longtime reader - didn't see this posted - pretty interesting that UNO students may decide the fate of athletics at UNO.
http://blog.nola.com/tpsports/2009/04/uno_students_set_to_vote_on_at.html
It all went down hill once Buzz left!!!
Looks like Buzz was right to doubt UNO's commitment to athletics.
Quote from: Lennys Tap on April 29, 2009, 08:25:09 PM
Looks like Buzz was right to doubt UNO's commitment to athletics.
UNO is a public university and their funding comes from further up the food chain. Is Buzz still suing them by the way?
As an aside, did you know there are more 4 year universities in the state of Louisiana then in Florida or Texas? It's a bit out of hand and something the Louisiana legislature is looking at in their attempts to cut about $800 million from their budget.
One idea is to merge UNO with Southern University.
Quote from: ChicosBailBonds on April 29, 2009, 08:31:56 PM
UNO is a public university and their funding comes from further up the food chain. Is Buzz still suing them by the way?
Bobby better take some TARP funds.
Quote from: mviale on April 29, 2009, 10:07:02 PM
Bobby better take some TARP funds.
Yeah, that will fix everything.
Quote from: ChicosBailBonds on April 29, 2009, 09:32:04 PM
As an aside, did you know there are more 4 year universities in the state of Louisiana then in Florida or Texas? It's a bit out of hand and something the Louisiana legislature is looking at in their attempts to cut about $800 million from their budget.
One idea is to merge UNO with Southern University.
Yes there a lot of LA LAs: LA-Tech, LA-Monroe, etc.... Kind of like the LA-LA Land that is California... the land of fruits and nuts!
Quote from: mu77vegas on April 29, 2009, 10:14:10 PM
Yes there a lot of LA LAs: LA-Tech, LA-Monroe, etc.... Kind of like the LA-LA Land that is California... the land of fruits and nuts!
No arguments there. It's a state in the absolute toilet and run by people that make it worse each passing year. Beyond repair....only a few more years and I can retire out of here. Tick tock tick tock.
Quote from: ChicosBailBonds on April 29, 2009, 08:31:56 PM
UNO is a public university and their funding comes from further up the food chain. Is Buzz still suing them by the way?
Well, under this place, half the athletics budget would not come from further up the food chain. It would come from student fees. Usually such fees are voted on by the student government, which as everyone knows is generally a body of super-involved students that generally not representative of the student body at large and are generally voted in by a small percentage of the students. What probably happened here is that the student government decided to put this to a full student vote, which makes is passage highly unlikely since my guess is that majority of UNO students don't want their fees increased to pay for athletics.
Quote from: ChicosBailBonds on April 29, 2009, 09:32:04 PM
As an aside, did you know there are more 4 year universities in the state of Louisiana then in Florida or Texas? It's a bit out of hand and something the Louisiana legislature is looking at in their attempts to cut about $800 million from their budget.
One idea is to merge UNO with Southern University.
Closing campuses doesn't save as much money as many think. Unless you cut the number of students enrolled, it would only result in moderate savings because the cost of instruction is the largest cost for most public universities.
If they were going to go through with this option, they should have done it immediately post-Katrina. They probably put a ton of money into UNO, and *now* they are going to close it? Makes no sense.
Quote from: The Wizard of West Salem on April 30, 2009, 11:53:45 AM
Well, under this place, half the athletics budget would not come from further up the food chain. It would come from student fees. Usually such fees are voted on by the student government, which as everyone knows is generally a body of super-involved students that generally not representative of the student body at large and are generally voted in by a small percentage of the students. What probably happened here is that the student government decided to put this to a full student vote, which makes is passage highly unlikely since my guess is that majority of UNO students don't want their fees increased to pay for athletics.
That is correct, they are asking the students to take on a bigger role of the athletics budget. Voting ends tonight via the internet. They've already had more voters than expected but of course the results won't be known until tomorrow. You can imagine that many students who don't care about athletics are saying no and those that do care are saying yes. UNO has a pretty good baseball team and a few other sports. It shall be interesting to see what happens.
