4 ms·

I work at a well known public uni. We can get state and federal funding for anything that aligns with democrat political talking points. We cannot get funding f

I work at a well known public uni. We can get state and federal funding for anything that aligns with democrat political talking points. We cannot get funding for basic tech and projects. We have a program where students design and build actual tech related directly to their degree and future employment, and we have to beg people to fund us. The school nor grants will find us in any way yet we are entirely bound to all the unis policies. This often means we pull money out of our own pockets for super basic tooling and materials. Students simply cannot learn in such a restricted environment and often burn out because they have to spend days working around a problem that a $10 component is meant to solve. Those students are also required to work to even afford tuition. They have to take on a second external job to have any "extra" money to buy their own hardware with. Yet the uni absolutely preaches equality and opportunity. Again, democrat talking points. They do nothing to actually make that happen. We need to defund unis, and we should have done it 20 years ago. Across the board no more public funding, if it's worthwhile then private industry will fund it like they do for any other trade.

hfern 4y ago
So it seems that your complaint is that certain things are not funded enough at a university. Why is your conclusion then to defund universities entirely? It seems like a non sequitur.
- jimbokun 4y ago
  Replace a non-functioning system with a new functioning system. In other words, the "burn it to the ground and start over" approach.
  - idiotsecant 4y ago
    Burning a system to the ground is almost always the best way to turn a bad system into a worse one. Just like the junior devs impulse to tear out the bad code some other guy wrote and replace it with the differently bad code that they wrote. Refactor. Don't rebuild. The bigger the system, the more true that is.
    - devwastaken 4y ago
      People != Code. Code is logical, people are not. Cultures can only be removed, you will never convince a 40 year old woman working in education their whole life that their entire philosophy is wrong. They will continue to push their beliefs under the table. That's the poison that is naturally bred in public institutions. It's all politically motivated. Not that I vote for them but you can see how little of a dent Trump made because the institutions around them were actively undoing their work. Perhaps for good reason, however they were voted in by half the population. What we see for support in education is largely confirmation bias. If you put it to a public vote higher education would be defunded.
- devwastaken 4y ago
  Think of the whole picture. The why. If you hear how admins and the "inner circle" professors talk you start to pick up on how they run things. It's a bandwagon culture that believes they have a responsibility to be activists and force that upon students. There is no fixing that by just replacing leadership. The whole boat must go.
veilrap 4y ago
My experience in higher ed is exactly the opposite. Funding is quite easy to get for STEM research projects through grants and other research programs. Projects that just "align with political talking points" tend to be much more challenging to fund because there's significantly less money available in those domains. Economically, an educated populace produces positive externalities on society. As such it makes sense for the government to fund and subsidize it to some extent because it produces a good ROI for both the society and the individuals.
- colpabar 4y ago
  > Economically, an educated populace produces positive externalities on society. As such it makes sense for the government to fund and subsidize it to some extent because it produces a good ROI for both the society and the individuals. Sure, but we tried that, and tuitions are sky high and everyone is in tons of debt, right? Cutting all public funding may be extreme, but something obviously needs to change.
- devwastaken 4y ago
  Then your state may be doing something right, unfortunately here the students are not getting a quality education for the cost. We try but we can't pull $2000 out of our pocket every semester to have group projects or other students programs. Fun fact with many of the external programs is you are actually paying them to do it. Though it's a "grant" the institution wants you to fundraise to pay them. Yeah, no. Because of this most students never touch a project outside of classes.
SeanLuke 4y ago
bumby 4y ago
>Across the board no more public funding, if it's worthwhile then private industry will fund it like they do for any other trade. If you think university is solely vocational training, then this makes sense. However, that leaves a lot, including fundamental research unfunded. Research seems to suggest that reductions in public funding is the single most important variable in increases in tuition. I'd be worried that your proposal either exacerbates the problem or creates a whole new set of problems.
- devwastaken 4y ago
  Can't increase tuition if there's no public institutions. :). You can't fix the ship. The political culture is far too ingrained. This makes perfect sense when you realize that public means government controlled and funded. Of course it's going to be largely politically motivated. As an example there are now new required classes that preach about equality and white privilege with dubious accreditation. Not as a concept, but as a requirement of students. That's a real thing, I wish I were making it up. Be a fly on the wall in your admins offices and you'll want to scorch earth that system too.
  - bumby 4y ago
    Honestly, how would you propose to generate the political will to just get rid of public institutions? This sounds more like a libertarian pipe dream than a pragmatic solution.
    - devwastaken 4y ago
      Not all, just the ones we know no longer serve their purpose.
      - bumby 4y ago
        How, though? How would you garner the support to actually make it happen?
schlauerfox 4y ago
So Democrats fund institutions and Republicans want them to go away entirely, is what I'm reading from this.
- devwastaken 4y ago
  Not a republican, that thinking is exactly why we are here.
gamblor956 4y ago
I work at a well known public uni. We can get state and federal funding for anything that aligns with democrat political talking points. We cannot get funding for basic tech and projects. Uh huh. Totally believe you. Convenient of you to leave out the name of your school while trying to make a ideological point so that nobody can refute your claims. Apparently your school's tech program must be quite bad, if it's alumni are unwilling to donate to fund student's basic tooling requirements. However, it means your school can't be located in the Pac12 or California. Across the board no more public funding, if it's worthwhile then private industry will fund it like they do for any other trade. If you think that publicly funded schools are bad, you should look into how much worse privately funded schools are. (Here's a tip: you won't just be paying for your own tooling. The school will charge you for it at a huge markup.)
- devwastaken 4y ago
  Too bad, I don't want to be fired. The tech program is bad, it's bad because there is not funding and instructors are a revolving door due in part to that. We have private industry instructors hire on, look at the state of the institution, and run. The only things that can be even partially funded are classes and dedicated individual student projects. There is 0 budget outside of that. Alumni don't make enough to be contributing any significant amount of money. Programmers outside of Cali bubble economy are not making that kind of bank. I'm telling you the facts of what I've personally worked with and how students are being scammed by this system for political gain.
  - gamblor956 4y ago
    And I'm telling you that if your school was for-profit, it would be even worse. For-profit schools are significantly worse than non-profit schools in every way. And it seems that your real beef is that the taxpayers have decided not to provide adequate funding to the school for basic supplies. You should take that up with your fellow taxpayers, not the school.
    - devwastaken 4y ago

