3 ms·

Budgetary Hemlock

18 points by robg 16y ago

_delirium 16y ago
An odd additional factor is that philosophy departments are actually quite cheap, and at many schools turn a profit (see e.g. http://www.today.ucla.edu/portal/ut/PRN-bottom-line-shows-humanities-really-155771.aspx http://www.today.ucla.edu/portal/ut/PRN-bottom-line-shows-hu...). Their faculty earn relatively low salaries, grad students are paid little to nothing, and there is no equipment to purchase or maintain. They're so dramatically cheaper than some other fields that the total expense is often actually less than the tuition charged for the credit-hours they teach.
- michael_dorfman 16y ago
  Obligatory joke: Dean, to the physics department: “Why do I always have to give you guys so much money, for laboratories and expensive equipment and stuff? Why couldn’t you be like the math department? All they need is money for pencils, paper and waste-paper baskets? Or even better, why aren’t you like the philosophy department? All they need are pencils and paper.”
tomjen3 16y ago
That makes sense, seeing as most philosophy isn't that useful. Let the students read some Socratese, some Stoic, some John Locke and some Aristolean writings - that should enlighten them enough.
- jbooth 16y ago
  Huh? If you're having the students read that, presumably with a professor to direct discussion, isn't that just having a philosophy dept?
  - yummyfajitas 16y ago
    A philosophy department is the waterfall approach to teaching philosophy. You come up with a plan for how many students you will have in 10-30 years, hire professors to teach that number of students, pay about 2x the necessary cost so the professors do research as well [1], and hope your big design up front works. With this plan, you incur huge fixed costs for very little benefit, and impose big limitations on your future choices. Instead, you could go lean. Hire some PTLs, pay them no benefits, just a lump sum per class. If enrollment drops next semester, you cut the number of classes and don't renew their contract. Don't pay them for research at all. [1] A heavy teaching load is 4+4. That's 12 hours of classtime/week, maybe 20-30 hours of actual teaching related work. This typically gets full time pay, great benefits, and "can't get fired" job security.

18 points by robg 16y ago

An odd additional factor is that philosophy departments are actually quite cheap, and at many schools turn a profit (see e.g. http://www.today.ucla.edu/portal/ut/PRN-bottom-line-shows-humanities-really-155771.aspx http://www.today.ucla.edu/portal/ut/PRN-bottom-line-shows-hu...). Their faculty earn relatively low salaries, grad students are paid little to nothing, and there is no equipment to purchase or maintain. They're so dramatically cheaper than some other fields that the total expense is often actually less than the tuition charged for the credit-hours they teach.

michael_dorfman 16y ago
Obligatory joke: Dean, to the physics department: “Why do I always have to give you guys so much money, for laboratories and expensive equipment and stuff? Why couldn’t you be like the math department? All they need is money for pencils, paper and waste-paper baskets? Or even better, why aren’t you like the philosophy department? All they need are pencils and paper.”

tomjen3 16y ago

That makes sense, seeing as most philosophy isn't that useful. Let the students read some Socratese, some Stoic, some John Locke and some Aristolean writings - that should enlighten them enough.

jbooth 16y ago
Huh? If you're having the students read that, presumably with a professor to direct discussion, isn't that just having a philosophy dept?
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  A philosophy department is the waterfall approach to teaching philosophy. You come up with a plan for how many students you will have in 10-30 years, hire professors to teach that number of students, pay about 2x the necessary cost so the professors do research as well [1], and hope your big design up front works. With this plan, you incur huge fixed costs for very little benefit, and impose big limitations on your future choices. Instead, you could go lean. Hire some PTLs, pay them no benefits, just a lump sum per class. If enrollment drops next semester, you cut the number of classes and don't renew their contract. Don't pay them for research at all. [1] A heavy teaching load is 4+4. That's 12 hours of classtime/week, maybe 20-30 hours of actual teaching related work. This typically gets full time pay, great benefits, and "can't get fired" job security.