Quote from: ChicosBailBonds on April 29, 2009, 09:32:04 PM
As an aside, did you know there are more 4 year universities in the state of Louisiana then in Florida or Texas? It's a bit out of hand and something the Louisiana legislature is looking at in their attempts to cut about $800 million from their budget.
One idea is to merge UNO with Southern University.
Sounds like Wisconsin versus Illinois. I think both Wisconsin and Illinois have 12 4-year universities. Yes, the Illinois campuses are probably each much larger, but does a place like Wisconsin need 4-year schools 15 minutes apart ala Oshkosh and FDL?
Quote from: warrior07 on April 30, 2009, 02:10:13 PM
Sounds like Wisconsin versus Illinois. I think both Wisconsin and Illinois have 12 4-year universities. Yes, the Illinois campuses are probably each much larger, but does a place like Wisconsin need 4-year schools 15 minutes apart ala Oshkosh and FDL?
All state Universities that are in a town of under 100,000 and that don't have direct access to the Interstate system should be closed. Why put a university in the middle of nowhere?
Quote from: warrior07 on April 30, 2009, 02:10:13 PM
Sounds like Wisconsin versus Illinois. I think both Wisconsin and Illinois have 12 4-year universities. Yes, the Illinois campuses are probably each much larger, but does a place like Wisconsin need 4-year schools 15 minutes apart ala Oshkosh and FDL?
Fond du Lac is a two-year school
Quote from: Skatastrophy on April 30, 2009, 02:33:46 PM
All state Universities that are in a town of under 100,000 and that don't have direct access to the Interstate system should be closed. Why put a university in the middle of nowhere?
This absolutely makes no sense. Whitewater has an enrollment of nearly 11,000. Platteville is about 6,500. Somehow plenty of people can manage to find their way there despite the lack of an interstate highway. Also, plenty of people seem to want to go to both places since they are operating near capacity.
Furthermore, if you close either one...or even a place like Superior...you have to do something with those students. Do they just not go to school or do they go elsewhere? If they go elsewhere, you are going to have to build residence halls, classrooms, etc. to fit them. Not much cost savings there. If the UW System just takes less students...well...that kind of defeats the purpose right?
Believe me, there are a number of problems with the UW System, but over capacity isn't one of them.
UW-FDL offers some 4 year degrees now too.
Correction... I just double checked, and while you can get your bachelor's degree with classes on location at FDL, they are actually granted by one of the 4-yr schools. Although the course offerings of UW extension schools may be one of the more irrelevant discussions ever on here...
Quote from: Litehouse on April 30, 2009, 02:53:41 PM
UW-FDL offers some 4 year degrees now too.
Just completion programs on their site offered by other UW schools.
http://www.fdl.uwc.edu/academics/bachelors.html
These are geared for returning adults more than they are new students. They have no residence halls.
Quote from: The Wizard of West Salem on April 30, 2009, 02:53:20 PMWhitewater has an enrollment of nearly 11,000. Platteville is about 6,500. Somehow plenty of people can manage to find their way there despite the lack of an interstate highway. Also, plenty of people seem to want to go to both places since they are operating near capacity.
Just because you *can* fill them up with idiots doesn't mean you *should* fill them up with idiots.
Quote from: The Wizard of West Salem on April 30, 2009, 02:53:20 PMFurthermore, if you close either one...or even a place like Superior...you have to do something with those students. Do they just not go to school or do they go elsewhere? If they go elsewhere, you are going to have to build residence halls, classrooms, etc. to fit them. Not much cost savings there. If the UW System just takes less students...well...that kind of defeats the purpose right?
Believe me, there are a number of problems with the UW System, but over capacity isn't one of them.
Getting worthless degrees from worthless universities isn't worth my (taxpayer) money. We're living in an age where kids feel entitled to get into some college. Raising admission requirements and closing worthless satellite schools and maybe a college degree will start to mean something again.