hfern 4y ago

So it seems that your complaint is that certain things are not funded enough at a university. Why is your conclusion then to defund universities entirely? It seems like a non sequitur.

jimbokun 4y ago
Replace a non-functioning system with a new functioning system. In other words, the "burn it to the ground and start over" approach.
- idiotsecant 4y ago
  Burning a system to the ground is almost always the best way to turn a bad system into a worse one. Just like the junior devs impulse to tear out the bad code some other guy wrote and replace it with the differently bad code that they wrote. Refactor. Don't rebuild. The bigger the system, the more true that is.
  - devwastaken 4y ago
    People != Code. Code is logical, people are not. Cultures can only be removed, you will never convince a 40 year old woman working in education their whole life that their entire philosophy is wrong. They will continue to push their beliefs under the table. That's the poison that is naturally bred in public institutions. It's all politically motivated. Not that I vote for them but you can see how little of a dent Trump made because the institutions around them were actively undoing their work. Perhaps for good reason, however they were voted in by half the population. What we see for support in education is largely confirmation bias. If you put it to a public vote higher education would be defunded.
devwastaken 4y ago
Think of the whole picture. The why. If you hear how admins and the "inner circle" professors talk you start to pick up on how they run things. It's a bandwagon culture that believes they have a responsibility to be activists and force that upon students. There is no fixing that by just replacing leadership. The whole boat must go.

