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Post by 7thWoman on Jun 23, 2004 17:41:54 GMT -5
But the prestige of the name of the school on that piece of paper_does_ depend on the prestige of the lecturers. Yeah, or the football team's win-loss record. Yeah, but perceived prestige doesn't necessarily have anything to do with faculty. It could be a school pride thing. It could be a football fan thing. It could be a famous movie actor who went to school there and flunked out of all his classes. What I'm saying is that without the kickbacks, (some) faculty would leave. They are very concerned with their paychecks. This is America. Salary and Prestige go hand in hand. Let's say the university throws all of this money into retaining a professor who has done an outstanding job on his research and is getting offers from all sorts of other schools. How does keeping this prestigious professor around help the students? By making the university as a whole more prestigous? I think it could benefit a grad student in the department who has that faculty member as an advisor, or a chancellor or president who can tell the Regents that under his leadership the Univeristy has achieved this or that. But it seems to me that the only way it could possibly benefit the generic undergrad is in a round-about, ride the coattails sort of way. I think most of the prestige we're talking about is only considered prestige in academia anyway. Doesn't do much for the majority of students who go directly into the work force with their BA's. I suppose it once again depends. I don't think there's a big demand for Humanities PhD's in the private sector. It's not everybody, but I think there's enough of them to support my argument.
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Post by The Bofa on the Sofa on Jun 23, 2004 18:12:17 GMT -5
Yeah, but perceived prestige doesn't necessarily have anything to do with faculty. It could be a school pride thing. It could be a football fan thing. It could be a famous movie actor who went to school there and flunked out of all his classes. You can talk about trivialities, or you could look at general views like the USeless News and World Report's rankings of schools. They provide a much better perspective on the "general" view. But how much of it is about salary? Of the people I know who have moved in the way you talk, salary was not the motivation for moving. A better working situation is much, much, much more than salary. Moreover, even in those cases, the salary perks are commensurate with prestige, more than anything else, and I have never disputed that they are looking for a more prestigious position. A chaired professorship, for example, has lots of perks, in addition to the big salary. The biggest one is the easy access to resources, which makes work easier. You dang straight. In the same way that having a Nobel Lauriate at the university benefits the students, regardless of whether s/he teaches a single class. "We are the home of Nobel Lauriate Prof. Bleak" and "Prof. Schmoe just turned down a net million dollar package to start an Artificial Intelligence Center at UC-Davis to stay at our institution" are very strong selling points for the university development program, who use them to convince donors to give the university lots of money. Mainly because Berkeley BAs aren't competing against Texas Tech BAs for jobs. They are going to much bigger things. Because they went to Berkeley and not Texas Tech. Granted, I don't know a lot of humanities professors. OTOH, given the state of the system, I would guess that most are just happy to actually have a job in the first place. Any salary is better than the alternative that faces 95% of the field.
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Post by IdahoBoy on Jun 23, 2004 18:24:34 GMT -5
I don't know what it is, Pablo. I don't mean this to sound mean, because when the timing is right, I go back and re-read... but whenever I see your posts in an argument, my eyes glaze over and roll back in my head. I'll work up some courage and come back and re-read, but for now... if there is something that I need to respond to, IM it to me. Oh... and koholeikei... I would like to suggest that I work at UH and know of a lot of people that are glad Dobelle is gone, but are MORE worried about his potential replacement! However, he did seem to do ok as a president overall, but I've seen so many more that could have done so much more. Oh, I've also experienced that when the economy is down, enrollment at schools is usually increased. The economy has been down since Dobelle began.
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Post by 7thWoman on Jun 23, 2004 19:01:15 GMT -5
A chaired professorship, for example, has lots of perks, in addition to the big salary. The biggest one is the easy access to resources, which makes work easier. It sounds like you and I are in two very different environments. In my department, the Dean of the Division had to force one of our faculty to be interim chair for a year because nobody wanted to do it. The chair who had served the three year term before is coming back for the next two years, but demanded a year sabatical and several other perks. It has been widely whispered that the only reason he is coming back as chair is to get his name on the department's new building. We have several faculty who have not published a damn thing in 10 years, take vacation in the middle of the quarter when they're teaching a class, and only grudgingly agree to take grad students. Less than half show up for department meetings. If they're not in it for their paychecks, I really don't know why they come to work at all. I just don't see how that benefits most students in any kind of non-negligable way. I think you are very wrong there. I think most Berkeley BA's don't do anything more impressive with their degrees or lives than Texas Tech BA's. I don't think it matters much where you go for undergrad, especially if you don't go for a higher degree afterwards.
