Saturday, May 19, 2007

Are SIU professors better off if the enrollment goes down?

After writing the last bit about SIU and Carbondale interactions, I realized that I hadn't gone far enough. In addition to it being in current SIU employees best interests to have Carbondale do poorly economically, it is also better for the current SIU employees if the enrollment goes down. After all, less students means less mess, less interruptions in your office, less papers to grade and more time to do anything else but deal with students.

You could argue that this will be bad for the future SIU employees and that is certainly true. But the current employees of SIU aren't going to be paid more or get more then the one job they have now, no matter what.

It might be time for SIU's management to change things so there is a reward for SIU doing better. In the real world, if an organization does poorly, people are fired, raises aren't given, outside managers brought in or at least a whole lot of yelling. At SIU, the same people who are failing continue to get paid and ignored.

It is a sad story about poor management, isn't it?

Of course, your comments are welcome.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

It not really amusing to read your miguided rants against SIUC professors.

Are you trying to get even with your dad or something?

PeterG said...

Nope, it is just reality. It is everyone at SIU, it isn't just the professors. The professors are just the vocal minority and so deserve special attention.

If you know my Dad, you know that he has been saying the same things for many years. He talks about student quality and bad administration, not about economics and why smart people do such a poor job. He is amused by the economic theory method of looking at the problem of SIU.

We all know in the end that if SIU doesn't change course, it is heading for the big iceberg. Much more fun to watch then be a crew member after it hits.

When the layoffs come, is your job safe?

Anonymous said...

It's not actually such a bad idea. Fewer students means smaller class sizes. If the professors were actually decent, maybe this would be an advantage.

But as for SIU, it just means they'll continue to put out a half-assed job and half-ass educate students.

Anonymous said...

Why is there no comment link on your May 18 post?

PeterG said...

I was wondering why there were no comments on the last entry myself. Do you think that it is so true, that everyone just agrees?

Thought it was insightful, but I'm biased.

Anonymous said...

There's NO LINK to comment!!