UNIVERSITY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

We saw the developed world taken over by the Military Industrial Complex. In brief, industrialist start wars to make money—driven by greed. The people who work in the jobs created to make the tools of war say they do not want war but they still work in those factories. Therefore, can we conclude that the people want war? Are the people who line up with tears in their eyes to greet the coffins hypocrites? Is this relationship to difficult or convoluted to understand? Are well-paid construction workers spitting on “anti war hippies” the new norm? Well if you are like me, think that is all convoluted, and look for the government to get us out of this merry-go-around look at what is happening in higher education. The government is the problem; of course, it didn’t start that way. Industry bought the government with their profits from the war machine. Now they own the Universities too.

President Eric Kaler, University of Minnesota was invited to speak at the Department of Commerce not the Department of Education. This seems to most people to be a sort “so what” bit of information. Let me flesh out what has been going on. Why do I refer to him as a disaster for education? To start with, he was invited by the government to speak to a group of University Presidents—his job to spread the word. But, what was the word? If you work in his university your tenure, which in university lingo means your job, has a tech transfer component. Which means that you have to discover something and turn it into a business or help others to turn in into a buck; if you don’t you don’t have a job.  Did you know that as a professor of the University of Minnesota you could take a year off work to develop a business and retain your University benefits? You can work one day a week as a consultant to a business and still receive your University Salary and have the company you work for pay you as well. The faculty hand book does not tell you any of this; its in the fine print.

Nowhere in his speech to other University Presidents did he mention teaching students. Does he not care that there is no one waiting in the wings to be teachers? They are all researchers. Does it surprise you that industries, the very people responsible for this mess, hire foreign educated workers. Does it surprise you that if they hire researcher they get researchers and not teachers. If they reward researcher and not teachers guess where professors will put their efforts—it will not be on the students. What is the main purpose of universities and Colleges? If you think you pay taxes to have them there to teach your sons and daughters, you are wrong if you live in Minnesota, New York, and, and, and, and . . .