I didn't say anything about increasing the capacity of the larger state schools. My point is that if you're only able to get into UW Bumblefuck, maybe you should go to a privately funded prep school to prove that you're serious about school or maybe you should consider working with your hands for a living.
Stout, Superior and River Falls, I believe, are the 3 UW- schools within a close radius.
Quote from: 4everwarriors' hedge trimmers on April 30, 2009, 03:30:02 PM
Stout, Superior and River Falls, I believe, are the 3 UW- schools within a close radius.
I wouldn't include Superior with that group:
Stout, LaCrosse, Eau-Claire, River Falls, Oshkosh, Green Bay, and Stevens Point.
Quote from: Skatastrophy on April 30, 2009, 03:26:15 PM
Just because you *can* fill them up with idiots doesn't mean you *should* fill them up with idiots.
Getting worthless degrees from worthless universities isn't worth my (taxpayer) money. We're living in an age where kids feel entitled to get into some college. Raising admission requirements and closing worthless satellite schools and maybe a college degree will start to mean something again.
I didn't say anything about increasing the capacity of the larger state schools. My point is that if you're only able to get into UW Bumblefrack, maybe you should go to a privately funded prep school to prove that you're serious about school or maybe you should consider working with your hands for a living.
That really is a stupid statement. Most of the people in this country who get degrees, get them from "satelite schools." And I can guaranty that 99% of the graduates from these institutions don't feel that they had worthless degrees. Honestly, it makes me wonder about the value of an MU education if it churns out people like yourself and your narrow, elitist view of the world.
Quote from: 4everwarriors' hedge trimmers on April 30, 2009, 03:30:02 PM
Stout, Superior and River Falls, I believe, are the 3 UW- schools within a close radius.
River Falls, Stout and Eau Claire are within about 70 miles of one another. If the tuition agreement with Minnesota ever ended, one of these three would likely close.
My bad on FDL.
But I think others have made the point I was trying to. We have a number of 4 year schools in Wisconsin not terribly far from one another that do essentially the same thing as one another. And it doesn't really make sense to have each one open. I think we also have 12 2-year schools in Wisconsin. To me, this doesn't make sense. Can't the UW-Fox Cities students get an Associates' at Oshkosh or GB?
Hey WIZ
what about graduates with degrees in Woman's studies or Ethnic studies?
99% sure about them?
Quote from: warrior07 on April 30, 2009, 05:06:00 PM
My bad on FDL.
But I think others have made the point I was trying to. We have a number of 4 year schools in Wisconsin not terribly far from one another that do essentially the same thing as one another. And it doesn't really make sense to have each one open. I think we also have 12 2-year schools in Wisconsin. To me, this doesn't make sense. Can't the UW-Fox Cities students get an Associates' at Oshkosh or GB?
Actually, you can't get associates degrees at Oshkosh or Green Bay. I think many public university systems if they did it all over, it would be done a lot differently. But remember the UW System, for instance, was a merger of the University of Wisconsin (Madison, Green Bay, Parkside), a formerly private tech school (Stout), and the former teacher's colleges (the rest). The System "evolved" more than it was created. I'm sure if they did it now, they would create a series of 15-25,000 pop. schools versus the way they have it set up now...but it is too expensive, and political suicide, to do that now.
Quote from: The Wizard of West Salem on April 30, 2009, 04:41:55 PM
That really is a stupid statement. Most of the people in this country who get degrees, get them from "satelite schools." And I can guaranty that 99% of the graduates from these institutions don't feel that they had worthless degrees. Honestly, it makes me wonder about the value of an MU education if it churns out people like yourself and your narrow, elitist view of the world.
Injecting personal insults into a discussion only weakens your already weak argument.
You can reduce my argument to a "narrow, elitist view of the world," or you could capitulate to the fact that the quality of educational institutions falls off quickly after you get out of the top couple hundred institutions in this country.
While you can "guaranty that 99% of the graduates from these institutions don't feel that they had worthless degrees," I can guarantee that when I'm reviewing applicant's resumes it piques my interest when I see that someone went to a sub-standard university like UW-Parkside. I'm not saying that I immediately dismiss all Parkside graduates but it makes me wonder if they went there because they weren't smart enough to get into a better school, or if it was their choice to go there because of other reasons.
