nm posted:Then why does it say this: The leftist groups on campus have had a lot of tension with law enforcement in recent years and this is probably a relic of that. As for general #BlackLivesMatter stuff: the protesters have been pointing out that there is a racial element to the tuition hikes, because they make it harder for poor minorities to attend school and minority enrollment had dropped significantly as a result. I would have trouble drawing a direct line from that to #BackLivesMatter, but that's where they are coming from. nm posted:The whole thing is a shitfest between an administration that won't cut its bloated self, and the tax payers who won't pay enough to fund a truly world-class system. I hate to go all truth is in the middle, but it is mostly true here, though I blame the tax payers more as even with reduced admin, the UC will be underfunded, particularly if it will use tenure track people like they should. The students are stuck in the middle. The UC budget problem is a lot more complicated than "the taxpayers don't want to pay for it". In addition to what Pervis and Sydin have said, here are a few more big problems:
Bizarro Watt posted:That also relates to my relative annoyance with the grad student union in general. It's a little unclear from your posts whether you still go to UCSC, but if you do I would recommend getting involved with the Grad Student Union now. A bunch of the leadership just graduated, so there are very few people running the show and even a few dissenting voices can make a huge difference in the direction of the union.
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# ? Mar 5, 2015 00:05 |
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# ? May 13, 2024 10:23 |
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nm posted:Ucsb was established in 65, before most of the UCB protests. You meant UCSC? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_riots_%281960s%29 quote:Since before World War II, students had demonstrated at the university. In the 1930s, the students at Berkeley led massive demonstrations protesting the United States ending its disarmament policy and the approaching war. Throughout the course of World War II, these demonstrations continued with the addition of strikes against fascism; however, they were largely symbolic in form. This can be inferred as the student groups leading these demonstrations did not necessarily seek, nor did they expect their demonstrations to result in change. Nevertheless, this passive approach to demonstration changed in the 1950s at the height of the McCarthy era. From 1949 to 1950, students and teaching assistants at UC Berkeley rallied against the anti-communist loyalty oath that professors were forced to take at the university. Up until the Berkeley riots, these demonstrations were the largest student protests witnessed in the United States.
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# ? Mar 5, 2015 02:08 |
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VikingofRock posted:I actually suspect that funding the UCs is pretty popular with the taxpayers. It's just not popular with the state government, nor with the regents (many of whom directly make money off student loans via their Wall Street ties). http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/...ed-by-a-regent. quote:A year ago, Richard C. Blum, then the chairman of the regents of the University of California, spoke at the Milken Institute’s Global Conference 2009, held at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles. The corporate confab was hosted by Michael Milken, the “junk bond king” who went to prison in the aftermath of the savings and loan fiasco in the 1980s. Milken, who is barred from securities trading for life by federal regulators, has since recreated himself as a proponent of investing in for-profit educational corporations, an industry which regularly comes under government and media scrutiny in response to allegations of fraud made by dis-satisfied students.
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# ? Mar 5, 2015 02:14 |
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Is anybody aware of the UCPath project? It's supposed to be a centralized HR/payroll/benefits app to replace all of the systems used by the individual UCs. I believe the project has been going on since 2010 and is about a quarter billion in the red. My knowledge of UCPath is patchy at best so some of this may be inaccurate, but from what I've been told: - UCPath is an Oracle PeopleSoft program. Oracle makes most of their money from PeopleSoft through its add-ons. Apparently, PeopleSoft necessitates the need for add-ons because of features that are lacking in just the base software. - There's a contract between Oracle and UCPath to use PeopleSoft. UCPath project managers have decided to go with base support and software because the add-ons are too expensive. PeopleSoft, being software designed for the corporate world, also lacks any sort of features to support funding information, which is largely how the UC's payroll system works (because where the money comes from matters; different groups get paid through various funds.) - AFAIK, UCPath decided to hire 3rd party contractors to program something to hook up PeopleSoft with funding information. - UCPath has a call center in Riverside where all of the HR/payroll/benefits stuff is supposed to be handled. Individuals within the UCs will no longer be able to enter in employee information into PeopleSoft as they currently do in PPS. IIRC, it has been decided that individuals must use some sort of Salesforce CRM form to enter and record the information; however, it's not known how that information will be entered from Salesforce to the call center to Oracle's PeopleSoft servers in Texas. - There have been several key project managers that have been hired to "fix" the UCPath project, all of whom have already jumped ship because they realize that this is ship is sinking. - I think UCPath's project schedule is still based on a targeted September 2015 pilot rollout date for UCOP, which hasn't changed at all even though everybody realizes and knows that UCPath will not be completed in time. - If I'm not mistaken, UCPath is being funded entirely through loans. If you want a prime example of sunk cost fallacy, this is it.
