Jacquelyn Gill responds to a stupid comment by Gov. Scott Walker. He has a ‘solution’ to the state budget crisis.
Last week, you told professors at the University of Wisconsin that they needed to “work harder.” You were making a case that the Wisconsin state budget crisis could be ameliorated by increasing employee efficiency, and you suggested having faculty teach at least one more class. I’m not going to talk about whether or not the budget crisis is manufactured (some have argued it could be solved by accepting federal funds for the state’s Badger Care health program), or whether your real goal is really partisan politics, and not fiscal responsibility.
I have a better idea, Governor. It looks like governors only manage one state. If we could double up and get them to cover two states, we’d halve the cost of the executive branch. Easy! Don’t worry, though, I wouldn’t ask you to double your workload — I don’t think you’re doing so well with what’s already on your plate — so instead, we’ll just have Governor Mark Dayton of Minnesota take over Wisconsin, too. We’re reasonably happy with him, he doesn’t seem to be owned by the Koch brothers, for one thing, and we sure don’t have the labor unrest you do.
It’s such a little thing, a state, and such a small favor to ask, that governors just do one more thing. One more tiny little addition to their workload. Such a tiny addition, that we wouldn’t even bother to increase their compensation — they’ll be happy to do extra work for free, because they care so much about the citizens of their state…errm, states. Well, Scott Walker doesn’t, but normal governors do.
(Gill takes a different tack and explains that university faculty already have a pretty heavy workload and casually implying that they’re lazy is offensive and wrong. That’s entirely true. I’m in my ‘light’ semester right now, only 2 courses instead of 3, and what that means is that I use that tiny bit of extra time to work on revamping a course. I’m trying some different things in genetics this year, to do a better job of improving the competence of the bottom half of the course, and that means I’m reworking all my lectures. Add another course to my load, and that means I’ll have less time to make classes better.)
That’s not really possible P.Z. A village only really needs one idiot.
Taking one more class is not like managing two states. I would have expected a better analogy from you PZ, not one that can be dismissed out of hand.
Gee, sounds straightforward and correct to me. But then, I did teach for a while. What do you have against teachers? You think they are lazy?
I do think most of them can do a little bit more work. Not all have a great work ethic and try to make their classes and coursework better. My personal experience is that half of them continue with their outdated stuff years on end and other large group recycle their stuff with minimal improvements. So when PZ or Jackie writes a blog against Walker’s proposal, they are unnecessarily covering other professors’ asses.
Before I chickened out and became a programmer, I taught and it has left me with respect for the work all teachers do and with a decided inclination to go all Papal on the noses of those who denigrate them!
That same criticism could be applied to every profession ever. Luckily, faculty workloads are managed by the faculty themselves, rather than anonymous commenters on the internet.
richardelguru,
Nice, I hope that catches on. It’ll be a nice legacy for this pope.
Gee, an evidenceless view, not worth the time to post it. If you won’t back your view with evidence, why should we, who have taught and know how much time it really takes, give it any consideration?
Funny, I could have said the same thing about governors. Just replace classes and coursework with states. What was your problem with the analogy again?
Also, how is it a state like California with 30+ million people and a huge area needs the same number of governors as Wyoming? Clearly California demonstrates that we need at most 10-12 governors for the whole country.
I’m pretty sure you just described the entire Republican platform.
You mean, unlike our dear Gov. Walker, who has such a great work ethic that his jetting around trying (and failing) to look presidential doesn’t at all cut into his duties of actually running the state that he’s governor of?
Because Walker’s effort to ostensibly create jobs by cutting taxes for the wealthy is the very essence of innovation, right? Not to mention his “bold, fresh” campaign trail ideas of “tightening the border” to control immigration (I can’t believe that nobody’s thought of that, yet!) or “bringing the fight to ISIS” (all those air strikes we’ve been conducting are apparently just passively letting ISIS have their way, huh?)
Whose ass are YOU covering, I wonder…
Why don’t you show me, with evidence, that the basic knowledge for the courses they were teaching changed in those years. I taught general chemistry and introductory organic chemistry. The knowledge for these courses were static, and trying to introduce advanced concepts would cause issues with the non-majors, and be ultimately counter productive.. Now, more advanced courses….
Scooter also needs to submit to a drug test if he wants to keep getting government money. don’t worry Scoot, if you test positive the state will provide a list of treatment centers you can enroll in.
Please, can Governor Dayton take on Illinois as well? Or at least the northern half of the state? Total land area wouldn’t be much different from Texas or Alaska and it’s already a known fact that it doesn’t take much work or intelligence to govern those states.
Your title should read “why did you elect this Scott Walker dope THREE TIMES?”
I’d actually expect there to be rather more crossover of duties than there is with teaching, so it should work better.
Also, I find it unlikely that someone with the ISBN of a bible for their user name is here in good faith.
15 – What does Bible ISBN followed by xxx have to do with this conversation?
Right now at Cal Poly, the college of science and math is doing a big push to get the students studying more, reminding them that they need to spend 25+ hours a week studying. (Two ours out of class for every hour in it.) I’ve found that’s about how much time I need to prep a course*. Even more if I have to grade an exam or homework (I have a grader for problem sets, but he’s getting paid too. If anything, relying on a grader costs more, since I have a salary and he has a wage).
Then add in that professors who are not lecturers like me have to maintain a research program, preferably one that has students doing things, and general advising and meeting stuff. PZ isn’t just studying zebrafish because they’re cool, but I imagine the UMM wants him involving students and teaching them research skills and providing advise as a senior in the field.
