The Mid-Sized State University

As the higher education crisis grows worse I see more clearly the characteristics of the mid-sized state university.
  • Wish for respect
  • Lack of respect
  • Imitation of perceived grand characteristics of the grand state university
  • Long mission statement marking out all territory that might be useful in the future
  • Tolerance of salary inequity justified by a vague concept of market value
  • Insistence to have what real universities have: sports at high level, research, terminal degrees, highly paid administrators
  • Budgets out of control
  • Reduction of the institutional mission to one item: survival

Popular posts from this blog

Image
A Speech Delivered By A High School Junior 1927 Daughter of A Tenant Farmer Working The Land Near Millport Alabama Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Envelope
Read more

High School PE Taught Me How To Conjugate Verbs. Sort of.

Eleventh grade. A tough one. Acne. So on. Eleventh grade: English and PE classes and other classes I don't remember at the moment. English class was into verb conjugation. PE class was not into exercise because it was my turn for locker room duty--caged room with baskets to hold student stuff. So. Back to English. We had a book with lots of examples of conjugations. Each example was presented in two columns, one singulars and one plurals. Hour after hour I stared at all the examples and tried to learn the conjugations. Memorizing all the examples was tough. I would stare, close my eyes and try to remember what the conjugations looked like, and then open my eyes to check. I wrote the examples over and over. I was making progress. But. Test. An English test over these conjugations was coming up. In fact, on the particular day I am remembering the test was later that day. While protecting the PE baskets I kept pouring over the illustrations and I knew that I was making progress
Read more

Academic Conference in a Huge Bookstore and the Hidden People of Chicago

I dreamt last night that I visited Chicago. I was walking through a huge bookstore and came upon a group of people having a meeting. Turns out some academic group was holding its conference in the huge bookstore because they could not afford a conference hall. Anyway I stood and listened and figured out that the group was talking about the death of languages in universities (that really is happening all over). So the speaker finished and asked if anybody else had anything to say. I raised my hand and gave a contemporaneous talk on how I saved Greek at a school. All of it was a lie but the crowd liked it and gave me a good round of applause. I wonder if I can put that on my productivity report. Outside of Chicago I found a group of people behind a hillock. These people were completely cut off. I visited. They were friendly. I noticed that they moved everything by mule or by hand and then noticed that these people had no wheels. I wondered whether I should show them the u
Read more