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# ? Mar 5, 2015 08:26 |
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At UCLA the good news is you don't need a protest to block all traffic flow in Westwood. It once took me more than an hour to get from campus to 405.
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# ? Mar 5, 2015 08:35 |
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FilthyImp posted:That's been the story since, like, UCSD? Which is on a hill but a 15 minute march to downtown La Jolla. I remember an SD professor mentioning a grad student immolating himself on the old student quad, and a tense protest march that ended up being a "stand around and hope no one from either side does anything dumb" kind of thing. Bit tangential, but there's a memorial by the Revelle Plaza fountain now for him.
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# ? Mar 5, 2015 08:49 |
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kurona_bright posted:Bit tangential, but there's a memorial by the Revelle Plaza fountain now for him. krnhotwings posted:If you want a prime example of sunk cost fallacy, this is it. But it only runs on WinXP, as the virtualized environment in 7 is janky. And XP is nearing its end of life, leaving an entire district with its core student database running on potentially unsupported hardware. Ouch. So in 2009 they hire out a new system ISIS, which is web based. But they didn't allocate any money for bug squashing and support. So they got a half-baked system that didn't work for poo poo that they couldn't fix. Awesome! Thankfully they learned their lesson and hired internal coders, working with Microsoft on a newer replacement for the replacement called MySIS. Which is also broken (it deleted the ENTIRE master scheduling data for a school two days before the year started. Randomly) but far more functional than the last pile of poo poo they tried to launch. We're 3/4 of the way into the year and the integrated grade book function is vaporware, college counselors have had to compute GPAs by hand (and certify them to colleges themselves because that didn't work either), and the old superintendent has been fired. Just hearing about when they upgraded the payroll system in the early 2000s makes me
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# ? Mar 5, 2015 10:15 |
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nm posted:Both of those related to MLK's message. "gently caress the police" doesn't relate to theirs (though, it would relate to MLK's), and in fact, gives certain persons tools to marginalize them. When the police show up to protests, it's usually to clear them, so gently caress the Police relates to every protest.
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# ? Mar 5, 2015 10:22 |
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I know in Riverside County their property tax tracking system is still running in DOS. And when my wife worked for CPS their systems were complete shitbox "track your stuff in this Excel sheet and email it to your supervisor weekly" style. Crazy.
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# ? Mar 5, 2015 17:36 |
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krnhotwings posted:Is anybody aware of the UCPath project? It's supposed to be a centralized HR/payroll/benefits app to replace all of the systems used by the individual UCs. I believe the project has been going on since 2010 and is about a quarter billion in the red. It's not so much a sunk cost thing as a reality of how weird higher-ed IT is. Accounting rules there are fundamentally exception-based (for a million goddamn terrible reason), each one being some sort of terrible code hack that a programmer implemented over the years. When you try to replace them with something new you're not just swapping system A for system B, you are simultaneously rewriting every exception hack that has ever existed for the system. At once. Eating something like 30 years of incremental development cost in one terrible meal. Which of course no higher-ed institution has the money for (admin budgets being the first thing to get slashed whenever there is a money crunch) so you basically get to choose between limping along with an existing terrible system and counting on the 5% chance that you've hired a savant ERP developer who is literally the equal of 30 lesser devs. The system is bizarre because the rules it implements are bizarre, because universities have profoundly hosed-up cost accounting policies.
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# ? Mar 5, 2015 17:41 |
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FilthyImp posted:No poo poo! I was there two years ago and saw nothing. Guess they peeled $29 off of the repaint of the Sun God to do it. That's not even touching on Deasy's involvement in the whole iPad roll out and subsequent revelations of possible sweetheart deals with software vendors. Dude had kind of a lovely run as superintendent.
