UVA
Updating yesterday’s post that used the firing of Teresa Sullivan, president of the University of Virginia, as a jumping off point for thinking about why we think rich people know how to do everything, the Post gets to the bottom of why Sullivan was canned.
Besides broad philosophical differences, they had at least one specific quibble: They felt Sullivan lacked the mettle to trim or shut down programs that couldn’t sustain themselves financially, such as obscure academic departments in classics and German.
This at the university founded by Thomas Jefferson. I’m sure he never supported the study of classics!
For the all incredible damage they’ve done to the world, one thing we can count on from billionaires is for them to overreach, sucked in by their own hubris and self-importance. And that’s what happened here, to the point that the damage control may be too great for Sullivan not to come back. Although perhaps I’m being optimistic. But at least we are having conversations about the incredibly problematic ways universities are run today.
Again, what do real estate developers, hedge-fund billionaires, and business partners of governors know about higher education? Almost nothing. Probably not more than the average student with a master’s or law degree. But because they are successful capitalists, our society lauds them as having the answer to all our problems. And if there aren’t real problems, the capitalist appointees will make something up in order to pursue their ideological agenda of running our universities in the same manner as their businesses–which have plunged the nation into a 5-year stagnation and left our national standard of living essentially unchanged for two decades while creating levels of income inequality not seen in 90 years. That’s not even to mention the fact that colleges and universities are some of our biggest union-busters, whether it is outsourcing any work that can be privatized, using violence against students protesting for economic justice, destroying tenure-track labor, and slicing apart collective bargaining agreements.
Another point worth making here is the problems with governor appointed Boards of Trustees for public university systems. Because these often operate as prestige positions for big fundraisers, governors, whether Democratic or Republican, name their friends in the business community to them. These positions may seem symbolic, and often were in the past. But they can have a tremendous amount of power over the university systems. Ironically, at the same time as state legislatures are deinvesting in higher education, the Boards of Trustees are using their power with ever-greater authority to force through changes rich business people want to see. Like getting rid of any major that doesn’t directly lead to employment within the capitalist system and in fact might lead students to question society–Classics, German, Philosophy, etc. It’s only a matter of time until they come after History.
No German department? Scheiss darauf!
Best comment on a WaPo thread ever (quoted in full…so sue me):
That’s a superb bit of snark, but what’s driving the move to oust Sullivan isn’t Biblical fundamentalism, but market fundamentalism. And unlike Biblical fundamentalism, which is essentially a sin of only one of our major political parties, market fundamentalism can be found in them both.
As I note downthread, Helen Dragas, the head of the Board of Visitors and the organizer of Sullivan’s ouster, was appointed by Democratic Governor Tim Kaine.
I smell a Berube.
In the past the Board of Governors at UVA got in a twist because the school was offering an adult education program (I think it was only at the Wise campus) that lead to a Liberal Arts degree. Yes they were upset because the degree had the word “Liberal” in it.
Interesting that the business types on the board think cutting costs by getting rid of classics is a good idea. Loyola University of Chicago was in financial trouble some years ago and considered cutting small departments like classics but, rather than letting cost-cutting MBAs run the place into the ground, they got a new president in 2001 who was shrewd enough to leverage their real estate assets so that now they have new sources of revenue AND a classics department.
Vulture capitalists like to present themselves as business geniuses but if all they know is how to cut costs, they are incapable of creating and sustaining either a business or a university.
At a medieval university you had your choice of law (canon or civil), theology or medicine.
We’ll be down to business, engineering, and medicine soon enough.
The new schoolmen are in the schools of business, and the departments of finance, calculating afresh how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
No society where taxation is something you can get a degree in is worth saving anyways.
We’ll be down to business, engineering, and medicine soon enough.
The new trivia.
It’s so awesome that one of the justifications actually used “proactive” as one of the meaningless buzzwords. I’m fired, aren’t I?
That’s the paradigm we are working with.
Let us think outside the box about how to disincentivize the inefficiencies of the backward looking departments in favor of the proactive going-forward areas of study.
