- I recently graduated (class of '25), and the thing I heard most often about my school's management was that over the past couple of decades, they more closely resembled a real estate holding company than a research university.
There's a great student op-ed about _a_ proposed solution (firing the deans): https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2022/11/29/anderson-burea...
- > He remembers when that building came up, back in 2001, replacing a grove of elm, beech, and oak trees on campus. The old arts center hadn’t been cheap: $17 million was real money at the turn of the millennium.
They tore down a building less than twenty five years old to build a fancier one with fewer actual teaching spaces. There are many "temporary" Quonset huts around here twice that age. This institution is the top recipient of federal research funding. Their fiduciary responsibility with our tax dollars appears to be in name only.
- Johns Hopkins University is not a university. Many other "Universities" are not universities either.
"Johns Hopkins Labs" would be a more accurate name as less than 10% of revenue is tuition related.
I'm not sure why folks including professors continue to view these places as primarily about teaching students or academics. These $100-$250 million building projects are pretty inconsequential when research grants and contracts bring in more than $4.5 billion per year.
by awakeasleep
2 subcomments
- If you’ve ever read science fiction about life in the ruins of an advanced culture, but you were irritated with how it skimmed over what the process of the fall was like— well, we sure have a wealth of those details now.
- A wise man once told me that a company or organization has enough professors or high level academics they must also run the show. They won't like it but they have to. You shouldn't have a layer above and pretend they know better. They will inflate the importance of stuff they can understand and ignore everything important.
by noelwelsh
2 subcomments
- When I was at university, my institution was investing $millions in building various new building. A grumbled to my supervisor, who explained to me that this was important to attracting new students.
It's an unfortunate truth that decisions to attend a given university are often made based on an image in the student's (or their parents) head about what a university should look like, rather than things like academics.
- Beautiful essay. Such quiet scathing critique. Written from the POV of a history professor witness:
> The university’s vice provost of student affairs gives the final speech. She has the students stand up and applaud the university president, to thank him for the hats. From the podium, she turns to face the president and applauds along with the audience. Here’s a woman who knows on which side her bread is buttered. The professor recognizes the name: she’s the official in charge of disciplining students who protest genocide in Gaza.
These days, I think often about the historical turn of events in Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, where the reign of the adhocracies started by taking over buildings like Convocation Hall (mid-lecture) at University of Toronto...
by WalterBright
2 subcomments
- Johns Hopkins has a business school, the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School, which was peculiarly not mentioned in the essay. You'd think their own business school would be capable of bringing fiscal sanity to the university?
by PaulHoule
2 subcomments
- I miss the Newseum, not least because it had this exhibit:
https://www.motorious.com/articles/highlights/don-bolles-car...
by paulorlando
1 subcomments
- "Giant donations, he’s come to realize, often increase the university’s bills, generating new operating expenses for projects that may have only tenuous links to the university’s core mission. The new fixed costs cannibalize existing funding streams, increasing pressure to grow revenue."
by markus_zhang
1 subcomments
- It is just part of the establishment. When the establishment withered it withered with it. It’s just a symptom of a larger, deeper problem.
- This is all stuff I feel like I was basically aware of but when it's described together it's so... depressing. Ugh.
- I misread the title as "The Missuses of the University" and thought this might be the next iteration on the "Real Housewives" franchise: "Real Housewives of the University".
Sorry, didn't mean to distract from the serious topic at hand.
- "Limp signs on the fencing announce the opening of the SNF Agora Institute, by which, he’s informed, the university is “building stronger global democracy."
"In 2017, the institute was endowed with a $150 million gift from a Greek shipping fortune..."
Here is Johns Hopkins' problem in a nutshell. Taking money from billionaire "philanthropists" and global organisations to put an intellectual veneer onto their vested interests. Johns Hopkins has done this in a number of areas.
What kind of "stronger global democracy" would this be? There is no global democracy and no global government, yet. How interested are shipping magnates in democracy as opposed to plutocracy?
- > With its 29 cantilevered roof planes and its clerestory glazed windows, it will quickly become the highlight of campus tours. Prospective students will look on with envy. Maybe it will attract more applicants.
I got an ad the other day for a school (a mostly reputable one). They were talking about their award winning dining hall food... and the photos are over the top.
Borrow a pile of money, to help fund a pretty campus, and get a degree with limited job prospects, then wonder why you're drowning in debt for decades seems to be the trendy thing to do.
by ohgeekz_com
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