The Return of Movie Friday

Last night, I went to see Serenity at the IMAX theatre at the Telus World of Science.  This stand-alone film is a spin-off of the much-loved SF-Western TV series created by Joss Whedon, Firefly.  I love that series, and had watched the movie a couple of times on my home TV.  To be honest, I had been underwhelmed.  But I decided to go in order to see if viewing in a (REALLY) big screen made any difference.

Short answer:  Yes.  I highly recommend seeing this in a real theatre if you have a chance.

Here is the trailer:

Dare to Dream

When I received the e-mail below earlier today, I thought of our now-retired blogger-in-chief, Jeremy Richards.  What say you, Jeremy?

Also, am I the only one who finds these "ACTION REQUIRED" subject lines on e-mails from Central extremely annoying?

Ruh Roh

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign made an offer to Steven Salaita, then rescinded last August it after he made several intemperate tweets regarding Israel's bombing of Gaza.  The university has stonewalled all attempts by Salaita to learn who may have influenced this decision.  A judge has now ruled that they must provide the requested documents.  Could get very unpleasant for UIUC.

University CEO Pay

With respect to the previous post ("Is There Anything the Modern University President Won't Do for Money?"), here is a column from Frank Bruni in today's New York Times on the alarming trend of escalating salaries for university presidents.  The huge paycheques and golden parachutes awarded to people like Yale's Richard Levin ($8.5M lump sum retirement nest egg) or Ohio State's E. Gordon Gee ($6M cash-out package) make me wonder what our own fearless leader will take with her when she departs this summer.  By the time we find out, she'll be long gone, and it will be water under the bridge.  But how many times must our BoG throw huge sums of money around for upper administrators, while doing everything they can to screw the rank and file faculty of AASUA before we acknowledge that these people are both incompetent and evil?

Is There Anything the Modern University President Won’t do for Money?

The title to this post is the tag line of Erik Loomis' takedown of NYU for its abysmal labour practices in Abu Dhabi, where it is building a branch campus.  This is the logical outcome of the "internationalization" that we keep hearing about.  In the end, always follow the money.

What's the Point of a Professor

Mark Bauerlein, an English professor at Emory, wrote a New York Times op/ed criticizing what he identifies as the deteriorating level of commitment to educational rigour demonstrated by today's faculty members.  It's a fairly fatuous piece, and this retort from Erik Loomis at LGM nicely highlights its deficiencies, including a significant excerpt from a much longer diatribe by the Tattooed Professor.  As they say, read the whole thing.

It Can't Get Much More Blatant than This

Here is an article on the bankruptcy filing of for-profit Corinthian Colleges, outlining the way they used the tuition money paid by duped students (and coming from taxpayer-funded student loans) to influence the political process so as to shut down any enforcement of regulations design to prevent the scams they were permitting.

Question Answered

In response to my previous post, I would say that after last night's rout the answer is a definitive "Yes, yes he should."  The main argument senior University people have implicitly made for cozying up to the PC party is, "They're the only ones who will ever hold power, so we should do what we can to placate them so that they don't nuke our budget."  That worked really well a couple of years ago, didn't it?

Anyway, having publicly rebuked the NDP, Goss now needs to step aside for the good of the University, and let someone who does not have his baggage take over on the BOG.

Should Doug Goss Resign?

Paula Simons raises questions about the appropriateness of Doug Goss' public involvement in yesterday's ooga booga scare story from some local captains of industry regarding the negative impact of electing an NDP government.

I have to agree that this level of political activity is very unseemly in a Chair of the Board of Governors.  He is entitled to his views, but then he should probably step away from his position.

Bye Bye, Jeremy

You will be sorely missed.

The Other Side of the Coin

The previous post pointed out that tuition increases can be blamed more on the exponential growth of the administrative costs of public universities, rather than on dwindling government contributions.  However, that is not to say that there is not a widespread belief among conservatarian politicians that government should get out of the education business, and leave that essential activity to the invisible hand.

In Illinois, an influential state legislator has floated a proposal to "start a serious discussion" about university privatization.  This comes on the heels of what Forbes has described as a "stealth privatization" campaign around the US.  All of this can be seen as a deliberate turning away from the principles of an egalitarian society that drove the idea of making university education available to all deserving students regardless of means or background.  Looking at the way the government of Alberta has handled the advanced education budget, it seems clear that our own politicians harbour similar views.

My youngest is in high school, with high grades and a full RESP, so I'm not worried about his education no matter what.  But I worry a lot about talented kids coming up who may find themselves priced out of a university education.

Contribution of Administrative Bloat to Tuition Inflation

Here's a article by Paul Campos in today's NYT discussing the role of uncontrolled administrative growth in the rise of public universities' tuition.

Update:  Campos contributes to an interesting blog called Lawyers Guns & Money, that I have linked to in several previous posts.  Here is a post by him related to his NYT piece, that includes graphs and further analysis.

We Are Not Alone

Lots has been written on Whither and elsewhere about our entitled President.  This "overpaid CEO" mentality has seeped into academe over the last few decades as boards of regents/governors/whatever decide that private sector ways of operation are bound to give superior results.  If the result being sought is a handful of poster children for the Peter Principle soaking up untoward resources, then yes, mission accomplished.

Anyway, it seems that the problem is pervasive, as seen in this story about U. California.

MOOCs as Shock Doctrine

Here we have a great post from Erik Loomis at the Lawyers, Guns & Money blog on how "disruption" of public education via the MOOC model is just another example of the classic privatization grift we have seen play out again and again.  The question is, do we passively allow it to happen, or do we actively resist?

Transit

The New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority recently announced that they were raising subway fares to $2.75, provoking a fair amount of hand-wringing about the cost to riders.  This is for one of the world's great transit systems.  Fortunately, here in Edmonton we pay much less for our somewhat modest transit.  Oh wait.