Somebody asked me if I liked rap music the other day. I said “nah, if I wanted to pay to hear angry people screaming about how they want to kill whitey, I’d go back to college.”

The academy is as rotten as the MSM.

Don’t get angry. Every time one of these incidents comes to light, another dozen profs headed down this same road see the report and check themselves. I hope.

oh
Now you’re suddenly an optimist?

Really, whose side are you on?

Oh, and does anyone remember AP laughter?
Dude once had humor. It’s missed.

I’m dead serious.

They also did an upgrade on the computers in the classrooms because he had problems pulling up the Huffington Post during class on the projector.

I’m not joking.

Since turning in my grants, shutting down my lab, and leaving the academic side for the administrative side, I have been on yearly, at-will contracts.

Obviously your experiences were different than mine.

Have a nice day.

Not all admins are jerks, but many of them are. If you are an admin, it’s 50-50 that YOU are the problem, and I could care less what you think. Usually YOU have civil service protection or a long-term contract–tenure, in effect–which unleashes people like you to mess with those who are vulnerable

I understand you point, but if you get rid of tenure, you put every professor at the mercy of college administrators–who either failed in the classroon and took refuge behind a desk, or who are ‘passive agressives’ who never had the ability to get up in front of 30 to 40 or more young adults and…..profess.

Janos Hunyadi on September 18, 2008 at 5:08 PM

I’m not advocating for (or against) tenure, but I don’t see how eliminating tenure necessarily means that faculty would be at the “mercy of college administrators.” Faculty could see be reviewed by academics, just as they are each year when they submit their activity reports on their teaching, scholarly research, and service work to their department heads.

I’ve been on both sides of higher ed – academic and administrative – and my husband is an administrative VP at an elite college in California. (I’ll chalk up your snide comment about college administrators to you having a bad day.) Based on our experiences, it seems that the key difference on the faculty side is that academics are not trained in HR practices. No one teaches faculty how to hire and fire, conduct evaluations, develop workplans, goals, and metrics. Administrative acumen is not respected or encouraged in academic departments. The biggest abuses in HR practices that I’ve ever seen were in faculty search committees and departmental meetings.

We entrust the future of our country to people who don’t have to do their job.

Deanna on September 18, 2008 at 4:44 PM

I know it seems like this from the outside, but it’s not true — at least, not in all disciplines.

Faculty at research institutions in the sciences and engineering are essentially small business people who need administrative skills to run and fund their research programs. Their ability to manage a lab provides employment for technicians and students — and the overhead from their research grants keeps the lights on in the humanities departments where Ward Churchills and his ilk do so much damage. If they don’t do their jobs, they won’t have funding to run their labs or, in many cases, pay their own salaries. Tenured or not, a faculty member (in science) without grants has no respect and a large teaching load.

I think some of these problems will be addressed as the costs of higher ed escalate and the stakes become higher and higher. Universities, even “state schools,” require private support to build new buildings, hire the best faculty, and recruit top students. To generate this support, they engage with an increasingly sophisticated group of donors (alumni, private foundations, corporations, etc) who expect to see accountability for how their money is spent. The boards of trustees who advise (as well as hire and fire) university presidents are populated by successful business people, not academics. Over time, these folks are influencing colleges and universities to become more transparent and accountable in their practices.

FWIW adjunct profs are not tenured, so the school has leverage. What I find amazing is the foul language used by this guy in the classroom. Is this the new professional? Is this the lib notion of civility?

The best way to stop this kind of crap…get rid of tenure. This is the only profession in the world where you can be guaranteed a job for life, no matter how bad you are at doing it. Even doctors and attorneys have boards, regulatory groups, and law suits to hold them responsible. We entrust the future of our country to people who don’t have to do their job.

Deanna on September 18, 2008 at 4:44 PM

I understand you point, but if you get rid of tenure, you put every professor at the mercy of college administrators–who either failed in the classroon and took refuge behind a desk, or who are ‘passive agressives’ who never had the ability to get up in front of 30 to 40 or more young adults and…..profess.

