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 . . .
No comments:
Post a Comment