BlogHer - Faculty self-interest trumps collegiality at the University of California - Comments

State colleges getting lost in the shuffle

klingtocash — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 01:32:00 -0500

In Connecticut, we are having a similar budget debate. Legislators are talking about sacrificing the state colleges while UCONN should flurish. Not everyone needs to go to the flagship university. The state colleges are essential to teaching students practical knowledge for their careers. It saddens me to see the way state colleges are thrown under the bus in favor of larger state universities. I am a graduate of one of those state colleges and was able to get a wonderful, practical education while not braking the bank.

Kristin

Helping you keep more of it

www.klingtocash.com

As California Goes

fittothefinish — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 07:45:58 -0500

This is really disturbing to me. It is unbelievably arrogant and completely astonishing.

Unfortunately, as California goes, so often goes the rest of the country.

Diane

lost 150 pounds and talks about it at:

www.fittothefinish.com/blog

In the south

Nordette — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 18:59:09 -0500

In the south, where we have legacy black schools due to segregation, we see similar scenarious played out, a willingness to let the "black" schools die with the belief they are inferior and provide no real public service. I suspect that if the black schools weren't here and the budget ax was falling, we'd hear similar comments about other non-flagship schools.

Loved your comment about lack of self-awareness. The arrogance is astonishing.

Nordette Adams is a BlogHer CE & you can find her other stuff through Her 411.

We're Grateful to Both Cal and UCSC: the State Should Be Too

Cynthia Samuels — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 17:27:35 -0500

As a parent of a Cal and a UCSC alum, I'm really -- well - I'm sitting here trying to even find the right words. Each of my sons got magnificent - and VERY different educations (suited to their equally different learning styles) and each helped to equip him to live in the world. The gift of a fine education to many of their classmates, who came after two years at community colleges because they couldn't afford UC for all four, or - literally - lived in their vans for a semester or two to be able to pay tuition - well - there's no way to measure what each UC has meant. All you have to do is go to one graduation and see how many kids are the first in their families to go to college, how many wear the clothing of the country they came from as they march receive their diplomas and the pride of both the parents - and the children -- of these graduates.

The UC system is one of the greatest things California has ever created and the elitism of these people makes me wonder what kinds of teachers they are if they don't understand that. All they have to do is come to a couple of graduations with their eyes open and their mouths shut to figure it out. How outrageous this all is. And sad. And shameful. OH - and did I say sad?

Cynthia Samuels, PartnerCobblestone Associates, LLPBlog and Media Strategies and Content Development Online and on Television

Don’tGel Too Soon

Here in New Jersey, we are watching California

Kim Pearson — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 14:52:23 -0500

We've just had a union vote on accepting a new agreement with the State of New Jersey that will lead to involuntary furloughs and deferred pay raises for state college faculty. Students are being hit with tuition increases, jobs are being cut and maintenance is being deferred. Because state colleges have autonomy, they are already on somewhat different tracks in terms of budgets and programs. On the email lists where we've been licking our collective wounds, someone invariably chimes in about how things are so much worse in California. Or North Carolina, Alabama or Colorado. In fact, as the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities recently found, 48 out of the 50 states are in crisis. The report says things won't likely get better until some time after 2012.

So expect the infighting to continue -- in fact, expect it to get worse. Of course the paradox is that a strong education system is critical if we are going to get out of this mess. So the question is what do we as citizens do?

KimBlogHer Contributing Editor|Professor Kim|

Heartbreaking To Read Academic Stupidity

Gena Haskett — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 13:44:15 -0500

This is straight up backstabbing, from the verb to shank. I read that letter three times. There is something Orwellian about it. Or Animal Farm. Or that story about the school boys on the island who devolve?

Item #1 about how they must explain to California tax payers about makes a UC education special for their children. I take it this does not include the parents or students of UC Riverside, UC Santa Cruz or UC Merced. It probably doesn't mean me either. I should probably stop striving to improve myself because, according to what they have written, since I live and work in California that does not make me a desirable potential student or citizen.

Oh, that the part about how American students who go outside of the state for an education tend to settle in the area of the institution once graduated?

Are they saying that in order to save the UC system get all the non-wealthy California students to go to Arizona, Utah or Texas and that way it would make more room for out of state/International students?

In their view this would bring $$$ to the state and then they would settle here and make California a better place? Because non-wealthy Californians are not worth California resources?

And dissing on TA's teaching and Temporary faculty who never wanted to be temporary in the first place? Priceless! I so wish to be a fly on the wall when they all meet for Fall 09 semester.

Gena - Out On The Stoop

Wow

Honeybeast — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 12:20:33 -0500

I'm flabbergasted by this! Even the mission page of the UC website "We teach" first, "we research" second and "we provide public service" third: http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/aboutuc/mission.html

Lunacy and megalomania indeed.

