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I've been part of universities for 9 years from undergrad to PhD. I was only able to reflect on this system after I left. Universities always have been a syste
by mo_42 3y ago
I've been part of universities for 9 years from undergrad to PhD. I was only able to reflect on this system after I left.
Universities always have been a system for selecting people who can keep it running in the future. So the first day as a freshman kicks off a test of serveral years if you're a fit. That's why we have different levels of degrees. People can drop out without much sunk costs. Otherwise only very few would try this journey and then the base for selecting good people would be low.
What I mean with good people who keep it running has changed a lot.
Historically, universities didn't have to justify themselves much. For governments, it was obvious because they provided knowledge gain, and, primarily, they provided well-educated people to work for the government. So universities selected the best people because they would become the next generation of teachers or drop out as educated governmental workers.
Nowadays, the government and the public want to see research results (for funding) because this is supposed to be the purpose of universities. I think this is a misunderstanding and universities took part in creating it. So the people universities select for now are still good students but also ones that play by the new rules and crank out as many papers as possible.
My main obstacle during the PhD was to adapt to a research style of looking up fashionable topics in the research community, writing an incremental paper und publishing it. My advisor even objected against some ideas because they're too risky.
- AtlasBarfed 3y agoYou're complicating things. Modern univ is run by sociopath MBAs that financialized institutions. They only care about getting in money. Prestige / paper numbers is secondary.
- leansensei 3y agoWith this bogeyman MBA figure you are postulating, you are oversimplifying.
- AtlasBarfed 3y agoOk I'll expand. If you haven't been living under a rock, you know that the cost of upper education has exploded over the last 3-4 decades. Tuition has increased far above inflation, while endowments have exploded. And yet, these are nonprofit organizations. There are no shareholders, no private ownership. Salaries are being heavily depressed in professors as financialization of departments results in humanities studies being axed. Teaching is either TAs or the rise of the minimum wage professor: the adjunct. There has been an arms race in facilities, but that does not explain all the increase. So: WHERE DOES THE MONEY GO? Every college professor will tell you that administration has exploded in size. Wait, these colleges basically functioned perfectly well without huge administration orgs. WHy are they there? Because they, who spoke MBA to the rich benefactors (aka former captains of induasty) inserted themselves. And of course any MBA of any place anywhere, be it nonprofit charity, corporation, or administrator of a college, in the last 30-40 years has seen their pay dramatically rise. A "CEO" of a charity used to be ... a charity. They'd get paid peanuts. Now it's pretty routine for a substantial charity director to get paid millions. Because of course they are so valuable and amazing that they need high compensation to "retain" them lest they take their amazing talents to corporate world. College administrators get to point to the fundraising and tuition increases and the overall revenue increase to show their amazing abilities and how they need to be retained with high six figure or seven figure salaries, otherwise clearly the university would fall apart.