You can call it elitist, but I see no reason to respect the satellite UW schools when their admission standards are lower than those to become a manager at McDonald's.
It's obvious that you're taking this personally, so I won't continue to press the point after this post. I just wanted to get across my contention that spending the money to educate a large number of students at mediocre universities isn't as effective as giving a smaller number of more deserving students an excellent education.
Additionally, if you're going to call someone "stupid" maybe you should spell-check your post first so that you don't end up looking foolish. Satellite is traditionally spelled with two L's.
Quote from: Skatastrophy on May 01, 2009, 10:38:27 AM
It's obvious that you're taking this personally, so I won't continue to press the point after this post. I just wanted to get across my contention that spending the money to educate a large number of students at mediocre universities isn't as effective as giving a smaller number of more deserving students an excellent education.
I don't think that in an information age, and in an economy where those with less education are disproportionally harmed, that we shouldn't be limiting access to higher education. I can understand the argument that maybe there should be more access to two year schools to start out, but access is access. It costs money to provide that access to a four-year or a two-year school.
having lived in Wisconsin since my MU days over 25 years ago I have never been able to figure out why no one has ever suggested some consolidation of he UW- system, must be political suicide.
I work in a business that thrives on ecomies of scale and it is well proven you lower costs by consolidating operations as simple as 1 vs 2 locations needs one less receptionist. I understand you don't reduce all costs and variable ones like professor pay remain in synch iwth number of students, etc.
This state has to lower the tax rate and every thing should be up for review and this seems like an obvious target.
Quote from: sailwi on May 01, 2009, 11:29:51 AM
having lived in Wisconsin since my MU days over 25 years ago I have never been able to figure out why no one has ever suggested some consolidation of he UW- system, must be political suicide.
I work in a business that thrives on ecomies of scale and it is well proven you lower costs by consolidating operations as simple as 1 vs 2 locations needs one less receptionist. I understand you don't reduce all costs and variable ones like professor pay remain in synch iwth number of students, etc.
This state has to lower the tax rate and every thing should be up for review and this seems like an obvious target.
Not only is it a political problem, but there isn't much of a cost savings *if* you keep access at the same levels. You would have to build new buildings...hire more professors...etc. The only cost savings would be administrative, but that isn't a high cost at most institutions. Now if you just closed a school, like Skatastrophy is suggesting, and just giving less kids access to higher education, then you do save money.
The UW System calculates its adminstrative costs at less than 7%.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4207/is_19950202/ai_n10183592/
Quote from: Skatastrophy on May 01, 2009, 10:38:27 AM
Injecting personal insults into a discussion only weakens your already weak argument.
You can reduce my argument to a "narrow, elitist view of the world," or you could capitulate to the fact that the quality of educational institutions falls off quickly after you get out of the top couple hundred institutions in this country.
While you can "guaranty that 99% of the graduates from these institutions don't feel that they had worthless degrees," I can guarantee that when I'm reviewing applicant's resumes it piques my interest when I see that someone went to a sub-standard university like UW-Parkside. I'm not saying that I immediately dismiss all Parkside graduates but it makes me wonder if they went there because they weren't smart enough to get into a better school, or if it was their choice to go there because of other reasons.
You can call it elitist, but I see no reason to respect the satellite UW schools when their admission standards are lower than those to become a manager at McDonald's.
It's obvious that you're taking this personally, so I won't continue to press the point after this post. I just wanted to get across my contention that spending the money to educate a large number of students at mediocre universities isn't as effective as giving a smaller number of more deserving students an excellent education.
Additionally, if you're going to call someone "stupid" maybe you should spell-check your post first so that you don't end up looking foolish. Satellite is traditionally spelled with two L's.
You bring up some good points, but I would be fearful that the surrounding states would pick up those students who normally would have attended the lower level state schools.