* It’s a bit faster for courses I’ve taught before, but, yes, I do change things around. And not just because I’m a novice teacher. Plus, if I’m lucky, I leave enough time to run through it in my office.
I thought that was pretty much answered already. It has to do with jefrir finding it unlikely that you’re here in good faith.
Besides, come on, it’s not every day that you see a real Bible code.
Now your turn. What exactly makes you think Walker’s idea is a good one? Or is that not something you’re actually willing to argue?
Well, SUNY tried making some of its presidents manage two colleges, so the analogy is not farfetched at all. By the way, it ended in pretty much a complete disaster, because taking someone who already has one full-time job and giving them more to do really doesn’t work very well.
This is also part of a pernicious attitude that if you love your job, like teachers are supposed to, you shouldn’t mind the low pay and long hours and extra service. No. It’s a job. Loving your job is a nice benefit. Knowing you’re doing good for people is a nice benefit. But there is an entire subculture devoted to telling people why they should stick with the low-paying service job they have rather than telling people and society that jobs should be paid what they’re worth.
jefrir: You have ISBNs memorized????
Wow!!
But did you know the ISBN of the Beast is 6-666-66666-6?
18 – “What exactly makes you think Walker’s idea is a good one?”
I have explained it in my previous posts.
Connecting my Avatar name with being here on good faith actually makes you about as sane as any bible thumping bozo.
I’m doing a time audit on myself this week, so I can say with certainty that prepping for a brand-new, somewhat challenging 1 hour 50 minute lecture took me 9 hours this week. For a single lecture, for a single class (standard load is three courses, two lectures per week each), for a seasoned professor somewhat familiar with the topic (it’s a new course for me this semester).
…Some of those hours, of course, taking place at home in the evening because I have other things I have to do during the day at work too. If I did all my class prep at work I’d never get anything else done.
9780007103072xxx #4:
So your contention is that teachers who don’t, according to you, do the one job they have particularly well, should—instead of being encouraged to do their job better—be given another job entailing just as much work? Yep. That’s gonna work. Have you been trained in this thinky stuff? You do it awfully
well.Conspiracy theories are not evidence that the conspiracies they claim to address exist.
ISBN
Why do you hate students?
Wow! I had no idea that International Standard Beast Numbers were a thing!
A fucking idiot said:
So what do you do for a living? Actually, it doesn’t matter: it’s easy for me to say you should be able to do a little more work at no extra pay. I’ll be nice and gentle and suggest that you just put in an extra two hours each day at whatever you do. (I am so nice: an extra class represents much more than two extra hours of work a day.)
You didn’t explain shit. You did make a bunch of assertions, and just referring back to them again won’t get us anywhere.
Context and history, friend. People’s handles frequently if not usually reflect their views or attitudes; ironic use is way less common than straight -up identity.
If you can’t see why a bible-derived handle might make people *here* suspicious … well, I guess I can understand where the rest of what you’re saying is coming from.
(Doesn’t mean I agree, of course; it just makes the context clearer to me.)
It helps that he has the Koch brothers backing him up, and likely a willingness to shamelessly lie. The Kochs plan to spend $1 billion on the upcoming Presidential election, so watch out. They may already have chosen him as their candidate, if you believe some rumors.
PZ, you are fucking idiot if you equate “extra work hours” with “doing a little bit more work within the allotted work hours rather than lazying around”. That is all I am suggesting.
Richardelguru
Nah, but I work in a library ordering books – I recognized it as an ISBN and got curious, and as I already had Amazon open I figured I’d see what it was.
Last semester was my heavier course load: 2 classes of 300 students each. But, oh yes, I did have one TA for ten hours a week.
So, just one more class would be 900 students……Walker had better be careful, because soon I’ll be the leader of a body that’s three times larger than the army of Sparta, and that knows chemistry. We could be capable of enforcing our demands.
jefrir: You shouldn’t have admitted that, I was soooooo impressed before you did. :-)
ISBN
So, since good teachers are already working at their limit, and since you don’t think that the extra work should require extra time, you want them to lower the quality of their teaching. But then there’s the lazy teachers who currently idle around and don’t give their students a quality education. You want them to teach extra classes, which they are sure going to prepare to the not quite high standard of their usual classes. Which may indeed lead to less sitting in the office watching porn. It just doesn’t lead to better teaching. Again, why do you hate students?
9780007103072xxx, #31
You should do a little bit more work within the allotted work hours.
That is all I am suggesting.
You didn’t read that essay he linked to in the OP, did you? Go ahead and explain how she’s “lazying around”.
9780007103072xxx
Am I invisible? I’ll try again…
In your #4, you claim that some teachers are failing to do the proper work required to properly teach the one course they at present have to teach. I’m not going to argue with that. I merely question the logic of your proposed solution.
Why do you think that the ideal solution to this problem would be to give such teachers another course to teach, on top of the one they are, allegedly, already failing to teach properly?
The fucking idiot typed again:
Oh. So rather than working more hours, you want us to teach faster. Got it.
Jeezus.
Assinine troll #spread
Know from what you speak, one of NO EVIDENCE. My personal testimony is that when I went from teaching to private industry, my hours went down by one third, and my pay went up by one half. So all the idjits like you in private industry are overpaid and underworked. How do you like that bit of truth?
Daz
Clearly, to get an answer to that one question we need to ask 500 more…
OMG 9780007103072xxx has caused PZ to find Jesus!!!!!
…
Or not
@9780007103072xxx
I am not from US, so my experience and that of my friends may not reflect what is happening in US. However those same words you wrote are said about teachers by some assholes around here.
