People who know how to extract the most money in salary from a university also know how to extract the most money from students. It's a win - win.

Forget not this.

That's a great model, Crid.

I think the problem is credentialism still holding in our society.

It's stupid.

If you don't practice credentialism, you might be able to get far better employees. The woman who edits me now was a longterm addict who had a felony charge who had gotten her life on track and was living in a "sober living" and doing babysitting to supplement her writing when I hired her. I just looked at her writing and thinking -- I didn't even pay attention to where she'd gone to college or whether she'd finished. She's fantastic and has great integrity and I love her -- she's worked for me for three and a half years now and always has my back.

I had kids just out of Harvard apply for the job when she did. (The woman who works for me was starting over in her mid forties, not starting out.) I am so, so lucky that I don't give a shit about where you went to school and what your pedigree is.

We have Griggs v. Duke Power to thank for that. It leaves employers with almost no legal means of judging the suitability of an applicant. For younger applicants who don't have a work history, college degree and a criminal background check are about it. (And state laws are eliminating the latter.)

I think the problem is credentialism still holding in our society.

It's stupid.

That credentialism is also self-defense for businesses against lawsuits alleging that their hiring/promotion practices are biased against certain classes of Protected Persons that you would have little chance defending against.

As far as the contract goes, some of the delicate women folk in Hollywood who cry about being unfairly treated should take note: if you write the best contract and get the other side to agree, you can make out like a bandit.

Cousin Dave: yes, "ban the box" seems to be popular.

No, it's cool, admins should keep the high salaries and schools can just hire underpaid adjuncts instead of actual researchers to fund the aforementioned admin salaries.

Chapman's suggestion is way below market rates. You don't just pay their current wages. And especially not for a short term contract situation like that. Double the full time hourly rate is traditional for people of that level. You have to account for benefits as well as facilities. If you were to contract them out with the classroom 5-10x hourly rate is normal.

At the rates Chapman suggests you won't find many takers since everyone would have gone bankrupt before too long.

"The more college focuses on stuff apart from actually teaching students, the less value it has."

Oddly enough this applies to research too. The terms colleges demand for using their research or even their personnel are equally generous as that administrators salary. The typical agreement is you pay for everything and they take all the profit. There are only two reasons I know of that any business goes to a university for research. One, it can act as a long term job interview for employees. Two, vanity project. As for useful commercial work there is no reason to talk to the schools.

I only finished college because I knew, back then, that some people have a prejudice against people who haven't, and I didn't want it to handicap me when I went for my first job.

I left college because:

- Wrong fit for me; another college may have been better

- Boredom

- Ludicrous cost

- The MLM marketing aspect (was mostly being taught/graded by grad students, who were paying for the privilege of doing the college's work)

Plus the allegiance to the institution was like high school "school spirit" on steroids. I wanted to go to class and resume my work/life on the rest of my time, not center my whole life on the place.

"Credentialism" -- never heard that before. I like it.

"The last year and a half has been very difficult for the victims of Larry Nassar, for the university community, and for me personally."

Yes, how difficult it must have been for her to be so inconvenienced by all the covered-up reports of raped teenagers. ~ Amy

Well, just when you've gotten that last pesky report covered up, another one comes along. That's gotta be exhausting.

Like the Penn State scandal and the Roman Catholic Church scandal, somewhere along the line, protecting the institution took precedence over protecting the people the institution was supposed to protect. It's a common failure of entrenched bureaucracies - like universities, churches, and the Communist Party.

"I wanted to go to class and resume my work/life on the rest of my time, not center my whole life on the place."

The school I went to was widely regarded, at the time, as a "commuter school" with a lot of "non-traditional" students. There were people who were already working in local industry, as technicians, assemblers, welders, inspectors, etc., who were working on a degree so they could get promoted into professional jobs. There were professional pursuing graduate degrees, and there were older women who were taking classes to come back up to speed in their fields after taking time away from work to raise children. A lot of classes were taught in the evening, and many of the instructors were people who worked in industry and taught one or two classes in their areas of expertise.

I liked it. The close connections to industry kept everything grounded, and the older students were good influences on the younger ones. There were a lot of people who already had degrees, and you could talk to them about their line of work and where their education had taken them. Very different atmosphere from universities (including this very same one) today. And tuition was very reasonable; I earned enough money from working as a co-op student to pay for my tuition and a cheap apartment.

But she loves her life and goddamn it, she deserves it! Why should she take responsibility for what happens on her watch when she can so easily reap the rewards and (somehow?!) justify herself as a victim in all this? That’s some mental gymnastics right there - see? She’s a victim, just like them! As a former competitive and collegiate gymnast I can tell you, the abuse is real: sexual, physical, and emotional. Here’s the next tie-in, many families hope their children can gain access to a less financially expensive college education via an athletic scholarship, so it is a whole feeder system. Young people end paying far too much one way or another.

"The last year and a half has been very difficult for the victims of Larry Nassar, for the university community, and for me personally."

Gee, lady, you're just not very smart. You only believed what others told you about events and processes at your school. If the coffee was hot, all was well.

Too bad you didn't tell Nassar to claim he was Muslim.

But the system is working for you, not the students, exactly as designed, so there's that.

That's a great model, Crid. ~ Amy Alkon at January 26, 2018 5:51 AM

Assembly line education is taking a hit with micro schools. No reason something similar can't be applied to higher education.

Are you sure that's Lou Ann Simon and not Garrison Keillor?

In any case I'll do the job for $350k, flat fee. MSU, call me.