I know you might be thinking "Good, let them leave", but those are future employees and tax payers that Wisconsin would be encouraging to leave the state for at least 4 years. Some of the most successful students probably wouldn't come back if they received internships and quality job opportunities, while the unsuccessful ones would certainly come running back home without completing school.
That's can't be good for the future. Wisconsin would basically be handing MN, IL, IA a lot of pretty smart people from mid-level state schools.
I don't think many UW-Oshkosh grads are becoming CEO's, but I've worked with several in my career and they are fine employees.
Quote from: The Wizard of West Salem on April 30, 2009, 07:51:08 PM
Actually, you can't get associates degrees at Oshkosh or Green Bay. I think many public university systems if they did it all over, it would be done a lot differently. But remember the UW System, for instance, was a merger of the University of Wisconsin (Madison, Green Bay, Parkside), a formerly private tech school (Stout), and the former teacher's colleges (the rest). The System "evolved" more than it was created. I'm sure if they did it now, they would create a series of 15-25,000 pop. schools versus the way they have it set up now...but it is too expensive, and political suicide, to do that now.
Very true. But, as you seem to suggest, it'd probably be nice if we could close down some of those 2-year and shift their resources to 4-year institutions where you could also get an Associates as well as a Bachelors.
Very interesting op-ed in the Times a few days back about the future of higher education.
~~~
April 27, 2009
Op-Ed Contributor
End the University as We Know It
By MARK C. TAYLOR
GRADUATE education is the Detroit of higher learning. Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market (candidates for teaching positions that do not exist) and develop skills for which there is diminishing demand (research in subfields within subfields and publication in journals read by no one other than a few like-minded colleagues), all at a rapidly rising cost (sometimes well over $100,000 in student loans).
Widespread hiring freezes and layoffs have brought these problems into sharp relief now. But our graduate system has been in crisis for decades, and the seeds of this crisis go as far back as the formation of modern universities. Kant, in his 1798 work "The Conflict of the Faculties," wrote that universities should "handle the entire content of learning by mass production, so to speak, by a division of labor, so that for every branch of the sciences there would be a public teacher or professor appointed as its trustee."
Unfortunately this mass-production university model has led to separation where there ought to be collaboration and to ever-increasing specialization. In my own religion department, for example, we have 10 faculty members, working in eight subfields, with little overlap. And as departments fragment, research and publication become more and more about less and less. Each academic becomes the trustee not of a branch of the sciences, but of limited knowledge that all too often is irrelevant for genuinely important problems. A colleague recently boasted to me that his best student was doing his dissertation on how the medieval theologian Duns Scotus used citations.
The emphasis on narrow scholarship also encourages an educational system that has become a process of cloning. Faculty members cultivate those students whose futures they envision as identical to their own pasts, even though their tenures will stand in the way of these students having futures as full professors.
The dirty secret of higher education is that without underpaid graduate students to help in laboratories and with teaching, universities couldn't conduct research or even instruct their growing undergraduate populations. That's one of the main reasons we still encourage people to enroll in doctoral programs. It is simply cheaper to provide graduate students with modest stipends and adjuncts with as little as $5,000 a course — with no benefits — than it is to hire full-time professors.
In other words, young people enroll in graduate programs, work hard for subsistence pay and assume huge debt burdens, all because of the illusory promise of faculty appointments. But their economical presence, coupled with the intransigence of tenure, ensures that there will always be too many candidates for too few openings.
The other obstacle to change is that colleges and universities are self-regulating or, in academic parlance, governed by peer review. While trustees and administrations theoretically have some oversight responsibility, in practice, departments operate independently. To complicate matters further, once a faculty member has been granted tenure he is functionally autonomous. Many academics who cry out for the regulation of financial markets vehemently oppose it in their own departments.
If American higher education is to thrive in the 21st century, colleges and universities, like Wall Street and Detroit, must be rigorously regulated and completely restructured. The long process to make higher learning more agile, adaptive and imaginative can begin with six major steps:
1. Restructure the curriculum, beginning with graduate programs and proceeding as quickly as possible to undergraduate programs. The division-of-labor model of separate departments is obsolete and must be replaced with a curriculum structured like a web or complex adaptive network. Responsible teaching and scholarship must become cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural.
