My state has gone insane
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@joe.edwards said:
@eViLegion said:
And given that there are actually a lot of rich, possibly-slightly-less-clever people who would also like to attend, the universities could quite easily just say "Actually, you know what?.... Fuck all of you, we're gonna take a massive pile of money off these rich people, and everyone else can sod off."
Wait, are you saying that doesn't happen over there?Not really, no.
Well, sort of a bit. In terms of post-graduates, and foreign students, it probably does.
But to qualify for government subsidy for educating home-grown undergraduates all universities must fulfill certain criteria, to do with equality.
They could easily make a fuck-ton more money by telling the government to piss off, and charging an arm and a leg to anyone that can afford it though.
I have a feeling, though, that the majority of the academics would rather earn the university a bit less cash, in order to teach bright people that they'll have fun teaching, as opposed to the dull 'entitled' offspring of rich international business people. I'd certainly much rather be professor to a single penniless genius than a whole lecture room full of billionaires.
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@eViLegion said:
@joe.edwards said:
@eViLegion said:
And given that there are actually a lot of rich, possibly-slightly-less-clever people who would also like to attend, the universities could quite easily just say "Actually, you know what?.... Fuck all of you, we're gonna take a massive pile of money off these rich people, and everyone else can sod off."
Wait, are you saying that doesn't happen over there?Not really, no.
Well, sort of a bit. In terms of post-graduates, and foreign students, it probably does.
But to qualify for government subsidy for educating home-grown undergraduates all universities must fulfill certain criteria, to do with equality.
They could easily make a fuck-ton more money by telling the government to piss off, and charging an arm and a leg to anyone that can afford it though.
I have a feeling, though, that the majority of the academics would rather earn the university a bit less cash, in order to teach bright people that they'll have fun teaching, as opposed to the dull 'entitled' offspring of rich international business people. I'd certainly much rather be professor to a single penniless genius than a whole lecture room full of billionaires.
We have prestigious universities that require sterling academic performance... or maybe a special "consideration" from an influential and/or wealthy politician here or there.
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@eViLegion said:
Fair enough... I don't really know how things go down in the US.
Neither does snooder. UC Berkely is considered an elite school. It's also public. Not to mention an epicenter of bullshit diversity sort of thinking and practice, including expensive nonsense administrative posts at the expense of education. Actually, they're making an effort to be racist by keeping out some minorities. The key to not being racist is to not be racist, not be racist in a new way.
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@boomzilla said:
UC Berkely is considered an elite school. It's also public. Not to mention an epicenter of bullshit diversity sort of thinking and practice, including expensive nonsense administrative posts at the expense of education. Actually, they're making an effort to be racist by keeping out some minorities. The key to not being racist is to not be racist, not be racist in a new way.
Berkeley is a pretty unique situation though. The specific confluence of hyper-liberal sensibilities and an extremely well-funded state higher education system doesn't really exist in most other colleges.
I'm not saying that it's impossible for a Diversity Dean to be unneeded in a university. That depends on the specific situation in a given school. But to say that it is always unnecessary, or that no university can benefit from trying to improve its image and reputation is false.
@eViLegion said:Fair enough... I don't really know how things go down in the US.
Honestly no matter what, people are going to complain. Where people in the UK complain about a specific state school applicant with good grades not getting into Oxford, over here, we have people complaining (and suing) because a specific white suburban kid with good grades didn't get into Michigan.
Or, and this always made me laugh, asian kids complaining that they get penalized for being asian, even though like a third of the student population is asian.
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@Snooder said:
I'm not saying that it's impossible for a Diversity Dean to be unneeded in a university. That depends on the specific situation in a given school. But to say that it is always unnecessary, or that no university can benefit from trying to improve its image and reputation is false.
I'm not saying that universities don't have a need for any sort of marketing or public relations. But they already have that.
@Snooder said:
Or, and this always made me laugh, asian kids complaining that they get penalized for being asian, even though like a third of the student population is asian.
So what? Maybe based on objective criteria, the population should be half? Why do you have fun being a racist?
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@Snooder said:
Or, and this always made me laugh, asian kids complaining that they get penalized for being asian, even though like a third of the student population is asian.
Because their culture, at least according to the stereotype, places such high value on education and hard work, leading to high academic achievment, that if they were admitted in proportion to their representation among the qualified applicants, they would make up two thirds of the student population, or something like that. TRWTF, of course, is that other cultures put so much less value on education and hard work.
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@boomzilla said:
So what? Maybe based on objective criteria, the population should be half? Why do you have fun being a racist?
Sure, but the kids complaining are never the perfect applicant. It's always that guy who would be straddling the line to get into Berkeley whining that he ended up at UCLA or something.
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@eViLegion said:
I'm mainly basing my observations on Oxford and Cambridge over here in the UK, which don't have an image of racism exactly (which I put mainly down to our nations very different histories with race relations), but have always been accused of being terribly elitist, despite pretty much bending over backwards to accommodate people from less privileged backgrounds.
It's not as straight-forward as that; those two universities are split up into many separate colleges, each of which manages its own admissions. Some colleges are very reasonable about admissions — get good enough grades and you'll get in, though the bar is very high — and with some there is at least the suspicion that the easiest way to get in is to get daddy to fund a new professorship or building. Collecting hard evidence is difficult, since if it is true there'll be a huge scandal (as lots of important people will feel their own degrees are demeaned by it) and therefore those who might be involved are very keen on keeping quiet about it.Personally, I hope these scurrilous rumours are false, but then I am definitely biased.
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@eViLegion said:
@dkf said:
Typical person with enormously too much work to do. It tired him out.One of my former bosses was in such a role (though the title given was different at the time). He said that it was very simple: you were supposed to spend 50% of your time teaching, 50% doing research, and 50% on administrative responsibilities. He was much happier a few years later when he went back to just being a normal (full) professor.
Typical maths professor.
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@Snooder said:
If so, then what part of this logical chain doesn't make sense to you.
Number one. Next?
1. Improving the image of the school as a attractive place for minority applicants is a beneficial goal.
2. In order to do this, you'll need to put someone in charge of making that happen
3. If the task is difficult enough, or the school large enough, this can become a full-time job
4. If you are going to give someone a full-time job, you'll need to pay them to do it.
