🚀 go-pugleaf

Dan Alt emitted:
>         Unfortunately, that doesn't work either, because the "frisbee
> throwin' guys on the quad" have no way of making the trustees look bad.
> The trustees are men in suits.  The only people they need to impress
> are other men in suits.  They can do so by pointing to their grant money
> and technology transfer.

More to the original topic of Dave Auston quitting, I heard today
something rather interesting.  Evidently, back in the 1960s or 70s, the
University came pretty close to going bankrupt, and the Trustees largely
took over the President's responsibilities to keep the school afloat. 
Since that time, the Trustees have traditionally been worried about
their bottom line rather than improving quality of education or the
student experience in general.

The person who told me this suggested that perhaps the Trustees were
trying to broker a deal with UH behind Auston's back, and he got fed up
with being a figurehead.  Honestly, I wouldn't blame him for quitting if
that were true, though I'd probably go out with a much bigger bang :)



>         You're right about saying that the only way to get improvement
> is to get "student" into the formula.  There's just no way to do that.

At the trustee level?  You're right, probably not.  The further up the
totem pole you go, the more greased it seems to get.  It's probably
designed that way for easier insertion....  8P

At the local level, though, students could conceivably become more
involved in the "process", but it generally involves making enemies out
of various members of your department's faculty.



>         Speaking as one of the faculty, however, I would say that in
> general, the individual faculty are not the problem, any more than an
> individual drop of water every drowned any one.  It's the institutional
> CULTURE that is a problem.

I'd agree with you there, for the most part.  Still, there are some
faculty who really take it as part of their job to protect what they've
built up around themselves, just to make sure that things stay easy for
them.

Visualize whirled profs - down with tenure!  :)

Barry Drennan