All pay. Professors are overpaid. What is a "top" professor? When I was a grad student at UConn, I worked for a prof that was big news because he had a cover of a major science mag. His first assignment was Genetics 101, or whatever the intro number was (can't recall). I was excited. I said, "wow, you got genetics 101." I thought it would be a great way to introduce students to our science. Guy looks at me dead pan and says, "well, it's part of the job, so I have no choice." He viewed the teaching portion of his job as a pain in the ass, and he sucked at it. That is what you get at a "research" University. Screw the grant skim. Hire better teachers, not folks who have great CVs for . . . looking down a microscope and writing 50 page grant applications. I personally knew 2 dozen professors. Only a couple considered teaching to be anything more than an annoyance.
National average for professor pay is $55k. At top-tier research universities it's in the $70s. Here's my advice: if you want to earn money, do not go into Higher Ed. Post bachelors, you're going to need to do a decade's worth of apprenticeship until your degree, then there's post-grad fellowships and visiting positions (another 2 years), and finally entry level pay ($40k-$50k) for 7 years until tenure. That means you get tenure around 42 and have another 25 years to earn. In other words, you are much better off as a High School teacher.
But beyond that, the issue of professor's pay is practically irrelevant these days since it has gone down as a % of a university's costs largely because faculty have taken on more responsibilities than their predecessors and the schools have hired part-timers to fill-in. As for better teachers, one wonders how good a teacher can be if they don't put 50% of their efforts into research.
Again, you're running into the biggest problem. 30%-40% of a university budget comes in the form of research grants. Now, 60% of that money would be lost to the university if it eliminated high earning professors. [I can argue that the other 40% would not be lost to the school since grant funds are set aside for fixed expenses related to research and therefore are not fungible.]
Start with this one - "Urban and Community Studies." Finish by getting rid of the entire school of education. To be a good teacher, you don't need to study how to be a good teacher for 4 (five!!!) years. You need to know the material and have the skills to communicate them. Most people who are good teachers were born that way. The concept that you need a 4 year (five!!!) degree to teach 5th grade is monstrously funny.
Get rid of Urban Studies? That's your answer? I never took courses in this field, but as I go on in life, it strikes me as an immensely interesting one, and I would have loved to find the time to learn more. The design of urban centers for maximal use and livability seems to me a very important subject. I've even read books for pleasure on this subject from Urban Studies experts such as Richard Florida. My city -- Buffalo -- in particular, could use a bunch of people like Florida to advise it.
As for education, I don't want someone teaching my kids who hasn't had a well-rounded education. I don't care if they only took 8 courses in their subject, I want them to take a full 32 courses.
No doubt SATs are up and the students are more qualified in terms of grades. So what? I say it again - 1/2 or more of the kids at UConn don't need a college degree, won't get much out of it, will have the debt ride them for much of their lives, and would be better off not being there.
How much debt can they possibly rack up? $22k debt is not onerous, and that's the national average including private schools and for-profits.
I disagree. That's an artificial characterization. It's easy. UConn is for CT students. We don't need students from China. Most Chinese students are there filing TA/Grad rolls. If we can't find CT kids to fill those rolls, then shrink the programs.
This is incorrect. Most schools are bringing in lots of foreign students as undergrads because either their parents or their governments are paying the freight (and the freight is ABOVE the cost per student). In other words, foreign students = net profits. These students bring tuitions DOWN. That's the whole reason why schools are marketing themselves overseas.
There's no guesswork. It's a govt. institution. As such, inefficiencies are everywhere.
It's guesswork on your part. As though inefficiencies don't exist elsewhere. This message board is proof of inefficiencies all over the workplace. But by and large, with cutbacks, expenses have been cut to the bone. It's as though you believe after all the cutbacks, people are just sitting around. You couldn't be more mistaken.
Get rid of the major. If they can't offer a required course more often or give preference to the upper class, then sh-tcan it.
Then what will they teach? Get rid of all majors? This is happening in every program.
Threaten that. Watch how quickly the department "finds" a way to get everybody in the class.
I'm not sure you're getting it. You have a limited number of faculty. You have upper level courses that can ONLY be taught by core faculty. What you have is a bottleneck. One way to resolve this bottleneck is to eliminate the requirement altogether.
Penn State. Right now. My son is on track to graduate in 3 years. What don't you understand?
Chem E and Bio E. Not the slough majors like "Women's Studies"
First off, Women's Studies at the vast majority of schools (such as Penn State) is an interdisciplinary program without dedicated lines. You'll find Lit, History, Sociology and even Science courses listed as Women's Studies. These aren't departments. Congrats to your son, but I find your posts incredibly ironic since your kids go to Penn State, where the costs of attendance are double and even triple the costs elsewhere. At Penn State, students pay through the nose so they don't have to experience the sort of dysfunction other schools experience. I'm at a R1/AAU school where the tuition is less than a third of the tuition at PSU (we're sub $5,000 currently). If we charged what PSU does, we wouldn't have any bottleneck whatsoever, so I find it odd that you're pointing to a school with sky-high costs and tuition as a model. In most schools nationwide, the costs are not half of what they are at PSU.
You're part of the system. It's clear from your well-practiced, yet spurious reasoning. You go as the system goes. So you'll defend the system as is and argue for expansion and ever more funding.
Bullshit. I am a heavy critic of the system, and anyone who has been reading my posts here over time knows that.
The great college bubble at the end of the 1900s was funded by debt. It is collapsing, just like many sectors of the economy, because the debt bubble is collapsing. U.S. treasury debt got downgraded for the first time in history in July of this year. Anybody paying attention should understand that we are in a period of great contraction. UConn would do well to be clear that it's not time to get bigger.
