cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/1806644
Archived version: https://archive.ph/nFSSK
Archived version: https://web.archive.org/web/20230823162005/https://therealnews.com/this-public-university-just-announced-massive-layoffs-is-all-higher-ed-at-risk
Higher Ed in red states is at risk. Of course, that’s the outcome that red states vote for. Oh no! It’s the completely predictable consequences of our very own actions!
West Virginia was a reliable blue state until the 2000 election. Maybe if democrats focused on helping workers instead of bourgeois scum, they wouldn’t constantly be terrified (or even at risk) of losing elections?
I’m fine with red states basically being the dumb manual labor slaves the US has always wanted.
“Made in Oklahoma by children labor”
Works for my blue-state-ass.
VOTE!!
“Slavery is okay as long as it takes place out of sight and materially benefits me!” — liberals
Hexbears need to be sure to explain “liberals” don’t mean left-wing, as it is commonly (and inaccurately) understood.
“Left-wing” is pretty vague. I’ve seen people say things like “now I’m as leftwing as they come, which is why I support sending tens of billions of dollars to Ukrainian Nazis! Slava Ukraini!” Under the capitalist mode of production, there are communists, liberals, and fascists. That’s pretty much it.
That’s a pretty narrow minded.
Not really. You either support capitalism or you don’t. And if you do support it, you’re either comfortable with its nastier aspects (genocide, slavery, the annihilation of the human species via climate change), as fascists are, or you find those aspects uncomfortable, as liberals do, though they aren’t an issue for you if they’re kept out of sight. Is there some other group I’m missing here?
I don’t like capitalism, but I’m not a communist. 🤷♂️ I must not exist.
Liberals already make it very clear that they aren’t left wing, do you think barely-regulated capitalism is a left wing position? Do you think constant warmongering is a left wing position? They’re garbage at actually doing anything concrete besides spending money on weapons.
Sounds like you like cheering for blue team though.
Only hexbears know this. Lol. If you ask any righty on the street “are you liberal” they’ll say “hell no I ain’t no commie democrat. “
And when most people say “own the lib” it’s usually meant to mean lefties.
So use whatever words you like, but successful communication is more important than proper vocabulary.
vibes based politics lmao
Back to those communication skills.
We are going through a demographic transition, a pinch in the hourglass. It will be temporary but painful, and the other side of the pinch might not be as big as it once was. Our population is aging.
It’s kind of crazy that our research apparatus is tied to how many students happen to be enrolling. World class universities is what makes the US economy so strong. From the tech to the biomedical industries, it’s not “the free market” that has boosted the economy, but being leaders in publicly available government funded research.
Yup. R&D is a matter of national security, too.
While I agree, the cuts need to happen and they need to be purely targeted at administration which exploded over the boom years.
We had massive growth and very little of that revenue made it to either research or actual teaching.
Fire the admin staff from education and healthcare, we need to make those sectors work again.
It’s the facilities costs that have truly exploded in the past couple of decades. Every university is in an arms race to build the biggest, most advanced campus possible. They’ve forgotten that their goal is to be a place of study and instead they’re trying to have world-class architecture so they can woo students. Students would go there so long as the damn programs are well run and they have a good reputation.
Just stop the gigantic capital projects and suddenly you’ve got plenty of capital. Hmm.
Yeah, that’s true throughout education, down to the local school level. Medicine too.
The economics aren’t really that tied. A lot of universities have research arms that are not tied to their undergraduate population. It might need a graduate student population to oppress, but undergrads are rather worthless.
Undergrads are the revenue generating portion of the university
Not really. Universities make a lot of money off research and the research helps more with prestige ratings.
Grant money from researchers is a drop in the bucket. That money mostly goes to flesh out laboratories with fancy equipment and pay for research assistants.
I finished my PhD in 2016. Since then I have shifted to industry, a move largely prompted by seeing the absolute shit state of academia at the moment (in the US).
It’s no longer a meritocracy. It’s all about who you know (or who you don’t), and in that sense, it’s no different from industry. But salaries are looking inflated given the differential between industry and academic workloads. It’s only a matter of time for academic institutions to enshittify as if they were private-sector entities, because most are effectively run like private-sector entities at this point.
