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Bringing in “business experts” has been eroding Colleges and Universities for decades. Too much money is going to leadership and not enough to professors (depending on school), postdoctorals, and graduate students.
Universities shouldn’t be businesses.
this is just like, 96% of organizations
They’re kinda screwed if they don’t. Universities compete for students. Schools that can’t attract loads of students end up shutting down programs, laying off staff, shrinking, and even closing completely.
Students are applying to a lot of different schools these days. Reach schools and safe schools. There’s all kinds of advice about what schools a student should apply to based on their skills and interests.
Ultimately, once a student gets offers from their applied schools, the final choice can come down to many non-academic factors. How nice is the school’s campus landscaping? How’s student life? How many extracurricular programs are there? How good are the school’s sports teams and facilities?
Education advocates often say none of that stuff should matter, yet if the choice is up to the student it absolutely does matter.
The university I went to is one of the top in my country for the programs I was interested in. It’s long had a reputation for having an ugly, minimalist campus without much to do. The rigour of its academic programs and competitive student body has been reflected in numerous cases of students taking their own lives.
Since I started there (now since graduated but visit often), the school has spent a ton on landscaping and beautifying, constructing beautiful new buildings and renovating old ones. The school now has new gyms, rock climbing walls, and a new food court / study area with lots of tall windows looking onto a green space. There’s also a brand new building for student housing being built as we speak.
And here’s the thing. All the new buildings and programs have new administrative staff. There are more staff than ever running open houses and prospective student tour programs and summer camps for kids. The school is open year round yet through all of these additions and upgrades, enrolment hasn’t increased very much.
And that’s the bottom line. Schools have to spend loads of money just to tread water. Many other schools are losing students outright despite all their spending on upgrades and new staff. These are publicly funded schools, by the way, not private schools.
In Finland they outlawed private schools. If rich people want to send their kids to good schools, they can invest in the public school system that benefits every student.
Spend six weeks on meetings and committees before finding out that that isn’t what a pentester does
Universities will still call alumni asking for money. Tell em no, tell em why, then tell em to put you on the ‘do not call’ list.
this is part of what I like to call accounting extremism where it makes sense on paper, if you save 0,01 eurodollars a pen you probably save like 5000 eurodollars a year or so. It’s just it does not consider anything that does not fit neatly into a single line KPI in an excel table, like “does this organisation still work”
Behold…the power of the purse.
Faculty: Can we get reimbursed for our travel expenses?
Universities: Submit your receipts here. Mike in admin will flip a coin. If it comes up heads, you’ll get reimbursed some time within the next 18 months. Otherwise, you get nothing and receive no notice.