I experienced teaching first Hand and some of my friends are teachers. Those same answers you got alredy apply around here to.
Donclusion: in light of all evidence available to me your presented stance is illogical and downright idiotic and you are behaving like an asshole. You should rethink it.
Please mr bible ISBN with 4-Xs after it, please splain to us what it means if it does not indicate your affinity for that book – which is what many here have assumed, me included? Does the XXX mean you are a fan of the XXX rated version of the bible? Or are they placeholders for future versions of the bible? Or what? Inquiring minds want to know!
John 3:16xxx was already taken.
A thimble-brain said: “I do think most of them can do a little bit more work. Not all have a great work ethic”
And there we have it, the essence of conservatism–the nagging fear that someone, somewhere is getting a better deal than you are. And it’s always based on “experience” or “common sense” as opposed to evidence or logic.
Teachers are a favorite target–I mean look at all that vacation they get…except they don’t. And they wind up putting in extra work to try to bring kids up to speed and sometimes to buy teaching aids and on and on.
Imbeciles like thimble-brain think teachers should teach their cretinoid devil spawn for free–for the pure joy of experiencing their little darlings. I hate assclowns like him.
I’m going to ignore the trolls as too stupid to bother with and make another point.
1. This is a slow motion disaster for Wisconsin and U. of Wisconsin Madison. Last I read, Walker was going to cut $300 million from the U. system.
2. UW Madison is one of the top research universities in the world. It’s rated 12th in the USA. Which says a lot. 30 of the 40 top research universities in the world are in the USA. This explains a lot of our technological and economic lead.
3. It can take years and years to build up a top research university. You can destroy it in a few months. It’s basically the top minds in science fields. They wear athletic shoes and walk out the door every night. They can and will keep walking (a pun here somewhere) if they get a better deal. Competition for these scientists is very high.
4. In our HI Tech society, research universities are powerful economic drivers. It’s no accident solid state physics (computers etc.) and biotech cluster around research universities. The SF bay area, Boston, U. of Washington, etc..
It’s estimated that in the last century 80% of our economic growth came from advances in science.
5. What Scott Walker is doing is robbing from Wisconsin’s future to paper over his failures in the present. The nice thing for wreckers and nihilists like him is that the effects will take decades to show up.
Usually Loonytarians also attack public education. If you abolished public education today, no one would see much for a decade or two. Until employers noticed that most of their job candidates were illiterate and couldn’t fill out an application form.
Can Scott Walker make Wisconsin into our first Their World state? Probably not, Mississippi and a few others are ahead. But he can try and so far, the voters in Wisconsin have decided to let him.
Actually, Walker is one of the Rethug candidates that scares me. He is an absolute uneducated philistine, but he is a political chameleon. He’ll dog whistle and toss red meat to the Rethug faithful, and then he’ll repackage his message and make it palatable to the middle-of-the-roaders who don’t start paying attention until after the convention. He could win, and if he does, he’d be worse than Bush.
PZ wrote: “The fucking idiot typed again:
PZ, you are fucking idiot if you equate “extra work hours” with “doing a little bit more work within the allotted work hours rather than lazying around”. That is all I am suggesting.
Oh. So rather than working more hours, you want us to teach faster. Got it.
Jeezus.”
I am not talking about you fucking idiot. I am talking about the bulk of professors who could do more than currently required of them. From your response it is no doubt you are a fucking idiot, but you are not lazy, so don’t talk for them as if you are included in the characterization.
The problem biblenumber and their kind have with misunderstanding teaching and the time it takes can be put on two main factors, I think:
1. They have been in classes! They have seen teachers up close and personal! Therefore they understand everything! They think it looks so easy, because they don’t see the hours of prep and grading that go into it.
2. They went to college a long time ago. They do not know the amount of assessment requirements that have been piled onto college faculty (it’s not just in K-12). The amount of formal paperwork and time added to prove you are teaching what you say you are teaching is not insignificant. Plus, you’re expected now to have online content for them to refer to, and availability and number of research means it takes more time to get up to speed on current topics. So honestly it does take longer to teach per hour than it did back in the days they’re thinking of.
Now it’s not a few or some of them, it’s the bulk. Pray tell, how do you come by your extensive knowledge of how the bulk of college professors spend their days?
Know who needs to do more work? Olympians. They only show up for a couple of minutes every four years. Slackers.
I always get a kick out of people that make these ‘some of them have bad work ethics, so all should do more’ arguments. Some Fox News cameraman said something to the effect of ‘10% of public teachers are bad, why can’t we get rid of them?’ to Matt Damon a few years ago (his mother is a public school teacher), and Damon responded with ‘Maybe 10% of cameramen are bad, why do you still have a job?’ or words to that effect. The stupid do not seem to realize that if we were to somehow rank all professionals in all professions, then we would find that EVERY profession has a bottom 10%, and thus, EVERY profession should, to use the Walker/9780007103072xxx logic, just make the entire profession do a little more work for a little less pay. I have a feeling, though, that this would be called ‘punishing success’ by the stupid.
A mystery. I’ve asked people in Wisconsin this and never got a coherent reply. Anyone know?
AFAICT, he failed. He was going to fix Wisconsin’s budget problems by the magic of Supply Side economics, a long proven failure.
It didn’t work. Instead all he did was attack most of the institutions that make states work. And oh yeah, all those jobs he promised never showed up either.
Headline today State faces $2.2 billion deficit heading into 2015-17 budget …
Is this what Republicans mean by fiscal conservative? Why yes it is. Bush ballooned the National debt more than anyone in history with his tax cuts.
