[lbo-talk] Disappoint With #125

[Alan Rudy]

How gloriously disembodied of you.  Yeah, knowledge accumulation is
inefficient and corrupt so therefore we don't have to take any of the
actual, materialized strategies imposed on higher ed by the corporatization
of universities seriously... nothing really matters if you have metatheory
that makes things "obvious."
Certainly, we needn't pay much attention to the ways that these funding
issues are tied to the increased research and administrative expectations on
faculty across higher education - at all levels, much less the ways it
reduces the space for actually critical research, for collegiality among
faculty and faculty and students and for a general suppression of public and
political engagements (on top of rampant political correctness and identity
politics).
Please, I know four kids who dropped out of CMU - no, not a NSF Research I
institution - this year because of a combination of rising costs and falling
state support.  Obvious to you, not exactly inefficient or corrupt to them.

On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 5:59 PM, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:


> Alan, you give one of the possible versions of what I have already
> aruged is the "obvious" but not acceptable answer to Doug's point.
> Knowledge accumulation is necessarily (a) inefficient and (b) in a
> capitalist society corrupt -- but the corruption is just part of the
> couse of the essntial gains.
>
> Carrol
>
> Alan Rudy wrote:
> >
> > The problem here is that research faculty and pro-Big Science and
> > university-industry collaboration/technology transfer agreement
> > administrators argue that the overhead brought in by Big Science grants
> pays
> > for the research, the overhead, the auditing and more... that big
> research
> > grants fund general education... when, in fact - and Chuck is right on
> this,
> > big research grants (and athletics) draw down the general fund.
> >
> > If researchers and administrators argued that Big Science contributed to
> the
> > commonweal and, as such, deserved a subsidy through tuition, fees and
> state
> > dollars that'd be one thing... and we could hold them to that, but they
> > don't... at the most they argue that what's good for large corporate
> profits
> > and info-/bio-tech start-ups is good for the public.
> >
> > On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 3:31 PM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > On Mar 11, 2010, at 1:24 PM, Chuck Loucks wrote:
> > >
> > >  If a tenured track professor is hired mainly to do research, why
> should
> > >> undergrads
> > >> have to pay the cost of that research for the length of time said
> > >> professor spends on
> > >> research?
> > >>
> > >
> > > Because maybe research makes better professors and enriches human
> > > knowledge?
> > >
> > > ___________________________________
> > > http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
> > >
> >
> > --
> > *********************************************************
> > Alan P. Rudy
> > Dept. Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work
> > Central Michigan University
> > 124 Anspach Hall
> > Mt Pleasant, MI 48858
> > 517-881-6319
> > ___________________________________
> > http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>

-- 
*********************************************************
Alan P. Rudy
Dept. Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work
Central Michigan University
124 Anspach Hall
Mt Pleasant, MI 48858
517-881-6319