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# ? Mar 5, 2015 18:54 |
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If one ever questions whether marxists are right about "capitalism ruins everything", they need only look at California's various educational systems for the past 40 years and sagely fist-bump their local communist.
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# ? Mar 5, 2015 19:50 |
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Zeitgueist posted:If one ever questions whether marxists are right about "capitalism ruins everything", they need only look at California's various educational systems for the past 40 years and sagely fist-bump their local communist. That sounds like a lot of effort, I'm just going to blame teachers instead.
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# ? Mar 5, 2015 19:53 |
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I'm going to blame unions. And then talk about how some populations aren't as good at learning. And that maybe we should have a serious discussion about that as a society
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# ? Mar 5, 2015 19:56 |
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Trabisnikof posted:That sounds like a lot of effort, I'm just going to blame teachers instead. Hey man, they get pensions. Even I don't get a pension! Better cut compensation in order to boost the quality of teaching.
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# ? Mar 5, 2015 19:56 |
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GhostofJohnMuir posted:Hey man, they get pensions. Even I don't get a pension! Better cut compensation in order to boost the quality of teaching. Good news, the UC has cut back on tenured positions, so they've done that already.
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# ? Mar 5, 2015 20:00 |
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nm posted:Good news, the UC has cut back on tenured positions, so they've done that already.
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# ? Mar 5, 2015 20:04 |
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FMguru posted:Well problem solved then! Hell no, did you know they PAY grad students?
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# ? Mar 5, 2015 20:10 |
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nm posted:Hell no, did you know they PAY grad students? Oh man, don't even joke about that.
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# ? Mar 5, 2015 20:12 |
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Bizarro Watt posted:Oh man, don't even joke about that. Also, professors should be evaluated by how many students graduate that are in their classes, just like in the business world!
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# ? Mar 5, 2015 20:13 |
Fun fact: as a TA, I get paid more than the lecturer teaching the class. Also I have much, much better benefits. The difference IMO is that the TAs have a way stronger union.
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# ? Mar 5, 2015 20:44 |
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Trabisnikof posted:Also, professors should be evaluated by how many students graduate that are in their classes, just like in the business world! In STEM, they already get evaluated based on how much money they bring. Woe unto you if you don't make more than you cost. Yes, we'll look the other way when you sellout to monsanto if the money is good.
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# ? Mar 5, 2015 21:23 |
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nm posted:The whole thing is a shitfest between an administration that won't cut its bloated self, and the tax payers who won't pay enough to fund a truly world-class system. I hate to go all truth is in the middle, but it is mostly true here, though I blame the tax payers more as even with reduced admin, the UC will be underfunded, particularly if it will use tenure track people like they should. The students are stuck in the middle. As one of those tax payers, I think this is unfair. The voters have approved the past several education spending propositions that were put before them (I know prop 30 didn't go toward UC but just generally speaking here). When you see things like this: quote:Data available from the UC Office of the President shows that there were 2.5 faculty members for each senior manager in the UC system in 1993. Now there are as many senior managers as faculty. it's hard not to think that the system is not being a good steward of the resources it currently has. Do we really need a 1:1 ratio of admin to faculty? Here are the current numbers: http://legacy-its.ucop.edu/uwnews/stat/ For example at Berkeley in October 2014 there were 5,649 academic full-time equivalents and 8,226 non-academic. What the gently caress?
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# ? Mar 5, 2015 22:40 |
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When I see data like that, it makes me want to go back to when they started adding so many management positions in the first place. If they had the funds for all those FTEs, why did they start focusing so much on that?
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# ? Mar 5, 2015 22:49 |
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Family Values posted:As one of those tax payers, I think this is unfair. The voters have approved the past several education spending propositions that were put before them (I know prop 30 didn't go toward UC but just generally speaking here). The start of the non-academic employee gap started with the cuts to UC. Lots of people who had real functional jobs, but fancy titles now have to fund raise. The chancellor, for example, was a real, functional job until the mid80s or so. Now they spend all thier time chasing rich donors. So they need people to do thier actual jobs. This change then changes who gets hired for the top spots. The person who used to get the spots were academics who both gained respect through their work and showed leadership skills. Now a huge chunk of the equasion is how much money can they bring in. These people are almost always of the "we need to make the university more like a business" and "one cool trick to fix higher education" people. They tend to be used to more managers and want people between them and the unruly academics. nm fucked around with this message at 23:03 on Mar 5, 2015 |
# ? Mar 5, 2015 23:01 |
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I guess what we're all trying to say is, gently caress Ronald Reagan
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# ? Mar 5, 2015 23:38 |
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Mayor Dave posted:I guess what we're all trying to say is, gently caress Ronald Reagan They should make this the new state motto.
