The founders of this “school” are selling themselves as rationalists and critical thinkers offering a path to success in the secular world in a way that Qanon* and Xtianist cult leaders don’t (they try, but as with most cults they’re implicitly or explicitly demanding blind faith).
Outside of the usual grifts that have more to do with fundraising than enrolling students, there’s not much of a business model here. There are only so many wingnut welfare job openings out there. Most non-religious right-wingers with $25k+ to drop on a year of full-freight tuition are going to spend it on an accredited institution that, if it doesn’t provide an education as you or I understand the term, at least spits junior out with some job training and a pretty diploma (and, if it’s a name-brand school, the all-important parental bragging rights).
[* I also don’t consider Qanon cult to be fully secular. There’s a lot of barely veiled Xtianist anti-Semitic and messianic BS baked right into that particular crazy cake.]
I was specifically responding to the “such rich tenure packages in decades past” section of thomdunn’s comment; because that suggested that tenured faculty were, at least in the past, actually raking in nontrivial cash; when it was my understanding(and recent-ish numbers seemed to confirm) that tenured faculty typically earned fairly modest salaries given their qualifications, especially the ones without much demand from industry or non-teaching medicine; and the big perk was high stability(and an applicant pool self-selected to view the option to work in their discipline as highly rewarding).
I’d certainly expect people with nearly ironclad job security to be paid a bit less than at-will or explicitly temp/contractor; but my question was really just whether there had ever been a period when tenured faculty earned more than a respectable but unthrilling professional salary; or if the main hook had always been stability; and the modern change was just the increasing use of various flavors of people who do faculty stuff; but have the job security of expendable temps and could probably earn more if they made it to ‘manager’ at the local fast food place.
“Keep Austin Weird” was always about supporting the local culture and arts scene.
Which… AFAIK failed miserably. Almost nothing that was a part of that actually exists in the city to my knowledge anymore save for maybe some old hippies who cashed out and moved to Dripping Springs or the hills.
New suggested slogans:
Greenwash Austin
Make Austin Suck More
I CAME HERE TO OWN LIBS AND ALL I GOT WAS 3k/MO RENT IN A CONVERTED MOTEL THAT SMELLS LIKE CHEESE AND NATURAL GAS
Not sure why this reminded me of it, but my department has a professor who meets with all new faculty to make a career development plan. I’m a non-tenure track assistant prof, so I was discussing the frustrations of my applying for lots of jobs that had 200 applicants for a single position. His response was that he’d never had to apply for a faculty job. His adviser arranged for his first hire, and then a department chair he knew offered him a better job. It was pretty shocking, and his advice boiled down to asking why I was waiting in line out front rather than having one of the old boys club let me in through the side door.
Destroying that “system of privilege that has been dominated by white male boomers” is necessary, and like so much else requires those that have been exploited by it working collectievly to demand change. From my personal experiences (including both parents and one sibling working in academia), the lack of tenure jobs is not due to a lack of school-wide funds*, though, but rather its a means to maintain control by the administration and the priveleged few old guard.
*inidividual departments are often squeezed for every penny, but that is a way to help keep people in favor of changing the power distribution from having the means to do so
It is, but not explicitly so. They can’t sell it that way to parents and prospective students. They have to pretend that they’re a free-thinking and rationalist and inclusive secular alternative to “liberal” academia while providing the same ROI as normal colleges. That’s how they can get “moderate conservative” creeps like Cardinal Douthat selling the idea in the NYT.
Compare with Bob Jones and Liberty (both accredited by the SACS, a body that seems determined to dilute its brand). Those schools are offering the Xtianist parent an extension of their child’s sheltered parochial or home schooling experience, giving the kid a simulacrum of a college experience and job training and a credential that’s at least recognised by Xtianist employers. Shady though it may be, there’s a non-grift business model there that isn’t present here.
It can be, but as I said there’s a very strong infusion of Xtianism in the Qanon version of the Blood Libel.
Yep. And guess whose applications go to the top of the pile… Ivy leaguers all.
yeah. That’s the way it used to work. But now we’re being told by people who got their jobs that way that it’s OUR fault that we can’t get a position anywhere.
Which is great for people who can be part of the old boys club. It sure as fuck doesn’t include me.
Right. The money is going to centralize things like advisement, and to hire new administrators.
They don’t’ have to. These are people who are using rationalism as a stand in for white supremacy. People who want to promote the idea of the meritocracy that just only happens to push white men to the top.
It’s filling the same niche as religion, it’s not explicitly religious. The distinction matters.
This is a fair point. I suppose I was referring more generally to the fact that it used as an excuse to cut costs over here, in a way that comes at the expense of workers’ rights and academic progress, and I fully expect UATX’s libertarian financial approach to exploit things in a similar fashion.
This is more the thing I was referring to. When I lived in Ithaca, NY, there was a huge discrepancy (in income, and perspective) between the tenured Cornell professors who lived in the area, and the adjuncts who were hanging around with other opportunities but to hope to get a shot at tenure some day.
My wife just started teaching at a per-class basis, and she had initially sort of figured out $30 as the average hourly wage. But I think she was also being fairly conservative on how much time she would spend on prep …
Yeah, you can phone that shit in, but for those of us who actually care about having classes that people can actually learn from (which is the goal of course, not just people getting a grade), you do have to spend serious time crafting lectures and assignments. I’ve settled on a project based approach, so I try and model that in my lectures.
I also tend to underestimate my hourly work when I’m budgeting things for project. God damn moral compulsions to do good work and provide the best experience for the people I’m working with!
If he’s paid enough, he will. Surprisingly he campaigned against Brexit. When he lost he said that he’d actually been pro Brexit all along but was doing a favour.
The NYT gave a glowing review to his Kissinger biography, then had to retract it the next day as he’d managed to get one of his ghost writers on the book to do the review.
He regularly says that Keynes couldn’t care about the future because he was gay and therefore not having children this means his economics is worthless. When it comes out he says that he’s totally not homophobic, one of his beloved children is gay. Then when he thinks the cameras aren’t rolling at some right wing nut job event he’ll say it again.
Niall Ferguson: insert money, out comes any shit you want.
I’m hoping that people won’t see where I attended The (fully accredited) University of Texas at Austin and confuse it for “UATX”.
I’m guessing they’ll just start their own accreditation board and certify themselves, Rand-Paul-style.
There are entrepreneurship courses (I don’t know about degrees as such, besides business) out there – without thinking too deeply about it (though perhaps I should), it seems like they equate “entrepreneur” with “bold thinker”, as though the only way to be the latter is to be the former.
This would’ve seemed heretical to me and those close to me not long ago, but honestly, the longer I’ve been away, the less I regret leaving. For years we kept telling people “we’ll probably move back there, someday, hey maybe in a year or so” but now everyone knows otherwise. It didn’t help that El Azteca, Milto’s and Ruby’s all closed; before that I genuinely wondered when the city was going to run out of water.