Have no fear! Glorious shock workers of the People’s Democratic Republic of Wisconsin will save the day! (Since there is nothing wrong with the system.)
Know who needs to do more work? God! The lazy fucking bastard hasn’t been seen for centuries!
Did Walker really get legally elected? Or did he benefit from Republican-led voter purges?
And don’t even get me started on the private sector, like writers. David Brooks’ column takes 5 minutes per day to read, max (if you would ever want to read his column). That means he has an entire work day minus 5 minutes he should be accounting for.
9780007103072xxx,
Scott Walker? Is that you?
I notice ISBN does not claim to have teaching experience. Therefore they have no basis for their claims since they don’t know jack about what teachers and lecturers spend their time on.
The average workload around my faculty is for the lucky ones about 110%
The other thing – if being a college professor was really such a cushy lazy job, everyone would be trying to do it. And yet, people still major in business and law and medicine and everything else on the planet.
9780007103072xxx,
Do you have a job?
Biblexxx (aka The fucking idiot) @ 49:
You keep asserting that most professors are on the lazy side. Some evidence would be nice, however, since I doubt you have any in your back pocket, how about providing an actual argument, or at the very least, the basis for this belief of yours?
What do you mean by the ‘bulk’ of professors? Are you including all American professors (or all the professors in a different country?) Or is your belief based on a specific school and the specific professors involved in teaching a particular subject? How many decades have you spent in various educational institutions, gathering data on your Professors Be Lazy theory? Or have you worked as a professor in varied schools, and in various disciplines, to gain firsthand knowledge of lazyship in the professoriate? Pray tell, oh bible.
You know who else needs to do more work? Hitler! It’s no excuse that he’s dead or that he had only one nut! Play through the pain, dammit!
Daz, #55
Clearly you don’t eat toast.
The bulk of professors? Hmm, what could that mean? Perhaps he is proposing that the additional classes could be taught by the adipose tissue the faculty are not currently using? Ewww!
I’m totally offloading the lipid synthesis lecture to my left thigh. It’s better at it than my brain is, anyhow.
This response from Walker is consistent with his responses on other issues. Everything takes the form “well, I don’t want to deal with this actual, practical problem, so I’m going to talk in generalities and offer a pie-in-the-sky solution.” His response to the minimum wage was a perfect example: “I don’t want to talk abotu the minimum wge, because I want to grow the economy so everyone makes more than that” was more-or-less his response. Very Ryanesque, if you recall he was fond of claiming the questions were too complicated to answer.
What is it with Wisconsin and facile poseurs?
@ Saad
Give that man* an internetz!!
______________
* it’s a set phrase (at least in my mind) and ‘person’ didn’t seem to work. So sorry if I screwed that up, and please bear in mind that ‘man’ apparently meant human being before my lot swiped it.
Saad #64:
Not since I got banned from the Louvre, for mistakenly eating the wrong artwork.
richardelguru #68
I get where you’re coming from, but if someone’s gender is unknown to you, then a non-gendered pronoun is the polite for of address. If ‘person’ makes your phrasing sound clunky, you should rephrase rather than be rude, yes?
Daz: Ewwwww! but it fell on the ground—and by the looks of it, butter side down!!!!
OK, I teach at a community college where all faculty are expected teach fifteen credit hours each semester, so PZ’s 7.5 actually does sound fairly cushy to me. I’ve got a Ph.D., as do most of the other faculty here, and this is where we ended up. The upside is that we aren’t really expected to do research and get published (it’s considered a nice plus if we do, but it isn’t make or break as it would be at a tenure-track institution.) The downside is that we are hard pressed to stay current with our fields. Still, I know PZ does research with his zebrafish, but I wonder if it really does take up half of his time during the school year.
The bigger question is whether or not students are really served by paying faculty so much to do research and get published. Obviously the top researchers in each field are a big boon to the colleges that employ them — they get grants, their reputations attract students, their influence on students can launch careers. They get big bucks from universities competing over them, as well they should.
But that still leaves a large second tier of professors who are kind of going through the motions. They work hard to meet their quota of journal articles published, but they couldn’t really be said to be doing a whole lot to advance the body of knowledge. (I’m particularly thinking of my own field of English — how many articles about the internal dynamics of Keats’ poetry does the world really need?)
I don’t think it would necessarily be amiss if some of the four-year schools experimented a bit with the community college model — allowing their professors to opt between the traditional research > tenure model and a heavier-teaching / no research expectations model. Professors in the second group would, of course, have higher expectations for good evaluations and other metrics of teaching success. This would be a way to bring down the cost of an education, which liberals and conservatives alike agree is a huge problem.
MAYBE this is what Walker meant, or maybe he just meant we’re all a bunch of lazy moochers. I certainly don’t want to defend him in any way in general, though — it’s clear he’s an enormous jerk.
BiblePorn @4
When people ask you to back up your weasel-worded non-committal evidenceless assertions, they are not being “fucking idiots.”
It surprises me that I need to make this point. A professor teaching an extra class does not save the university any money. Admission is capped at UW, so there won’t be more tuition dollars coming in from teaching another class (unless your class is so exciting that students decide to take extra class hours). The only way this saves money is if it allows UW to fire people.
@brucegee1962 #72: That second tier already exists, at least here at UW – Milwaukee: permanent lecturer appointments. The lecturers (the permanent ones, not necessarily the ad hoc ones) have doctorates, and teaching is their only duty (unlike professors who have both research AND service requirements in addition to what is typically a lower course load – I’m not familiar with the community college faculty requirements, so I don’t know if you all also have a service component). They are expected to keep up with the research and stay current in their fields.
