's address and was recognized as being in attendance by the Interim President.
And the odd love affair gone wrong continues for the bitter people on this blog.
That's fascinating. At several points during the speech I couldn't believe the public rebuke Nagi was giving to Jacobs. Regarding research, students, academics. Of course he thanked him for coming. The same way Obama "thanks" Republicans at the State of the Union. I was shocked at how much of a polite middle finger Nagi was giving to so much of what Jacobs, Scarborough and Gold advocated for and stood for. Which speech did you watch?
No, it was not my intention to minimize the importance of educating people who can make useful contributions to society. My objection is the orientation of the priorities and goals of the university and the American education system in general. It is short sighted with the notion that training, information, techniques, and specializations are education when they are only a part of the process. More important are critical thinking, an understanding of history, literature, people, being able to analyse, express, create or to at least understand the importance of these capacities. In the long run these are the abilities that contribute more to a stable, employable, creative, productive and positively influential society and work force. Here there is enough fault to go around, and I even blame our narrow minded electorate and what I feel to be their general lack of capacity to understand what is happening to our nations institutions. There is enough blame for all to go around. Probably the only thing left is a dramatic collapse to bring about a dramatic searching of the heart of what is important and valuable for a society to continue. May someday we will all agree again that the politics of exclusion and marginalization helps no one, including those at the top...in fact it only hurts. The more people that are excluded from the politics, the institutions, the economy and so forth...the more it breeds despair and then anger and anger leads to.....?
I was very disappointed when Nagi said he has set a goal to increase enrollment by 400 students next fall. I wish he would have been more specific and said, “400 students who are well prepared for the rigors of university academic work.”
Four hundred more high school graduates wandering around Main Campus who can't do college work doesn’t do them or UT much good.
I was very disappointed when Nagi said he has set a goal to increase enrollment by 400 students next fall. I wish he would have been more specific and said, “400 students who are well prepared for the rigors of university academic work.”
Four hundred more high school graduates wandering around Main Campus who can't do college work doesn’t do them or UT much good.
Ah. I see the problem. I'm talking about the University of Toledo and you are talking about a different school.
Have you not noticed that UT has increased the number of well prepared students? One of the main reasons enrollment has been down is we've stopped enrolling hundreds of students who pad our numbers but can't pass our classes.
If you are trying this hard to be unhappy, at this point it is because you must crave and thrive on unhappiness.
Why is the assumption that the 400 students are all unable to attend college? Why are we preemptively attacking future UT students before they are even here? Why not embrace them and wait to see if they are in fact strong students before accusing them of not being so?
November 9, 2014 at 1:59 PM, I might agree with you if the gpa's and test scores of this incoming class were revealed, like they do at most schools, instead of Barrett saying the students were well prepared, with no follow-up.
According to UT's website, a student can still be admitted with an ACT score of 15, the lowest of any state university in Ohio. Until there is a University-wide minimum of something like an 18 ACT score and 2.5 GPA, I fear UT will continue with a reputation of being a poor academic choice. Tell the unprepared students to go to Owens for a year to prove themselves, and then admit them as a transfer.
Anonymous 2:02 PM. I am all for open borders and embracing all comers without prejudice and so on. But get real: UT is now mainly motivated by the business model in higher education. More recruits = more tuition dollars = more "profits."
Remove Huntington Bank representation and similar private-sector corporate parasites from our Board of Trustees and noxious self-serving "managerialism" might begin to die on the vine before killing its host.
The noisy, tired STEMM discourse on the main campus has long enervated and discouraged the intellectual aspirations of its many liberal arts students and faculty. So quit knocking down the Ivory Tower and sincerely invest heavily in growing its solid academic reputation. The outcome of this investment will be to demonstrate some long-term commitment to UT's academic and civic duties.
In time the UT BOT and main campus administration will ultimately earn some local, regional, state and national respect for its academic achievements. Many strong students who seek a university education for its own sake will then choose to attend UT, enjoy their varied and enriching learning experiences, graduate in a timely manner, and eagerly support the university with their dollars and devotion into the far future as proud alumni.
The incoming class of students in Fall 2014:
Average ACT - 22.4
Average GPA- 3.29
Incoming students in Fall 2011
Average ACT - 21.7
Average GPA - 3.12
The Ivy League it is not, but it is movement in the right direction and it certainly isn't 18 ACTs and 2.5 GPAs. I was able to track this down easily - I doubt I'm the only one able to do so.
Seems like the working assumptions of many on this blog are dramatically different than the reality. Feels a bit like a Fox News echo chamber where facts don't penetrate because they disagree with the preferred narrative.
Facts? Preferred narrative? Reality? Whose reality? Are you imbibing?
Thanks for posting the numbers.
My biggest concern is the number of low performing students admitted that drag down the GPA and SAT averages. Those, along with percentage of students admitted, are among the numbers that publications like USN&WR use to rank schools.
Like it or not, when UT shows up as a Tier 2 school, and most of our peer schools in Ohio are Tier !, parents and high school students may not consider UT as a good choice.
Please share with us the rankings you refer to where UT is tier 2 and all our Ohio peers are tier 1. And by state law UT is an open enrollment thus must have some pathway of entrance for high school graduates with minimum GPA, although many programs and colleges (including the former A&S Colleges) have all recently raised admission standards, the lowest qualified students 600? per year are in YouCollege with a retention rate there of under 50%- but UT has no choice but to accept and place those students somewhere.
Bloggie, while it remains your blog, it seems pretty clear the conversation has moved past you. Please try to keep up; with UT happenings as well as with the expectations of the readership.
Appreciate it.
November 11, 2014 at 6:13 AM - First of all, I said most of our peers, not all of our peers.
USN&WR changed its rankings a few years ago, and now the top 200 universities are all ranked Tier I. Below 200 are Tier 2.
Complete list: http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities
Toledo profile listing as Tier 2: http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/university-of-toledo-3131
Some schools that I would consider peer schools or that play in the Mid_American Conference with Toledo and are ranked Tier I (with national rank). Miami #76, Ohio #129, Ball State #173, Bowling Green #173, Western Michigan #173, Central Michigan #194, Kent State #194, Northern Illinois #194.
Akron which is considered an open-admissions school also, is making moves to increase their admissions standards, and I don't think the state will stop them as graduating students is now priority #1.
All public colleges in Ohio are open-admissions by law. Many schools have branch campuses where they send under performing student applicants that are never counted by USN&WR. This is how they bypass the law.
Maybe it's time to bring Owens into UT?
UT is not allowed to "hide" general admission direct from high school students with 2.0 GPA on a regional campus, hence a major factor in our tier 2 status compared to our peers.
To 12:40. "Major" factor? Hardly. UT was slimed by Jacobs Inc. pure and simple. Our academic reputation nationwide took a big hit. There is no 'forgive and forget' about that. It will take years to recover. An ethical and mindful new leadership might begin to pave the way. To make that happen the BOT will require a new face and cast of characters. Otherwise UT will continue "slip, sliding away" in the rankings to the brain-numbing beat of "The Bankers and The Bean Counters."
Yes when USN&WR and other similar reviews and ratings include all UT students, including those with only provisional admission status who can not meet individual college and program requirements as freshmen in the calculation of direct from high school freshman high school GPA and ACT scores, those "extra" 600+ students UT must count (when many other peer institutions with regional campuses do not) greatly impacts our overall rating. And this has been and issue and impact to our rating long before Jacobs and current BOT messes.
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