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# ? Mar 5, 2015 23:47 |
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^^^^^^^^^ I bet Jerry Brown would sign that. Mayor Dave posted:I guess what we're all trying to say is, gently caress Ronald Reagan Absolutely. Actually, a great protest would be if the UC students went to his grave and pissed on it.
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# ? Mar 6, 2015 00:33 |
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nm posted:^^^^^^^^^ Those two guys danced on it.
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# ? Mar 6, 2015 00:40 |
nm posted:^^^^^^^^^ Is his grave near a UC? A mass-pissing sounds like a pretty good form of protest to me.
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# ? Mar 6, 2015 01:03 |
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VikingofRock posted:Is his grave near a UC? A mass-pissing sounds like a pretty good form of protest to me. Get on it. The grave itself is sort of off aways and the wall blocks off view from the main part of the library. I'm surprised more people don't do it.
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# ? Mar 6, 2015 01:07 |
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Ron Jeremy posted:
Also, huge laughs for it being out in the middle of white-bread country.
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# ? Mar 6, 2015 01:44 |
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I was in Thousand Oaks back in 2008 or so and it was one of the whitest parts of California I've been in, others including places like Mission Viejo and Kensington, and to a lesser extent Los Altos, Pleasanton and San Ramon.
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# ? Mar 6, 2015 01:47 |
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FilthyImp posted:While the grave itself is out in the open-ish, there's tons of security and poo poo around. poo poo, drink enough to have a decent stream and you don't even need to jump the fence.
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# ? Mar 6, 2015 01:48 |
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As someone who lives in Thousand Oaks, it is indeed white as gently caress.
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# ? Mar 6, 2015 01:49 |
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Ron Jeremy posted:
I see "right" in that quote and I think, "The facts and evidence tell me I was wrong, but my heart and best intentions tell me I was right".
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# ? Mar 6, 2015 01:53 |
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There's a petition to expel the UCSC students who took part in the protest, and the administration is probably going to acquiesce. I kind of have a stake in this -- I taught critical theory to one of the students arrested in the highway closure protest -- but it seems excessive to dole out more punishment on top of a possible felony conviction. (I've never quite understood why schools feel the need to police off-campus student conduct but I'd wager the administration will expel them to save face). The sentiment around campus, at least among the professors/grad students I interact with on a regular basis, is that the protesters shot themselves in the foot by lumping police brutality and prison reform in with tuition hikes. I got an e-mail from one of the organizers that justified fairly well why the issues are linked (I could post it if anyone's that interested), but the optics of a bunch of students chained to the highway chanting "gently caress the police!" seems to have even the (mostly) protest-friendly community in Santa Cruz confused about what it is the students were protesting in the first place. That's kind of a shame, since I think if the protesters stuck to the tuition hikes they could have had a clear and effective message -- I'd think that the glut of money flowing into administrative position at the expense of actual teaching/research goals for the university would be more effective than some apparently general outrage at all social ills. (To be clear: I don't think police brutality or prison reform are issues that should be ignored, only that the lack of a clear message in this case seemed to undermine the effectiveness of the protests.)
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# ? Mar 6, 2015 02:01 |
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Meanwhile, the CSU system cruises along doing ????
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# ? Mar 6, 2015 02:04 |
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Mayor Dave posted:I guess what we're all trying to say is, gently caress Ronald Reagan Yeah basically he was outraged over california having a low cost european style uni system and decided to fix it.
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# ? Mar 6, 2015 02:07 |
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# ? May 13, 2024 10:23 |
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CPColin posted:Meanwhile, the CSU system cruises along doing ???? Nah, it's pretty poo poo too. Major tuition hikes in the last 10 years, difficult time getting classes you need, consideration of cutting "unproductive" majors. It just doesn't get the exposure that the UCs do.
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# ? Mar 6, 2015 02:12 |