This is what has been happening to the K-12 teaching profession for many years.
When I went to school in the ’60s & ’70s each department had a secretary to take care of office work for the teachers and several students, including myself, would volunteer to assist with xeroxing.
My high school had hall and bathroom monitors who were older (probably retired) community members who provided extra eyes and ears to free up the teachers to actually do the job of teaching.
The last few years that I was teaching high school, the work load was becoming unbearable. Class size could be as high as 35 students per class. We were expected to teach six classes, keep up with turning in weekly lesson plans for each class, keep up with grading and entering grades, call parents about low grades, call parents each and every time a student didn’t attend class, attend many meetings about our students and do all of our own xeroxing, correspondence and other paperwork.
One week per month, we had to give up our planning periods to do “extra duty” monitoring the cafeteria and hallways, etc. Once a group of gang members knocked the security guard down and kicked him in the head in the very hall where I (a middle-aged disabled woman) was scheduled to monitor the following week.
I was up early every morning and was one of the first teachers to arrive at the school. I met with students for tutoring during my lunch period and before and after school. I also mentored a Junior Classical League club and took students to competitions every year. That’s another story – the district provided a bus for us to go to the state competition the first year our school was open. The following years, it was refused, so my husband and I rented a twelve passenger van and he would drive us. The other group that met in my classroom was the Gay Straight Alliance, so my room was busy after school.
After I served my family dinner and took care of my family, I would spend my evenings and most of my weekends grading papers and doing lesson plans. I lived and breathed that teaching job for seven years, but there were administrators who were constantly demanding that I and my colleagues do even more.
More and more often, teachers have been accused of having a soft job, being lazy, having too much vacation time, etc. I can tell you that most teachers are dedicated and spend many many hours above and beyond the school day working. Many of us used our spring and summer breaks to work on improving our lesson plans (like PZ) and taking classes (often on our own dime) to make ourselves more prepared to teach our children.
Teachers on every level from pre-school to graduate school deserve respect and much better pay for the hard work that they do.
I’m still waiting for Bible ISBN to expailn how increasing everybody’s workload because some people may not doing their current job well* is going to increase the quality of teaching. It’s like saying the best means for fighting some people not paying their taxes is to increase taxes across the board. That’ll teach them!
*Is that slacker bound to exist? Sure. At least for the German middle and highschool system I can attest that there are folks I wouldn’t want near my kids. That doesn’t mean that the overwhelming majortity of my colleagues to be aren’t working unpaid overtime in order to cope with bad conditions so their students get the best out of it.
#74- The only way this saves money is if it allows UW to fire people.
And that’s the whole point.
@wpjoe #74: Yes, the idea is that we will fire people. We’re actually running the numbers right now to see if even shifting the entire teaching load onto faculty and firing all of the GAs, ad hoc lecturers, and permanent lecturers would cover the proposed cut, but of course we should also remember that what we’re ultimately talking about is eliminating jobs and exploiting faculty members by demanding more work for the same (or less) pay in order to make up for the lost labor. I haven’t heard that stated explicitly enough – it should be mentioned any time the topic comes up. We don’t want to cut jobs, but if we have to, we’re lobbying to have it happen in the form of closing campuses in order to better-fund the remaining ones instead of cutting across the board and making all of our campuses suck. This has the added effect of putting pressure on Republican legislators who are facing big losses of jobs and education access (plus a draw for businesses) in their districts to oppose the cut.
Brucegee1962,
I presume that you kept in touch with some of your classmates who did go to 4-year research universities. Have you compared your experience to theirs? My own experience has been that even “midling” faculty spend a lot of time on research–often more than they spend on teaching. The reason for this is that it is the research that ultimately makes the biggest difference whether they get promotion and eventually tenure.
And you will notice that even piddly-shit little 4-year colleges require a research program for faculty–usually one that will involve students (undergrads). Often, the prof is expected to bring in enough research money to cover his/her salary for 3 or even 9 months a year. So, even at a small 4-year college, a faculty member is going spend a lot of time managing student researchers (and maybe a postdoc or two) and applying for woefully pathetic grants, hoping to cobble together enough to justify his existence to the department and the college. My dissertation adviser was never home–it became a joke how many times he’d missed his anniversary.
Most of them could make much more money and work fewer hours (if so inclined) by going into industry. That is what I opted to do. Don’t fall into the conservative trap of assuming everyone else has it easier than you do.
9780007103072xxx #78:
Please answer the fucking question.
Evidenceless assertion, dismissed as fuckwittery due to lacking third party evidence. Either evidence (link to third party publications), or shut the fuck up.
brinderwalt (#9)
Seriously. Some of their stuff is outdated by three or four thousand years. Also, ALEC. How about we worry about the right-wingers’ reliance on that before we worry about teachers who might borrow someone else’s work?
Brilliant crowd gathered by PZ.
I was trying to start a legitimate discussion, and then fucktard PZ starts name calling. Is that how civility goes in around here?
– waiting for the spawns..
Then your ass should be fired, along with Walker’s, for not doing what you should do. Get enough tax revenue to run your state properly, with the education you expect. Walker should take $1/year as an example….
There will not be a legitimate discussion until you shut up with the rethug talking points, and provide evidence via links to back up every assertion you make. You don’t know how to have a legitimate evidence based discussion, unlike those here. You lost before you even started because of that. You weren’t prepared for reality.
@80 a-ray-in-dilbert-space
I’m certainly aware of this. What I’m questioning is how much all this research benefits the institution and the students.