Reviewing your input leads me to suggest that the value-added path might be: replace paleontology with Palin-tology.
They want to cut Latin and German so that no one will ever know that “dis incentivize the proactive paradigm” means absolutely nothing.
Tax cuts for the rich leave the rich with too much money, at the expense of the rest of us.
Jack-up their tax rates to Kennedy-Johnson levels, and, with what left, they can choose to either throw their money at political campaigns, or endow colleges.
And they should only endow departments, and chairs, on things they know something about:
-Theft.
-Tax evasion.
-Screwing your partners/investors.
-Marketing highly risky derivatives as ponies and unicorns for everyone.
-Negotiating with state and federal government to your advantage.
-Fleecing taxpayers.
-Outsourcing/Insourcing for cheap labor.
-Gambling.
-Advanced hubris.
-Finding creative CPA’s.
-BSing corporate boards for salary and power.
-Golden parachutes, and how to maximize them.
-How to ask for large bonuses after abject failure.
-Chutzpah.
-Countries without extradition treaties.
And leave the “soft” and “social” sciences alone.
Btw – GERMAN? WTF? Instead of Chinese, we may all be speaking German in the decades to come – depending on what happens in Europe in the coming months/years.
Not certain this is still true, but German used to be significant for the study of medicine. So when you find yourself shopping for specialists and the degree on the wall is from UVA, walk away, friend.
Further examples of why the “run it like a business” model is so very wrong for public services generally and education in particular. As I have repeatedly said, business schools are where minds go to die.
Also ironic that the guilty men (and one can be almost certain that they are men) may well describe themselves as ‘conservatives’.
But what would Russell Kirk or William F Buckley have to say about the philistinism on display here?
However their modern heirs are far too busy obsessing about teh gays and the threat they pose to our vital fluids to even notice this.
They’d say nothing. Their team is winning, and besides, those who care for such things can purchase them on the open market, without subsidy from the dead hand of the State.
Related.
“The UC regent[appointed by the Governator] whose pension fund overhaul may have cost the university billions [while enriching financial consultant cronies] is now in a position to play with even more of the public’s money.”
I’m sure with some poking and prodding, there’s more of the same to be uncovered
Much like the failures of capitalism in the first Gilded Age, failed capitalists in the second Gilded Age are consistently rewarded if they have the right friends.
Wow. I’m so old I can remember right-wing assholes bitching about students taking Women’s Studies classes rather than studying Platoanaristotle, the foundation of western yadda-yadda.
The real foundation of western yadda-yadda is in the B-school.
They paved Allan Bloom’s grave and put up a parking lot.
The Department of History will be replaced by the Department of Why America is Awesome.
What’s happening to American higher education these days is analogous to what occurred in the last century in Russia and China: the destruction of institutions of high culture in the name of radical theories of political economics. Then it was the New Socialist Man who was going to be created by a drastically ideological educational system, now it is the Entrepreneur. The old civilization must be destroyed. In both cases, the only cognizable justification for education is vocational, which is ironic since the Soviet economy hardly benefited from all those poorly trained but politically correct engineers and our prosperity is not obviously furthered through the endless proliferation of marginally literate business majors.
Capitalism is the last secular ideology.
The propaganda was poor and detrimental and in some cases antiscientific, but I don’t think you give the Soviets nearly enough credit for bringing so much education to so many people. Generally people experienced in such matters give grads from the USSR a lot of credit in science and engineering and math.
There weren’t that many places to learn before the revolution.
And they were not accessible to nearly as many people from as wide a range of social backgrounds. The free university systems, open to all who qualified (while they certainly had flaws), were one of the real highlights of the Communist countries.
To be an Entrepreneur now you have to first go to a school of entrepreneurial studies.
“Wenn ich Entrepreneur höre, entsichere ich meinen Browning!“
This is the first place that I’ve seen it noted that Helen Dragas, who led the fight to oust Sullivan, was appointed by Democratic Governor (and later DNC Chair) Tim Kaine.
Right–the Democrats have not been any better than Republicans on this issue. When I was in New Mexico, Bill Richardson appointed a horrible BoGovs that then chose a president who declared open warfare on all good things UNM has going for it. The damage to the school may be beyond repair.