Faculty self-interest trumps collegiality at the University of California

Leslie Madsen Brooks — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 23:08:42 -0500

In a letter that has made jaws drop throughout the University of California system and in colleges and universities around the country, a group of 23 University of California, San Diego department chairs have called on the UC to--among other things--sacrifice campuses, specifically UC Merced, UC Santa Cruz, and UC Riverside, that value teaching as well as research. Wesleyan University Professor Claire Potter puts it best, I think, in her interpretation of the letter in her post "Sincerely Yours, The Department of Miserable Bastards,":

To put it in plain English for those of you who do not teach at a prestigious flagship, some people (you, for example) suck, other people (they) don't; hence, it can be determined some faculty have value and others do not. From this we can derive that some faculty are endlessly exploitable and/or can be discarded without any real harm coming to anyone important, such as students.

You are so right, Professor Scull, and I think you should just march right up to [UC Santa Cruz Professor and activist] Angela Davis and her [History of Consciousness] friends and tell them that to their faces. The one bright spot in this budget crisis, it seems, is that we can take the gloves off and be honest with each other about how we really feel. But I do want to say -- that was one heck of a run-on sentence, and before you row away in your little lifeboat, leaving the rest of the system to paddle around on whatever floats, you might want to get the Chair of the English Department on board.

The letter, which really you must read, was authored by UCSD sociologist Andrew Scull, who--I kid you not--researches the sociology of lunacy and megalomania. (Talk about lack of self-awareness.) Proving that sociologists just don't get, well, social interaction, the UC Los Angeles sociology department has joined in with its own letter, which, like Scull's, calls on the Regents and President of the UC to cut back on programs (or perhaps closely entirely) the three campuses Scull mentions in favor of campuses like UCLA, UC Berkeley, and UC San Diego. (Which leaves some campuses--like, oh, mine in Davis--in some kind of limbo, I suppose, limping along on life support as it struggles to develop technologies to, you know, feed the world and remediate environmental disasters in the making.)

Danielle Gaines cites a statement University of California President Mark Yudof made to the Merced Sun-Star:

"I am 100 percent behind Merced, Riverside and Santa Cruz, and do not see the call to reduce expenditures on those campuses, beyond their proportionate share of the systemwide deficit, as a solution to our budgetary ills."

For more discussion of Scull's letter and the respective UC campuses, see Margaret Soltan's post at University Diaries and the comments on it.

The truth is, all campuses have something to contribute as teaching and research institutions, and cuts should be distributed proportionately across them. Merced's budget is tiny compared to UCLA's, just as my salary as a UC staff member is small compared to a department chair's at UCSD or UCLA. And just as the furloughs and pay cuts are being distributed on a sliding scale, with lesser-paid administrative staff losing a smaller percentage of their salary (say, 4% to 6%) than better-paid faculty (7% to 10%), the larger campuses should have more cushion in their budgets to take a bigger hit during a financial crisis affecting the entire system.

There are also issues of equity to California's growing populations of young people of color, who are tragically underrepresented at the University of California. Writing in La Prensa San Diego, Jorge Mariscal upbraids Scul for wanting to close those campuses that have the highest enrollment of underrepresented students:

As the privatization of the UC continues (UCSD, for example, is a public university in name only with only 6% of its budget coming from the state), more out-of-state and international students will be admitted. This has been a shift desired by some for several years now. The mission of the UC that says we should be serving the people of California is sacrificed on the altar of revenue flow.

UCSD then becomes a finishing school for out-of-state students from rich families and affluent foreigners. The University of Michigan, now almost fully privatized and being talked about as a model for the new UC, currently enrolls more international students than Mexican American students.

Once the three “elite” UC campuses make the transition to being in essence private schools, working class and minority students will slowly disappear from their classrooms. Again, this is already happening due to increased tuition (which Scull supports) and enrollment caps. But if UC were to adopt Scull’s plan and wipe out the campuses with the most underrepresented students—Riverside and Merced—you accelerate the process.

Throw in the California State University system and the California Community College system, both of which are underfunded, and the picture of higher education in the state becomes even more complicated, particularly as regards working-class students, non-traditional (e.g. older) students, and students of color. Asking to be removed from the cuts because the academic research you do is somehow more important than the work being done elsewhere to educate first-generation college students is just arrogant.

What are your thoughts?

When she's not blogging, Leslie Madsen-Brooks, Ph.D., coordinates programs for UC Davis's Teaching Resources Center, which has taken its share of cuts. In 2009-10, she'll be using her 16 furlough days from the University of California to promote learning in other organizations.