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Post by The Bofa on the Sofa on Jun 23, 2004 19:56:21 GMT -5
It sounds like you and I are in two very different environments. In my department, the Dean of the Division had to force one of our faculty to be interim chair for a year because nobody wanted to do it. Um, you are confusing "Chaired Professorships" with "Department Chair." They are separate things. Chaired professorships are usually honory titles that go only to the most distinguished of the distinguished. Things like "The Isaac Newton Chair of Physics" at Cambridge. They usually come with lots of money and prestige within the university. Chaired professors do things like hob-nob with the university president while sipping brandy on the university jet. On the other hand, the Chair of the Department is a $hithole job that basically no one wants to do because you have to put up with egotistical faculty who want you to give them everything. I gotta tell ya, if that is the case, then a lot of really, really smart people are wasting an awful lot of money going to Berkeley when they could just as well go to someplace a lot cheaper (and easier to get in to) Of course, it is not the case. Berkeley BAs do things like, "Get their PhD from MIT or Cal Tech." Texas Tech BAs, um, don't.
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Post by 7thWoman on Jun 24, 2004 12:33:44 GMT -5
I thought a chaired professorship might be something else. That's awfully rare isn't it? I think we have one in our department who is old enough to have emeritus status. I think he is basically just a name we can use to get money for some projects. I haven't seen him since the day he officially started here. The point I was trying to make is that my faculty don't seem all that motivated to help anybody, much less students. On the other hand, the Chair of the Department is a $hithole job that basically no one wants to do because you have to put up with egotistical faculty who want you to give them everything. No doubt. But it also has its perks. Our chair does not have to teach more than a class or two a year, there is a significant pay raise involved, the college throws some extra research money that way, etc. I would think that despite the $hitholiness of the job, it would be an important stepping stone of a faculty member's career of that faculty member truly cared about doing what is best for his/her department, the univeristy, and the students. Yep. Some do, sure. Certainly more than Texas Tech. But most people who go to Texas Tech have already decided grad school is not for them. It doesn't make the school or the faculty any worse. That's the problem with a lot of faculty, they think all of their students want to pursue a PhD or that they should want to. I haven't looked at the numbers, but I would expect that most Berkeley students do not go on to grad school. I don't think a Berkeley BA is going to get anyone anywhere a Texas Tech BA couldn't besides a competitive grad school.
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Post by The Bofa on the Sofa on Jun 24, 2004 13:08:08 GMT -5
I thought a chaired professorship might be something else. That's awfully rare isn't it? I think we have one in our department who is old enough to have emeritus status. I think he is basically just a name we can use to get money for some projects. I haven't seen him since the day he officially started here. The point I was trying to make is that my faculty don't seem all that motivated to help anybody, much less students. "Getting money for some projects" benefits the entire university, including the students. If they can use a guy's name to get donors to give money, that helps. It helps to create scholarship programs and build new buildings with top facilities. He doesn't have to teach a single seminar class to make a difference to the students. The university recognizes that the picture is far bigger than most people see, especially the students.
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Post by kolohekeiki on Jun 25, 2004 19:48:40 GMT -5
Pablo...thanks for clarifying everything through your posts because now I understand your point a lot better. Because I honestly weren't thinking about all those other factors either.
But I did know about the growing enrollment but the cutting back of classes and faculty. Because my friends and I were constantly talking about that issue that how is it that the enrollment is growing, but they are cutting back on the classes.
And please don't bring housing into this. Because I worked for student housing this passed year, and student housing is just overall messed up. I know that there isn't enough housing to house everyone, but I talk to lots of my friends that are RA's in the dorms and they said they had a lot of open rooms in the beginning of the year after housing said that all the rooms were full. The housing department at UH is just messed up and it really needs to get fixed and all the changes that they are making now are just really not necessary.
But Pablo, I fully understand your point a lot better now. I just wasn't going that deep into thought about the whole thing until you mentioned it.
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