Just a few weeks ago, I attended a meeting of political scientists who had gathered to discuss why international relations theory had never considered the role of religion in society. Given the state of the world today, this is a significant oversight. There can be no adequate understanding of the most important issues we face when disciplines are cloistered from one another and operate on their own premises.
It would be far more effective to bring together people working on questions of religion, politics, history, economics, anthropology, sociology, literature, art, religion and philosophy to engage in comparative analysis of common problems. As the curriculum is restructured, fields of inquiry and methods of investigation will be transformed.
2. Abolish permanent departments, even for undergraduate education, and create problem-focused programs. These constantly evolving programs would have sunset clauses, and every seven years each one should be evaluated and either abolished, continued or significantly changed. It is possible to imagine a broad range of topics around which such zones of inquiry could be organized: Mind, Body, Law, Information, Networks, Language, Space, Time, Media, Money, Life and Water.
Consider, for example, a Water program. In the coming decades, water will become a more pressing problem than oil, and the quantity, quality and distribution of water will pose significant scientific, technological and ecological difficulties as well as serious political and economic challenges. These vexing practical problems cannot be adequately addressed without also considering important philosophical, religious and ethical issues. After all, beliefs shape practices as much as practices shape beliefs.
A Water program would bring together people in the humanities, arts, social and natural sciences with representatives from professional schools like medicine, law, business, engineering, social work, theology and architecture. Through the intersection of multiple perspectives and approaches, new theoretical insights will develop and unexpected practical solutions will emerge.
3. Increase collaboration among institutions. All institutions do not need to do all things and technology makes it possible for schools to form partnerships to share students and faculty. Institutions will be able to expand while contracting. Let one college have a strong department in French, for example, and the other a strong department in German; through teleconferencing and the Internet both subjects can be taught at both places with half the staff. With these tools, I have already team-taught semester-long seminars in real time at the Universities of Helsinki and Melbourne.
4. Transform the traditional dissertation. In the arts and humanities, where looming cutbacks will be most devastating, there is no longer a market for books modeled on the medieval dissertation, with more footnotes than text. As financial pressures on university presses continue to mount, publication of dissertations, and with it scholarly certification, is almost impossible. (The average university press print run of a dissertation that has been converted into a book is less than 500, and sales are usually considerably lower.) For many years, I have taught undergraduate courses in which students do not write traditional papers but develop analytic treatments in formats from hypertext and Web sites to films and video games. Graduate students should likewise be encouraged to produce "theses" in alternative formats.
5. Expand the range of professional options for graduate students. Most graduate students will never hold the kind of job for which they are being trained. It is, therefore, necessary to help them prepare for work in fields other than higher education. The exposure to new approaches and different cultures and the consideration of real-life issues will prepare students for jobs at businesses and nonprofit organizations. Moreover, the knowledge and skills they will cultivate in the new universities will enable them to adapt to a constantly changing world.
6. Impose mandatory retirement and abolish tenure. Initially intended to protect academic freedom, tenure has resulted in institutions with little turnover and professors impervious to change. After all, once tenure has been granted, there is no leverage to encourage a professor to continue to develop professionally or to require him or her to assume responsibilities like administration and student advising. Tenure should be replaced with seven-year contracts, which, like the programs in which faculty teach, can be terminated or renewed. This policy would enable colleges and universities to reward researchers, scholars and teachers who continue to evolve and remain productive while also making room for young people with new ideas and skills.
For many years, I have told students, "Do not do what I do; rather, take whatever I have to offer and do with it what I could never imagine doing and then come back and tell me about it." My hope is that colleges and universities will be shaken out of their complacency and will open academia to a future we cannot conceive.
Mark C. Taylor, the chairman of the religion department at Columbia, is the author of the forthcoming "Field Notes From Elsewhere: Reflections on Dying and Living."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/opinion/27taylor.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print
The students at UNO voted NO