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Mrs Whiggins

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Everything posted by Mrs Whiggins

  1. Setting aside tuition momentarily; I would say that for students from low SES a greater barrier might be the non-tuition costs such as living expenses, etc.
  2. The answer to that is: it depends. At some universities it is space. A&M had to backtrack on their rapid admissions growth because their infrastructure could not handle it. I cannot recall if it is a mandate (whether that is from their chancellor or the BOR or State) or not, but I *think* there was something I read that only a certain % of classes could be online. It was long enough ago that I've forgotten the particulars of it but it arose post pandemic I think. In other cases, money is not for a new building but renovating an old one. Pipes in old buildings break and whew boy, there went 15 years of research ruined due to water damage. During the economic downturn, deferred maintenance that wonderful thing K-12 districts know all about, is no stranger to higher ed campuses either. So stuff gets patched and patched again. Even better is when the public university goes with lowest bid and cuts corners to the point that it does actually affect the overall lifespan of a building. Many state universities (I'll go with flagships) campuses will have the mix of old and new. From the various campuses I've visited, you may find original buildings from the founding and then the burst of construction that occurred post WWII that continued into the 60s and 70s as the population grew and baby boomers came of age. Some of the 60-70s buildings were the brutalist concrete structures that are now in approximately the same condition as our nation's bridges and overpasses. I'll stop there.
  3. In the STEM fields, specifically say a hard science such as chem or bio for example, one thing that isn't talked about among laypeople is how those grant dollars work at unis. Say a prof writes a grant and it gets funded and you and I get an alumni mag/email saying--"Professor So-and-So was awarded a $5 million dollar grant by the National Science Foundation, this 5 year grant blah blah blah..." What isn't said in that article is that firstly, the university will take a cut off that grant right off the top. At T1 public unis that may be anywhere from 40-60 % of the total. That is IIRC, for operations, maintenance, staff support, etc. By that I mean, it keeps the lights on and the university running w/o which said prof wouldn't have a lab. So, $5 million drops to (I'll use 50%) $2.5 million in short order. But wait, it's a five year grant so that's $ 500,000 a year. Still seems like a lot? That depends. One may need to purchase more equipment, or lab chemicals, or keep animals fed and watered, or pay post doctoral assistants and other staff salaries and so on. The amount of the award I listed was actually well above average, I just didn't feel like parsing it down to smaller amounts. The average award (annual figure) is around $100,000 IIRC (I'm using NSF). While graduate students don't make much, if a prof has no grant money with which to pay them, then they usually need to teach. If they're teaching then they're not in the lab helping do the experiments that aid in publications and grant writing. For UT, they actually do alright; I think their NSF funding rate is around 36% (meaning the number of grants applied for and then granted), but grant writing takes a lot of time and is only one part of a professor's job. I didn't even go into start-up packages which are used to set up a research lab when hiring faculty. Which leads to another issue with buildings--sometimes a new building is needed because the increase in enrollments mean that more teaching labs are required. Like it or not, students (and their parents) prefer to have classes with labs be in person and not virtual. But labs have safety requirements and other needs. If the average lab is about 20 students per section, at large state unis (like tOSU or A&M) you could have labs running dawn to midnight and weekends and still have students shut out. Which leads to four year graduation rates dropping which brings the State down on the uni.
  4. OMG, I love the mansplaining to you with regards to how business is run. As if. As if you just walked in straight from graduation with the ink on your degree still wet. I'd also like to know why your guy thinks a direct email to a vendor discussing a change in invoicing is passive aggressive vs what actually is passive aggressive or at the very least, avoidance when the vendor goes around you to talk man-to-man about getting his feelings hurt because YOU didn't behave the way he wanted ( most likely deferring to him and whatever he put on the invoice) when he fucked up. Trying to put you in a box via the tag team. I think you got the description slightly off though: an aggressive woman, a team-mate who threw you under the bus, and a snowflake.
  5. Because there is a graph posted, I'd like to provide a link to an article that accompanies that same graph. It's an informative read, won't take all that long (5-8 minutes for you bright eyed readers) and provides information that puts that graph in a much clearer perspective relative to this discussion, which btw, has strayed somewhat from the original topic of academic fraud. https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiatives/state-and-local-finance-initiative/state-and-local-backgrounders/higher-education-expenditures
  6. Did you ever watch the Coen brothers' classic, O Brother Where Art Thou? Maybe it's like Tommy, who sold his soul to the devil only instead of being able to play the guitar they swapped for the ability to be like one-eyed Big Dan (the Bible salesman) and they just wanna kill toads and hurt people. Big Dan was like the Cyclops, but I bet...I bet if you was to pick up a copy of Homer's Great Work you'd find that just about every monster in that epic has a doppleganger in the GOP. The rest of us? We just want to get home.
  7. Another recent read from the library. Roxane Gay is a contributing writer to the NYT among other publications and this is a collection of her essays published in several sources over the last few years. A perspective outside of the realm of my own lived experience.
  8. Are we sure that Dan Patrick is not filled with formaldehyde? He looks like maybe he is. I used to think he'd be a candidate for an STD because of how he protests so much about sex but now I'm halfway convinced he's just been filled with preservative and poured into his starched jeans and plaid shirts and his hair sprayed with so much lacquer he sounds like foil when he walks.
  9. They aren't the only ones. We attended a relative's funeral in south Florida and during the eulogy were "treated" with an unexpected political treatise by a non family member that covered all the talking points and then some. My spouse was fuming but kept his silence. I was rather stunned at why anyone would interject MAGA and politics into a remembrance of a life that was lived with a focus that was outside of the political realm. But Florida be like that I guess.