This is certainly a difference between the sciences and the liberal arts. There are very few grants in the liberal arts
Were you agreeing or disagreeing with me when I said the current state of affairs could be improved?
I don’t for a moment want to make it sound like I think faculty at four-year colleges have it easy — especially while they’re still working for tenure. I know that publish or perish is brutal and stressful.
Still, solely in terms of workload — if I had the opportunity to teach half as many classes, with the expectation that I’d write a book or a bunch of articles instead, I’d take it like a shot.
9780007103072xxx #84:
A: Do not use plays on the word ‘retard’ or any other reference to mental health problems as a slur. You shouldn’t be doing that anywhere, but at the very please abide by this blog’s idea of civility while commenting here.
B: I’ve addressed you three times now, regarding your premise at #4. I’ve stated no point of view, but have simply pointed out a problem with the internal logic of that premise. Why have you not addressed this? If you’re looking for discussion, then fucking well engage with those who are responding to you.
Bible numbers
We don’t do civility around here. It’S a rude blog. What we also don’t do is ableist slurs, so knock it off. Try reading the rules. It’s part of the required workload here.
magistramarla @76
All you said in your comment and more for my wife and her collegues at a grammar school in a working class neighborhood. Teachers and support staff there are responsible for escorting kids from their busses to the front door, passing out breakfast and lunches, making sure every kid gets loaded into the correct bus at the end of the day, monitor play times at recess, break up fights between 8th grade boys (many of whom are larger and stronger than they are) and still find time to give individualized attention to special needs kids who are now “mainstreamed” in classes that once were maxed out at 35 students and now average 45 or more. And as an added bonus, they have to take turns buying basic supplies like toilet paper, diapers*, classroom materials and even books because there’s no room in the school budget for such luxury items. And for their trouble they get to be demonized in the press by our illustrious mayor and newly elected lizard brained governor who are itching to fire them all and turn the schools over to their billionaire pals to convert to charter (i.e. for profit) schools.
*Yes, diapers. Some of those mainstreamed kids aren’t even toilet trained.
Brucegee1962,
The thing I noticed when I was a grad student was that the faculty rarely did much research–they didn’t have time. Most of the time, they were applying for grants, dealing with administrative BS, etc. It was mainly the post docs who did actual research. My experience at a research University was the main reason why I decided I didn’t want to teach at a research University.
Bibleporn: “Is that how civility goes in around here?”
[snort]…[chuckle]…[guffaw]…Bwwwaaaahaaahaaaa!
Dude, where did you think you were? On a Spongebob discussion board perhaps?
I think that the model being used by the republican’s is the Regan model. They place him on the level of the unassailable, they judge him by an unfailing logic devoid of reality or historical accuracy.
It is the image they use, the part they are playing and the result are on par. We have still not recovered from Ronny’s effect on the state yet let alone the improvement in education policy.
Mr. bible kisser you know you might try and remember the old saying “it is better to be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt” and think over what you are wanting to say before you say it. It is often when speaking from an emotional reaction without any logical fact based analysis that we say things that make no sense. That is the vary definition of foolishness which you then compounded by a hapless defense.
uncle frogy
@#2 had a point, but then lost me @#4. The entirety of a governor’s job is to manage a single state. Adding another state is near to doubling his responsibilities. Professors generally have at least two classes in addition to research and other duties. Adding an additional class without substantial compensation is an onerous burden and likely breach of contract, but it wouldn’t double or even 1.5x their workload.
I say that btw after staying up till near 1am grading paper. Later today I will be spending several hours on class prep.
You must mean the 35 years of supply side economic policy that has led us to the current economic climate.
It seems that if you challenge PZ’s premise:
1) There would be an immediate onslaught by fucking idiots
2) At some point, the king idiot will drop in to insult you, and nothing much else by the way of response.
3) Some fucktards will keep on asking for links leading to evidence for anything you say (not everything in a discussion needs to have been researched and published, there is a thing called observation in lieu of evidence)
4) Some shittards will start speculating on your ulterior motives
5) Some will snort and guffaw
Way to go.
Maybe the xxx indicates he thinks the bible is pornography.
#98 but that kind of discernment would be lost on fuckducks populating this space
Bible Numbers
Monitor Note
You have been kindly informed about and pointed to the rules. It is not only polite to follow the rules the blog owner set, it’s also a prerequisite for being allowed to comment.
#100 and which rule is that? Is retard a bigoted word, if so I will stop using it.
a_ray_in_dilbert_space #46
Holy cow… I’ve seriously been trying to boil it all down for a long time now, trying to grasp what exactly conservatives are afraid of, and this finally made it click for me. Thanks.
Oh, you mean the liberals/progressives, who are evidence based, unlike your sloganeering self liberturdian self. You can’t think, as you don’t know how, and wouldn’t recognize real evidence and possibilities if you tripped over them.
Bible Numbers
All varieties of retard are ableist, as was already explained to you
Then one where if the horde tells you to stop using ableist words, you do so, or get banhammered. You don’t control anything here. You either obey, like providing evidence, or YOU go away.
9780007103072xxx #101:
Yes it is. It uses mental health issues as a slur. Please stop using it.
But then how do you strongly tell someone that they are not mentally capable? For example, what else do I call this shithead on #103?
Well, shithead should do. But he does need getting checked.
9780007103072xxx,
Why do you think that?
What’s the matter, don’t like your idiocy being exposed for being dumb, deaf, stupid, sloganeering, and have the inability to consider a tax increase to cover your state’s expenses, like any rational person knows is a viable option.