I ain’t got no stinkin’ tenure–so I’m at the Total Mercy of every pipsqueak in admin. As Yoda would say, “Many pipsqueaks in college admin there are.”

Some students ‘work the system’ : they demand grade increases and extensions by threatening to go to admin if untenured profs don’t cave–and as the percentage of untentured profs increases ( it has increased a lot ), it gets more and more difficult to maintian standards

does any one think todd palin thinks less of his wife because she is a pta member, councilman, energy overseer, mayor, governor. he does what he can to support his wife and the same time lead his own.

it seems to me that the left thinks an all american family is subject to riducile.

all you feminist tell why is sarah palin not a feminist idea of a real woman.

I remember getting an earful of socialist BS in a MATH class when I was in college. I challenged him on what it had to do with calculus and he pretty much stopped. But he always tried to stare me down in class. It didn’t work.
Brass Pair on September 18, 2008 at 1:07 PM

Not in college or even high school…these memories go back to 8th grade…
A math teacher…“Mr.C” had more knowledge of US history then any dozen people I’ve known since.
I looked forward to math…cause I knew I’d get a real history lesson.

Y-not on September 18, 2008 at 1:51 PM

I concur with this. Being in engineering, I don’t feel the liberal bias that so obviously exists in the other disciplines.

LastRick on September 18, 2008 at 3:57 PM

I get worried we are experiencing the beginning of a huge backlash against higher education.

On the one hand, we have populist congressmen wanting to dictate to colleges and universities how their endowments should be spent/managed with the apparent goal of making college “affordable.” Sounds great on first blush, but where is it stated that we all have a right to go to an expensive college (or any college at all, for that matter)? Having been on the administrative (non-academic) side of universities, I can tell you that managing endowments is complicated business — not one that will be improved by government meddling.

On the other hand, we have a backlash from people who are sick of academics using their access to young people to spread their liberal political views. In its mildest form, the backlash manifests itself as an overall hostility to higher education; however, further along this continuum are people who have such a distrust for educators that they feel the only way to combat them is to push for the teaching of intelligent design in science classrooms.

Unfortunately, the effect of all of this brouhaha is to disenfranchise the public, leading in inadequate funding of NSF, and to a lesser extent NIH. So the Ward Churchills of the world continue on their destructive rants (after all, they don’t need grant dollars to run their scholarly research programs) and the academic scientists and engineers, who are teaching subjects that directly impact on U.S. competitiveness, struggle to fund their labs or leave for higher-paying jobs in industry.

lberals in fact think that any person black, women, white male should in fact not have a chance to be a successful person UNLESS THAT PERSON IS JUST LIKE ME.1

FIMINISM denies her any rights. I do not think so!

THE LEFT’S

lberals in fact think that any person black, women, white male should in fact not have a chance to be a successful person UNLESS THAT PERSON IS JUST LIKE ME.1

InTheBellyoftheBeast on September 18, 2008 at 4:06 PM

Congrats on raising such a kid.

I tended to just argue with my teachers, but walking out takes some guts.

I am also proud that many of my students have had the courage to stand up against their liberal class mates. I wonder if it helps that I give them great grades for courage!!!

IMHO, the really broken part of our universities is in the liberal arts, not the sciences and engineering.

Y-not on September 18, 2008 at 1:51 PM

I concur with this. Being in engineering, I don’t feel the liberal bias that so obviously exists in the other disciplines.

It is my understanding that businesses were forced into this situation because a lawsuit stopped them from being able to administer their own aptitude tests.

rhodeymark on September 18, 2008 at 3:50 PM

Maybe that’s just a California law, because here in Texas at my job we do make people take a few tests. Then again, it’s an insanely easy test, so maybe that’s why it’s allowed.

I’m an English prof myself

Richard Romano on September 18, 2008 at 3:45 PM

I’m just curious. What do you teach specifically?