veilrap 4y ago

My experience in higher ed is exactly the opposite. Funding is quite easy to get for STEM research projects through grants and other research programs. Projects that just "align with political talking points" tend to be much more challenging to fund because there's significantly less money available in those domains. Economically, an educated populace produces positive externalities on society. As such it makes sense for the government to fund and subsidize it to some extent because it produces a good ROI for both the society and the individuals.

colpabar 4y ago
> Economically, an educated populace produces positive externalities on society. As such it makes sense for the government to fund and subsidize it to some extent because it produces a good ROI for both the society and the individuals. Sure, but we tried that, and tuitions are sky high and everyone is in tons of debt, right? Cutting all public funding may be extreme, but something obviously needs to change.
devwastaken 4y ago
Then your state may be doing something right, unfortunately here the students are not getting a quality education for the cost. We try but we can't pull $2000 out of our pocket every semester to have group projects or other students programs. Fun fact with many of the external programs is you are actually paying them to do it. Though it's a "grant" the institution wants you to fundraise to pay them. Yeah, no. Because of this most students never touch a project outside of classes.

SeanLuke 4y ago

bumby 4y ago

>Across the board no more public funding, if it's worthwhile then private industry will fund it like they do for any other trade. If you think university is solely vocational training, then this makes sense. However, that leaves a lot, including fundamental research unfunded. Research seems to suggest that reductions in public funding is the single most important variable in increases in tuition. I'd be worried that your proposal either exacerbates the problem or creates a whole new set of problems.

devwastaken 4y ago
Can't increase tuition if there's no public institutions. :). You can't fix the ship. The political culture is far too ingrained. This makes perfect sense when you realize that public means government controlled and funded. Of course it's going to be largely politically motivated. As an example there are now new required classes that preach about equality and white privilege with dubious accreditation. Not as a concept, but as a requirement of students. That's a real thing, I wish I were making it up. Be a fly on the wall in your admins offices and you'll want to scorch earth that system too.
- bumby 4y ago
  Honestly, how would you propose to generate the political will to just get rid of public institutions? This sounds more like a libertarian pipe dream than a pragmatic solution.
  - devwastaken 4y ago
    Not all, just the ones we know no longer serve their purpose.
    - bumby 4y ago
      How, though? How would you garner the support to actually make it happen?

schlauerfox 4y ago

So Democrats fund institutions and Republicans want them to go away entirely, is what I'm reading from this.

devwastaken 4y ago
Not a republican, that thinking is exactly why we are here.

gamblor956 4y ago

I work at a well known public uni. We can get state and federal funding for anything that aligns with democrat political talking points. We cannot get funding for basic tech and projects. Uh huh. Totally believe you. Convenient of you to leave out the name of your school while trying to make a ideological point so that nobody can refute your claims. Apparently your school's tech program must be quite bad, if it's alumni are unwilling to donate to fund student's basic tooling requirements. However, it means your school can't be located in the Pac12 or California. Across the board no more public funding, if it's worthwhile then private industry will fund it like they do for any other trade. If you think that publicly funded schools are bad, you should look into how much worse privately funded schools are. (Here's a tip: you won't just be paying for your own tooling. The school will charge you for it at a huge markup.)

devwastaken 4y ago
Too bad, I don't want to be fired. The tech program is bad, it's bad because there is not funding and instructors are a revolving door due in part to that. We have private industry instructors hire on, look at the state of the institution, and run. The only things that can be even partially funded are classes and dedicated individual student projects. There is 0 budget outside of that. Alumni don't make enough to be contributing any significant amount of money. Programmers outside of Cali bubble economy are not making that kind of bank. I'm telling you the facts of what I've personally worked with and how students are being scammed by this system for political gain.
- gamblor956 4y ago
  And I'm telling you that if your school was for-profit, it would be even worse. For-profit schools are significantly worse than non-profit schools in every way. And it seems that your real beef is that the taxpayers have decided not to provide adequate funding to the school for basic supplies. You should take that up with your fellow taxpayers, not the school.
  - devwastaken 4y ago