I did my graduate work at a top-tier public university in the US. Most of its funding is now from ridiculous tuition rates and other ways to nickel and dime its students. Its administrators make money like a private c-suite.
When was it ever a meritocracy? It’s always been about who you know.
Honestly, I think higher ed is more at risk because the people on the top keep skimming for more funds, leaving everyone below struggling. Pay your faculty, staff, and working students (grads and undergrads) well.
Very few faculty and staff make high salaries. But the facilities costs are insane. Universities could do just fine without building another $50 Million dollar building. Growth for the sake of growth needs to stop. If that happens, then suddenly tuition costs would be under control.
State subsidization has also dived off a cliff. Why would they when they know people will take out loans to make it up? (Neoliberal answers only!)
Colleges act like Scientology in the states. Equating education with how much money you’ve handed them.
Meanwhile anything can be learned online, but it counts for nothing because corporations treat purchases credentials as the only legitimate form of “education”.
Ah yes, I’m sure the formal training received by doctors, nurses, lawyers, teachers, and engineers is just an over-hyped “education” that can all be replaced by online MOOCs.
There are real problems with education, especially with the costs, but “anything can be learned online” is the worst take I’ve heard in a long while.
Medical professions have hands-on training that can’t be replaced online.
You can get a teaching degree or an engineering entirely online, do you think those are not legitimate?
If someone can pass a calculus test after watching YouTube videos and doing practice tests, why should that count for anything less than someone who got the same score on a test from in-person courses?
Remote learning became a lot more common during COVID, like it or not, it’s becoming normal. Unfortunately, test scores only count if you pay a lot for those courses. Free MOOCs teaching and testing the same content will not count, even if afterwards the people passing can demonstrate the same exact knowledge.
Just because you can get part of your education remotely or through self-learning didn’t mean “anything can be learned online”.
And if you were hiring a math tutor for your kid, would you prefer a self-proclaimed expert from watching YouTube videos or would you want someone who got a degree from a credentialed university? And even if you don’t care, why are you surprised that others would be skeptical of the YouTube expert?
Remote learning can be fine for some things, and self learning through informal channels are also fine, but it’s not a full on replacement for formal education in all cases.
Math can be easily tested, if they can pass a calculus and algebra test that is comprehensive, why would I care how they learned it?
Because part of a higher education degree is actually talking with people.
Which you can still do with online classes.
For one, you can have a second screen and Google the answers. It’s a little bit harder in person.
I’d really like to see a system of online learning where extension offices are built out into testing center networks. This still disenfranchises people sadly, but staves off some existential questions about what passing an exam even means now.
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Anything can be learned online, with enough drive and determination
But if you’re that powerful: why bother learning from others? You could simply leave and create your own community called name’s Gulch.
No sorry, that’s just fundamentally false. You can’t just learn titration techniques from watching a video. You can’t learn phlebotomy without an instructor watching you do it to a patient. Hell, you aren’t learning how to drive a car from playing a video game.
And I’m not sure where you are pulling the “if you are that powerful” from. You really have an ax to grind don’t you.
And I’m not sure where you are pulling the “if you are that powerful” from.
(The preceding comment was a parody of Great Man ideology)
Yeah, but the pain isn’t going to be universal. For profit universities aren’t doing well already and I expect them to do worse over time. I expect a lot of non-profit private liberal arts universities to go bankrupt unless they turn into foreign student visa centers. There will probably be some consolidation of public universities, but nothing really bad.
I expect college to get a lot cheaper as the available student pool doesn’t recover from the millennial echo boom.
I expect college to get a lot cheaper as the available student pool doesn’t recover from the millennial echo boom.
“The market will self-correct,” I tell myself, despite all evidence to the contrary (the total lack of an incentive for monopoly capital to lower prices in a bourgeois dictatorship). “The market will self-correct. The market cannot fail us. Only we can fail the market.”
No, probably just in the US and other collapsing countries
