Comments on: The end of state universities http://www.almostgotit.com/2008/10/07/the-end-of-state-universities/ So, kids are mostly raised & I've just gone back to work... Tue, 03 May 2011 14:46:12 -0700 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: A Little Tea or Something http://www.almostgotit.com/2008/10/07/the-end-of-state-universities/comment-page-1/#comment-1908 A Little Tea or Something Wed, 08 Oct 2008 02:14:21 +0000 http://www.almostgotit.com/2008/10/07/the-end-of-state-universities/#comment-1908 Frank DeFord (NPR sports commentator, SI writer, author) made a brilliant proposal a few years ago during one of his radio spots. It was, simply, to move college football programs out of college athletics departments and into the realm of campus entertainment. Pay the athletes; buy them fancy BMWs; put them up in shi-shi housing; hire prostitutes for them---whatever. Just don't do it on the academic dime. The result, he contends, would be athletics departments that exist for actual athlete-scholars. I think you're spot on. In the performing arts world we like to beg the government for money so we can continue to ply our trade. But state-sponsored art is usually horrid. Executive directors of various performing arts institutions like to make pretty much the same curtain speech when the house lights go down: ticket sales account for only a small percentage of this company's budget. Some grant monies are often mentioned, but in the end, it's usually private benefactors keeping things afloat. A good development director is worth his/her weight in gold. Frank DeFord (NPR sports commentator, SI writer, author) made a brilliant proposal a few years ago during one of his radio spots. It was, simply, to move college football programs out of college athletics departments and into the realm of campus entertainment. Pay the athletes; buy them fancy BMWs; put them up in shi-shi housing; hire prostitutes for them—whatever. Just don’t do it on the academic dime. The result, he contends, would be athletics departments that exist for actual athlete-scholars.

I think you’re spot on. In the performing arts world we like to beg the government for money so we can continue to ply our trade. But state-sponsored art is usually horrid. Executive directors of various performing arts institutions like to make pretty much the same curtain speech when the house lights go down: ticket sales account for only a small percentage of this company’s budget. Some grant monies are often mentioned, but in the end, it’s usually private benefactors keeping things afloat. A good development director is worth his/her weight in gold.

]]> By: Florinda http://www.almostgotit.com/2008/10/07/the-end-of-state-universities/comment-page-1/#comment-1906 Florinda Tue, 07 Oct 2008 22:21:05 +0000 http://www.almostgotit.com/2008/10/07/the-end-of-state-universities/#comment-1906 Tennessee's reliance on sales taxes as its main revenue source will always keep it behind the curve. Your point about the perception that a state university exists mainly to field (serve?) a football team definitely applies to the school in question. I moved away in 2002, but I knew plenty of people who lived and died by the Vols but had no connection to the university at all. During my son's freshman year at UTK, I mentioned his scholarship to my brother-in-law, and he responded "I didn't know he played football." He was joking, but he had a point - a "football school" tends to be more about football than school. (My son didn't play football, but he did get his engineering degree in 2007.) The flagship universities of a few states (Pennsylvania and New Jersey come to mind) are private, and I think you make some good arguments in favor of that. Tennessee’s reliance on sales taxes as its main revenue source will always keep it behind the curve.

Your point about the perception that a state university exists mainly to field (serve?) a football team definitely applies to the school in question. I moved away in 2002, but I knew plenty of people who lived and died by the Vols but had no connection to the university at all. During my son’s freshman year at UTK, I mentioned his scholarship to my brother-in-law, and he responded “I didn’t know he played football.” He was joking, but he had a point – a “football school” tends to be more about football than school. (My son didn’t play football, but he did get his engineering degree in 2007.)

The flagship universities of a few states (Pennsylvania and New Jersey come to mind) are private, and I think you make some good arguments in favor of that.

]]> By: Mr. Budd http://www.almostgotit.com/2008/10/07/the-end-of-state-universities/comment-page-1/#comment-1905 Mr. Budd Tue, 07 Oct 2008 21:57:13 +0000 http://www.almostgotit.com/2008/10/07/the-end-of-state-universities/#comment-1905 Most people also do not realize how little there is to cut at Tennessee universities after a series of major cuts in the 90s and earlier in this decade. I manage a large academic department at one of the state campuses. Ninety-two percent of our budget (which is about half of what Coach Phil Fulmer makes in a year) is for faculty salaries, another 2% is for our miniscule staff (3 poorly paid--but excellent--budget and secretarial staffers for a dept. with 23 faculty members, 7 lecturers, 280 undergraduates and 75 graduate students), the paltry remaining 4% goes to operations. So where are you going to cut without cutting out real faculty and staff, thereby decreasing the number of courses that your daughters and sons will be able to take, thereby making classes bigger (and we already have five fewer faculty members than we did three years ago). If anyone thinks, by the way, that these faculty members are lazy because of tenure, and that they should be working a lot harder, I will happily meet him or her any time of any day to show them what goes on in my department where most faculty members work a lot more than 40 hours a week. They win international awards for their research, they bring home teaching awards year after year, and they are in the classroom with your children day after day. They do all this, by the way, for signficantly lower salaries than even other SEC schools pay. And yes, we probably are going to become essentially private within my lifetime. Other public universities--e.g. Virginia--are already there. The only way anyone at any state university can hope to grow a department or program is by raising private money. No one in public education thinks that states are ever going to give more than the ever diminishing sums they are giving now. The day is coming when they will give us nothing. Most people also do not realize how little there is to cut at Tennessee universities after a series of major cuts in the 90s and earlier in this decade. I manage a large academic department at one of the state campuses. Ninety-two percent of our budget (which is about half of what Coach Phil Fulmer makes in a year) is for faculty salaries, another 2% is for our miniscule staff (3 poorly paid–but excellent–budget and secretarial staffers for a dept. with 23 faculty members, 7 lecturers, 280 undergraduates and 75 graduate students), the paltry remaining 4% goes to operations. So where are you going to cut without cutting out real faculty and staff, thereby decreasing the number of courses that your daughters and sons will be able to take, thereby making classes bigger (and we already have five fewer faculty members than we did three years ago).

If anyone thinks, by the way, that these faculty members are lazy because of tenure, and that they should be working a lot harder, I will happily meet him or her any time of any day to show them what goes on in my department where most faculty members work a lot more than 40 hours a week. They win international awards for their research, they bring home teaching awards year after year, and they are in the classroom with your children day after day. They do all this, by the way, for signficantly lower salaries than even other SEC schools pay.

And yes, we probably are going to become essentially private within my lifetime. Other public universities–e.g. Virginia–are already there. The only way anyone at any state university can hope to grow a department or program is by raising private money. No one in public education thinks that states are ever going to give more than the ever diminishing sums they are giving now. The day is coming when they will give us nothing.

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