I thought Brandon Augsburg did a nice job, but read it yourself.
The final quote in the story cracked me up - "He may be one of those people who wants to keep it the way it was 20 years ago," Wendler said. Yep, that is it Walt! A guy who starts software companies for a living, doesn't believe things have to change and wants to go back to the past? I want to go back to the quality of management SIU had in 1966 (so that is 40 years and not 20), but want to change everything else to modern ideas. For example, I want to have modern classrooms with power plugs and Wifi for notebook computers, big touch screens and internet for the instructors, reasonable chairs to sit in and no holes in the walls. I would do that before I spent a penny on a football stadium or administration building that serves no one but people who are secondary to the mission of the university.
Older isn't better, newer isn't better, better is better.
6 comments:
You've got it partially right, and partially wrong in your musings on SIU. Yes, SIU will never be the U of I, and yes, the administrative bloat is staggering. Alumni aren't going to fund this Saluki Way debacle, and somebody needs to get through to the admins and get them to drop it.
But...
(1) If we want to excel, the best and most cost effective way to do it is the Liberal Arts. Wendler and pals strangle COLA to feed the sciences, while COLA does the majority of the core curriculum teaching. Hire more Liberal Arts faculty. They don't need labs or startup costs past a computer and some paper. We can compete with U of I in this arena.
(2) Modern classrooms don't lead to better teaching or learning. You can have all the internet and smartboards you want, but if you don't create a culture of learning, none of that matters. What does it say about a university when the AD is quoted in the student newspaper (this week!) encouraging the drunken tailgating that we've all come to love? What does it say about a university when they only seem to care about athletics when it comes to capital projects? Disgusting. We need better students, and we need to hold them accountable. College ain't high school. We need to stop having freshman year devolving to 13th grade.
"Older isn't better, newer isn't better, better is better."
Can you trademark that?
Perhaps SIU just needs better trademarks as part of their marketing. That's where the unproductive, yet moneymaking parts of corporate America are heading.
McDonald's (trademark): "I'm livin' it!"
Paris Hilton (trademark): "that's hot."
I'd say Paris is shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves (brainwise) in three generation but she's making money on no sleeves, no shirt, and no brains. Perhaps SIU ought to work from this business model (no pun intended).
Regarding CoLA and more funding for more students. There are case studies that show that Duke greatly improved their standings by pushing excellence in CoLA (you are surprised that I have done research about universities aren't you?). As I have said several times, choosing areas to be great in is lots easier if there is less competition. So that makes sense to me.
I think you can easily improve SIUC in almost all areas. Clearly the big spending on Chem and Physics are not going to bring in students. As a CS/Engineering guy, I can tell you that there are jobs and big money out there for those fields.
Let me just comment on one other thing - I'm the anonymous coward above. That you want to hold our leaders accountable here at SIU is laudable; that you want to commodify education and model this University on your business experience isn't. Education is a not-for-profit enterprise. You can't quantify how much people learn, or how they grow culturally or spiritually. Choose whatever ridiculous metric you want (SIU tries to use lots!), none measure wisdom. Students are not products. Parents and society are not customers. This isn't a factory.
Ha ha ha!
Guess where else there was a jump up the ratings because of a greater emphasis on CoLA? You'll never guess.
I know the answer but I'm not going to divulge it because I want to at least know what Peter's guess is.
Sorry to the crowd, I didn't get the DE's writer's name right. Went in and fixed it so I think it is right now.
Sorry Brandon.
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