When you quit being a dumb fuckwit, you will stop being treated like a dumb fuckwit. But you have to change your discourse.
a_ray_in_dilbert_space #48:
One thing I’ll give Walker credit for is that he’s unflappable. In interviews he never gets perturbed, and almost never goes off-message. Intellectually he’s eternally floundering, but he never betrays any insecurity he might feel about it.
This does mean he’s pretty boring and passionless, so to some extent I think his candidacy would actually keep the lazier conservatives home on voting day 2016, but who knows.
#108 – See his response in post #103. He reminds me of someone who keeps asking everybody to provide evidence that god does not exist. Then when you don’t, starts hurling insults, making unwarranted associations, and generally goes crazy with “look at me” sign on his head.
Of course you will have to read all his antics on this threads to perceive his mental health.
Jebus I can’t believe I’m doing this but I’m going to ask again…
9780007103072xxx
You claimed at #4 that some teachers aren’t doing their jobs properly.
You then claimed that this problem could be solved, not by bringing them up to speed on the work they’re already supposed to be doing, but by giving them more work.
Please explain your reasoning, as on the face of it this looks like a rather silly policy.
9780007103072xxx #111:
Use mental health as a slur one more time, and you will be reported, and probably banhammered. Knock it off.
I’m confused as to how a given professor could even add an extra class to their work load at any given time without impacting the work of other professors as well as students (negatively). Are people really thinking this through?
The implicit premise seems to be that there is a surplus of professors. I’m not sure that’s true …
Nope idjit, what I ask you to evidence is that there is a documented problem with teacher productivity. No documents, no problem. But, you don’t have those documents, you know you don’t have those documents, and you don’t know how to link to documents if you had them. So all you have is slogans, which are dismissed since they are made without evidence.
GET IT?
The other thing that happens if professors increase their teaching load is that students get less diversity in teachers. You might not think that’s a big deal, but put a kid in a class where their style and the professor’s don’t match, then tell the kid that this person will teach 70% of the classes in their major, and see how satisfied they are with that, how good their education is, and how many other potential students look at that and decide to go somewhere else with a larger faculty.
9780007103072xxx, allusions to slurs are also frowned upon, especially considering what you are implicitly referring back to. We also don’t make, or appreciate the attempt at making, internet diagnosis of mental health.
Can we just ban BiblePorn already? If they were really here for a “legitimate discussion” they would have responded to Daz already. Also, Nerd really does have a point about needing evidence for the bulk of professors being inefficient/underworked.
raven@53:
I am not a political scientist, but I’m from WI, and best I can tell it was nothing exotic – gerrymandering, voter ID fearmongering (despite it being shot down judicially), and the fact that Wisconsin has pretty much always been purple. Milwaukee was run by proud socialists (we even have parks and streets named after them!) in the early 1900’s… but we also we produced Joe McCarthy. Our senators are Republican white-haired plastics businessdrone Ron Johnson… and Democratic gay progressive lawyer Tammy Baldwin. We (usually) have a strong, well-funded DNR… which also has to tiptoe around the gun-thumping deer-killers.
Bibleporn,
Here’s a clue. If you come on here and make a bunch of assertions with zero evidence to back them up, you are going to get eaten alive on this blog. Your personal opinion and your experience carry zero weight as objective evidence.
And in particular, when it comes to academic demands, there are several regular contributors who are professors and who are familiar with research that has been done on faculty duties and satisfaction (after all, if you were a faculty member, wouldn’t you want to know how your peers are worked, treated and paid so you would know whether to look for a new position?).
So, either back up your opinion with evidence, shut the hell up or accept that you are going to get obliterated on this board. Those are your options. Grow a pair of whatever gonads you prefer.
I have worked in a broad range of jobs/careers and the “not everybody pulls their weight” statement is true for all of them. The only exceptions are the few times I’ve worked in small groups (i.e. less than 5 people). The correct response is to develop better tools to identify and remove people who are under-performing, not a blanket increase in workload.
And then the desire to, instead of trying to make it so that more people get that good deal, drag everyone else down and make them as miserable as you are.
The American work ethic is just a tool of the economic oppressors. So is “civility” for that matter.
Fuck absolutely everyone who says this. About any job. Employees in America have increased their efficiency by a factor of about 2.5 in the last 40 years, and taken a pay cut too.
raven 53
Not just Republicans. This ie what fiscal conservative has always meant. It means that the person so designated doesn’t even understand that there is such a concept as macroeconomics, and has a really shitty grasp of microeconomics too.
brucegee1962 72
BZZZZT!!! Wrong! Conservatives are whining about the public dollars going to education, (which are already insufficient), and want to further reduce them in the name of ignorance and stupidity (i.e. fiscal conservatism, see above). Progressives, on the other hand, are concerned about tuition costs to students, which are rising drastically, principally due to the bullshit pulled by conservatives who keep cutting education funding.
There is no possibility that that is what Walker meant, and it disturbs me that you’re gullible enough to suppose that there is.
Grewgills #94
Not all states are equal; being governor of, say Wyoming, isn’t nearly as big a job as being governor of California or New York. So adding another state may only add about 10% of the workload, depending on what states we’re talking about here.
I have firsthand experience of being in the middle of a “blanket increase in workload to punish a few slackers” tactic. Want to know the result? The slackers continue to slack off, because their well of not giving a fuck is bottomless, and the people who were doing their job and then some get demoralized by being lumped in with the slackers and dial back to doing only exactly what is expected of them and no more.
