Wow. To extrapolate from your bad experiences to say that NO (state) universities or K-12 schools should receive greater funding than they do now doesn't seem justified. You haven't proven the magnitude of the supposed problems you see, or outlined a workable alternative educational and research system to meet our societal needs. A generation of students will suffer. And you are locking yourself out of potentially beneficial collaborations with academics by viewing all/most of them as corrupt.
Cheers, Tom On 10/21/12, "Aaron T. Dossey" wrote: > > The egregious behavior I have witnessed a large fraction of the time in my > relatively short career, almost exclusively by faculty - nepotism, spousal > hires, intellectual property theft (institutionalized and informal), > laziness, student abuse, postdoc abuse, technician abuse, data falsification, > HIPPA violations, safety violations, students injured in unsafe labs, > exploited students and postdocs, gatekeeper mentality (especially when it > comes to careers and grant eligibility), elitism, antiquated institutional > policy (such as but certainly not limited to: inability to collaborate with > the private sector), ... and tenure on TOP of all that, making it impossible > to weed out the "bad seeds", thus making it impossible to prove that all this > is just by a FEW "bad seeds" (leave a bad apple in the bucket, you know what > happens)... all of this suggests that ignoring realities and the rigidness > and rejection of change and reform does the ivory tower, education, research, > outreach, innovation, etc. NO favors. It behooves no one (except possibly > rightwing libertarians who would seek to replace our entire system with a > monarchy, even if that be the unintended consequence of their pursuit of > anarchy) to put their head in the sand and pretend that the current system is > "just fine, needs no reforms, isn't hurting anyone, just needs more money, > needs no reform, etc.". > > I, for one, can not see increasing the budget for the current system - eg: > throwing more money at universities with the current sets of policies. I'd > like to see half of the entire federal research budget go toward more SBIR > grants AND grants for which only non-faculty are eligible - AND the entire > federal grant system be conducted with short anonymous applications - among > many other reforms (again - ending spousal hires and tenure among them). I > have a much longer list, and literature to support it, if you are interested. > ;) > > Now I am going to irk the other half of the list and say I better get to bed > lest I be late for church in the morning. > > Cheers! > ATD > > > On 10/21/2012 12:47 AM, Thomas J. Givnish wrote: > >What is not a sane development, of course, is the declining share of the > >budget that states are choosing to invest in education at all levels. > > > -- > Aaron T. Dossey, Ph.D. > Biochemistry and Molecular Biology > Founder/Owner: All Things Bugs > Capitalizing on Low-Crawling Fruit from Insect-Based Innovation > http://allthingsbugs.com/about/people/ > http://www.facebook.com/Allthingsbugs > 1-352-281-3643 -- Thomas J. Givnish Henry Allan Gleason Professor of Botany University of Wisconsin [email protected] http://botany.wisc.edu/givnish/Givnish/Welcome.html