  10. I know. I know. I have the Mark Twain quote memorized but sometimes it's all I have to hold on to. That the idea my parents had that investing in people benefits our society at a greater rate than any other thing we might do in this country. But oh the hate sells it does and that makes for some sleepless nights thinking about all that hate out there.
  11. I've never had an issue with AOC. She's earnest and with me I'll take that over the fake outrage shit on which the GOP corners the market. Katie Porter though, I will follow her white board all over town and back. I love it when someone pulls out receipts. It's like when some guy starts bloviating about how we've won a national championship blah blah blah and then "got Jimbo" blah blah blah and then the actual record on a white board is posted and *crickets*. Furk.
  12. My kids are Gen Z. Trump is not ever going to be in their wheelhouse. Ever. They think he's a joke.
  13. Charlie Kirk, high school drop out, possessor of a small brain in a large head, and advisor on presidential policy. What a world we live in.
  14. I don't always agree with your takes but this is a reasonable assessment right here. This next point is going to chafe some people, but women who enter the teaching profession where wages can vary really need to crunch the numbers before they select an institution of higher education. I'm not in that field, but if I were advising a young person who was interested, that is something that bears merit. The PSLF (Public Service Loan Forgiveness) plan had a lot of snafus but I actually thought it had the right idea towards helping both the borrower and the communities it was designed to benefit.
  15. Very little on the second page has to do with academic fraud which is the original thread emphasis. An examination of how public universities are funded, administrated, legislated, and held accountable by various entities would belong in the Cloak Room due to various reasons. Similarly to the way on page 1 @Armybrat brought up the government (federal level) in K-12 education, one cannot escape the ties, incentives, and restrictions placed on institutions by local, state, and federal governments. The mission of student development first and foremost would be ideal but the CR would be the best place for that discussion because the "mission" has been political for over 60 years. Higher ed is similar but with research and other parameters added.
  16. That's a shame. After being adopted by Daddy Warbucks, I figured Annie would give up her hard knock ways. Oh well, the sun will come out tomorrow, tomorrow, you'll get released tomorrow, it's only a day away.
  17. "Violent thugs..." Oh, they're so close to getting....nope. Just can't quite get the penny to drop can they?
  18. I don't know; but I would wonder how much additional staffing (in your graph it is staff in public elementary and secondary i.e. K-12) is due to the increased awareness and regulations regarding student services--such as special needs, behavioral and ESL support and so on? At the higher ed level (not in the graph), some of those needs would follow students along with TItle IX and ADA compliance, NCAA administrative compliance, career counseling staff, mental health services, first gen support, and testing services just off the top of my head. Most of those services were nonexistent when I was in school save for Title IX, NCAA, and rudimentary career and mental health staff. I was reading not too long ago about how many students bring emotional support animals with them to school. Not service animals (separate category) but each student has to fill out an application etc. Which means someone has to review that, etc etc.
  19. Do it. No CR here, but when people talk about toxic masculinity, they're not only referring to the treatment of females by society, but how men are seldom given 'permission' by that same society to feel and express emotions. Everything has to be 'productive' or a man is weak, effeminate, lazy, and on and on. My word, a man is not a machine any more than a woman is solely a birther of babies. Mr. Rogers used to sing, "What do you do with the mad that you feel?" and talked about constructive ways to express our emotions of frustration or helplessness or grief that do not hurt ourselves or others. Take that day for yourself. Own it. Enjoy it. Live it.
  20. Thank you for calling it like it is (thread title) and not Playing. The. Game. which is what Erick senior and junior would likely say. In most academic endeavors, the annual review assesses three areas: teaching, service, and research. The last is the one by which the most $$, the most prestige, the administrative appointments, the gravitas, and the respect is placed. It is a system that once was admired world-wide that has been corrupted over and over again. Sad.
  21. Picked this up at the library but it was disappointing. I didn't care for the writing style much at all. I wasn't looking for gossip, but more in depth information on the structure (which is touched on some) but for a critic who has spent a number of years writing, I was expecting something cohesive and it just wasn't.
  22. I suppose that naiveté is my fallback when I run across threads like that on their politics forum. By that, I mean I'm not surprised at their outrage or lack of knowledge about how degree programs, minors, and such work. Where I am consistently surprised is how little thought they apply to what a well-rounded education comprises. So much of the greater breadth of my education came from courses outside of my major; courses on topics that were not taught in my high school (at the time, no AP was available) and my first exposure to authors such as Toni Morrison or the history of the Tulsa Race Massacre or even a semester long intensive writing class on the various types of economic systems (including communism!) occurred at this time. Indoctrination? Hardly. The faculty wanted us to read, think, and then write; justifying or informing or expanding upon what we learned in class. I owe them so much for that. So these prolific angry posters want to never crack open a book that might invigorate the little gray cells into a world beyond the box in which they've placed themselves. What cowards. How little credit they give to the students brave enough to explore the world around them and to critically examine thoughts and ideas foreign to them.
  23. Rep for using Charlie Cox in a gif. So dreamy.
  24. Agree with the Fox propaganda. It's insane how effective it's been. Yeah, he makes me nervous with respect to potential skeletons but he's a charming guy and people seem to overlook a LOT of flaws when covered with that veneer. We are stupidly high school when it comes to electing competency and candidates with character.
  25. Don't forget loyalty oaths. A part of our history and useful weapons to bring around recalcitrant citizens.
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