It’s self-evident that Walker is an evil toad, but it does not therefore follow that everything that dribbles from his mouth is necessarily evil or even wrong. Since right-wingers frequently base their opinions on things that are badly warped versions of reality, he might have heard something like the increased use of “lecturers” mentioned by @75 and be regurgitating that.
You’ve been asked to provide data, any data at all, to support your assertion that the bulk of professors are lazy and don’t already work to capacity, and you have been asked by several people. If you don’t put up soon, you can expect more people to start to get dismissive and rude.
Bibleporn saw two professors being jocular while earning SOME OF HIS TAX DOLERS and that is a sin according to the rethugs. Work harder, you horrible slaves!!!!
brucegee1962 126
Actually, it kind of does; not because he’s evil, although he is, but because he’s a Republican, which means that anything he says on matters of economics (or social policy) is pretty much categorically wrong. There is absolutely no reason to give him, or any Republican, the benefit of the doubt, because the more malevolent and wrong-headed interpretation of their words is always the one that they mean.
I see what Walker is doing here.
1. Cut taxes on the basis of magic, Supply Side Economics. (Which fails almost every time.)
2. Claim this will “jumpstart” the economy and lead to a burst of economic activity and thus pay for itself.
3. When it doesn’t, deficits occur. So then they cut services to balance the budget.
4. Problem solved. Of course, then you don’t have those services. FWIW, in my state over half the state budget is education, K-12 and higher ed.
So really, who is getting hammered are…children. They grow up with a minimal education if they are lucky. Just what we need to compete in a complicated 21st century. The GOP concern for “families” is as false as their fiscal conservatism.
Lofty #128
This is what is morbidly funny about all those libertarians and their Republican overlords: In modern countries the mythical tax dollars are given, directly or indirectly, to everyone – all the way up to the rich who are subsidized in many ways. And yet, when people like Walker or BibleXXX want to talk about “their tax dollars” they’re always going for either the over-worked or under-paid (preferably both).
They’re either stupidly evil or evilly stupid.
Shorter Walker (paraphrased):
That Iceberg looks too small, it really should have more ice on it.
Wife and I both k12 educators in WI. Counting down years to retire and get out of this hellhole. Current proposal is to increase private school vouchers at expense of public schools, resulting in reduction of funding to public schools. Absolute destruction of public education!
9780007103072xxx @2:
You make a good point. If PZ continues with hyperbolic false equivalence like that, it might be mistaken for a joke instead of a serious –
(whisper from offstage)
– what was that?
(more whispers)
Really? It was, you’re sure?
(whispers)
Hunh, well whaddya know.
I went through college and graduate school a decade or so back. I now work as a substitute teacher in a large public school district. I feel qualified to say that teachers are working as hard as they possibly can.
Sure, there may be some slackers somewhere, but not as many slackers as in businesses where I have worked. Seriously, teachers don’t even have time to get to the bathroom – kidney stones are a job hazard – and the school counselor that I am married to usually doesn’t get time for lunch. As a sub, I often leave a pile of ungraded papers, papers the regular teacher would have made time to take care of. Back in my college days, I often went to professors offices, and never found one slacking off.
Now governors, on the other hand …. Think back to every presidential election campaign that has ever happened in the USA. About half of the candidates are governors of various states, currently serving governors, out campaigning like drunken sailors, full-time and more. When and how are they governoring?
Do you see college professors running for office while professoring? Does anybody even, when Walker’s possible candidacy is bruited, say, “No, he can’t run, he’s governing Wisconsin, you fucking idiot.”?
No, a college professor is known to be a busy person, not even able to attend a football game since the 1930s, while a governor is a disconnected dip with a large staff, and often a lieutenant governor doing the real work. (No, an assistant professor does not refuce a professor’s workload.)
But let some good conservative like Walker slander an entire profession, and watch the believers bay for blood.
Hey Bibleporn, I just said that last semester I taught 600 students. That wasn’t an exaggeration or a typo, it was my roster: six hundred.
When was the last time, if ever, you did something like that? Lectures, problem sets, grading, exams, tutoring, email, and personal face-time with that many people all day, every day? And that’s how it works in my department, many professors have that many students.
So who the hell are you to whine about how someone who has that kind of workload handles it? With that number, managing to show up and get the job done is more work than you or Scott Walker have ever even tried. Doing the job well is astonishing, but there are people who manage to do it.
So, just STFU about this.
I do remember one college professor who ran for office while teaching: Newt Gingrich. He had no problem whatsoever short-changing his students for his personal benefit. I’m sure no would be surprised to see that he is a conservative republican.
To be fair, Elizabeth Warren was also a professor when she ran for office. Let’s not discourage professors from running for office — we need more educated people running things, rather than doofuses like Walker.
Oh, I am all for professors running for public office. (Except for the squid-obsessed ones – they should be kept decently out of sight.)
I’m saying that the stereotype of a college professor hasn’t even included going to the college games since ever, while the stereotype of a governor includes going to the Super Bowl and an assumed candidacy for president. I don’t know where anybody gets the idea that teaching is easy, except that Walker has said so, but everybody knows that a governor has time to stump for another job, and just accepts that as part of the schedule, along with fundraising barbecues.
Let’s not forget Zephyr Teachout of New York State; she had run for governor there. She is also a professor, and she even wrote a book on political corruption.
raven #130:
In effect, claiming that the resulting explosion of economic activity will “feed the beast”, to paraphrase Grover Norquist. He claims instead that tax cuts will “starve the beast”.
Seems like the classic example of chutzpah: killing one’s parents and then begging for mercy because one is an orphan.