Larry Sabato Speaks Out on UVa Controversy
"This has given us our worst two weeks of publicity since I've been associated with UVa and that was 42 years ago. So it's been a disaster, it's been a national public relations disaster."
CARPE DIEM
Professor Mark J. Perry's Blog for Economics and Finance
Saturday, June 23, 2012
About Me
- Name: Mark J. Perry
- Location: Washington, D.C., United States
Dr. Mark J. Perry is a professor of economics and finance in the School of Management at the Flint campus of the University of Michigan. Perry holds two graduate degrees in economics (M.A. and Ph.D.) from George Mason University near Washington, D.C. In addition, he holds an MBA degree in finance from the Curtis L. Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. In addition to a faculty appointment at the University of Michigan-Flint, Perry is also a visiting scholar at The American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C.
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3 Comments:
Typical liberal statist Sabato...
Dumping one of his fellow travelers from the taxpayer subsidized trough that the U of Va feed at is a disaster?!?!
So then that begs the question, what are the following incidents?
Chopped liver?
Penn State Scandal: Virginia's Offer to Jerry Sandusky Shows Depth of Cover-Up
November 14, 2011
An "alarmingly large fraction" of the first-year class of economics graduate students at the University of Virginia were involved in a cheating incident that came to light this month, according to the department chair
June 30, 2005
158 students faced plagiarism charges
May 6, 2002
I wondered what this was all about, so I found this writeup of the situation. Apparently the board wants to cut costs and move online more, so they fired the popular President without much notice. I think the board is right about the general direction they want to go in, but they probably should have given Sullivan a chance to implement that vision. It seems that they decided to fire her without talking over with her the different direction they wanted to go in, which doesn't seem fair to her. On the other hand, given her past moves, I doubt she would have been the right person for the job and she probably disagreed with such a move, so the board ultimately may not have been wrong to just move quickly and remove her.
This case really does highlight why no existing university is likely to survive the transition online, because they move so slowly and they still don't realize that the environment around them has completely changed. For example, one big change that's going to happen is that academic research is going to be split off from teaching, as should have happened decades ago because the combination has always been a con, but the big complaint from the professors is always implicitly about research, never about how the quality of teaching will go down. That just shows how clueless they are, as they are about to face competition from online learning that isn't bogged down by such wasteful research budgets but will offer a much better learning experience than these "research" professors ever could. The universities are doomed and this kerfuffle is just one of the first warning shots before their demise.
Something is really rotten at UVA - and I am not convinced it is the Board at fault (Sure, how they did what they did seems to have been done poorly)
A WSJ OpEd today reminds us how administrative spending rose by 69% while that for teaching rose by 42% (not sure it this is all during Sullivan's tenure).
Universities are loath to change - quality falls while grades are rising - and people just want to maintain the status quo.
I am sure we will hear more as the sage unfolds - but whatever I have heard and read so far suggests to me that the Berlin Wall that certain parts of the faculty/administrative complex have erected is about to fall - and the entrenched do not like it.
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