The all-jolly-knowledge-workers-together-into-the-future wing of the Democratic party — and it’s a big one — is if anything worse, because they believe, whereas for the others, it’s transparent whoring after the almighty dollar.
Bright, modern, practical people with our best interests at heart…
Overall, I have to say the Dems in Montana really have been much better than the Republicans, though that may mostly reflect the pre-Neanderthal nature of Montana Republicans.
I don’t doubt that they have been better overall…but have they been much better for higher education? This is an honest question; I know nothing of the politics of higher ed in Montana.
Generally, yes, though not unambiguously (this is one of the areas where Schweitzer falls down).
This is unsurprising given how horrible most Democrats are these days on education issues.
Schweitzer generally falls down on most economic issues. He really is Max Bauchus on most of those.
It’s only a matter of time until they come after History.
Indeed, the groundwork for this has already been laid.
German is now an “obscure academic department?” Or is that just written atrociously?
German programs are getting slashed across the country.
As a U.Va. alum I find this perversion of the University’s mission sickening. The German department is one of the finest in the nation. Jefferson himself ordered the Classics department to be among the first established. (The Rotunda was constructed to reflect his belief that the more earthly scientific pursuits, such as chemistry and biology, would occupy the lower levels, while the true Enlightenment subjects of the mind, such as philosophy and Classics, occupied the highest floor–not that Helen Dragas, Mark Kington, and Peter Kiernan know this, or if they did, would give a flying fuck.)
And Dragas wants someone who will “make the hard spending decisions necessary to keep U-Va. competitive in a volatile higher education marketplace”? Really? You’d be hard-pressed to find a good student in the whole frigging Commonwealth, or for that matter the entire Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, who isn’t at the very least interested in the University as either a first or second choice. It has always drawn huge numbers of students from PA, NJ, and NY whose parents wanted an Ivy-caliber education at half to a third of the cost. The chances of that changing were somewhere between zero and zero. But I guess nobody expected a real estate developer, a VC, and a hedge fund parasite to start throwing their weight around. Goodbye, Mr. Jefferson. Hello, Mr. Dimon.
I’m not surprised at that. But I’m not sure how it could be considered obscure.
Obscure in the special sense of ‘doesn’t draw corporate support’ or ‘isn’t accompanied by a tied funding stream from a foundation’ or ‘not a competitor for DoD money’.
Obscure?
I don’t use it.
I am very important.
Therefore, it isn’t important.
Maybe if you get rich you can be this stupid too.
Maybe if the Germans succeed in repossessing Greece, Italy, and Spain this idiot will want someone who can talk to them? Who knew the Eurozone crisis might save American higher education. We can save Classics by insisting the Italian bankers still speak Latin.
It’s a shame that the conservatives will never have the opportunity to read it in the original German.
Here in Texas exactly the same thing is going on. Last year the principal at James Bowie Hiigh School in Austin cut Latin and German but left three assistant band directors and all of his fifteen admins. Oh, and Agricultural Sciences, in a school where “agriculture” means maybe growing a couple of tomato plants. I long for the days of the old school tie sorts who believe in classical learning. We shall not see their like again.
Apparently people missed the article in the WaPo listing each of the board and who appointed them. Yes, Dragas was appointed by Kaine. Please note though, just because a person is appointed by someone leaning one way or another doesn’t necessarily preclude they too lean that way. That Gov may have just been trying to “balance” things as it was. Also, things happen and who knew when he appointed her things would get this bad in the economy and for this long. All too often people reduce budgets to the point where it takes forever to recoup what is lost. People can be so short sighted when looking to the future. Pity they couldn’t see this woman actually had a plan beyond their comprehension. They will never know, but they are soon to see how much damage they’ve incurred trying to “fix” things. We’ll see how many cards fall from this house of cards. There’s also the possibility this woman had an ax to grind. After all, she went on this “mission” months ago speaking individually we each of the board, 1 on 1, never at meetings . . . sounds like and ax to me.