CL, 4/4/06: Poll: Names of univ. president candidates public? - USM Forum -- Message Board

Date: Apr 4, 2006

CL, 4/4/06: Poll: Names of univ. president candidates public?

Date: Apr 4, 2006

I really would like to know who is shocked by this action. Come on, compadres, Mississippians still live in a paternalistic system. Our good ole boys and girls are going to take care of us incompetent, ignorant, barefooted hicks. Lucky us. Time for things to change.

Date: Apr 4, 2006

Most people in Mississippi have real jobs in the real world. They don't have the option to sit around with a guaranteed job and bitch and moan about their employer. College professors have this anachronistic system of tenure. We in the business and professional world will continue to do everything we can to whittle away at this fossilized work force. In the end we will prevail since your productivity is poor in everything you do and you have no friends outside your own community.

Date: Apr 4, 2006

S. Forbes wrote:

Most people in Mississippi have real jobs in the real world. They don't have the option to sit around with a guaranteed job and bitch and moan about their employer. College professors have this anachronistic system of tenure. We in the business and professional world will continue to do everything we can to whittle away at this fossilized work force. In the end we will prevail since your productivity is poor in everything you do and you have no friends outside your own community.

Only until the mighty mighty union resurges to put you in your proper place.

Date: Apr 4, 2006

S. Forbes states,
Most people in Mississippi have real jobs in the real world. They don't have the option to sit around with a guaranteed job and bitch and moan about their employer. College professors have this anachronistic system of tenure. We in the business and professional world will continue to do everything we can to whittle away at this fossilized work force. In the end we will prevail since your productivity is poor in everything you do and you have no friends outside your own community.

People with real jobs do not have time to waste posting on this Board or to do all they can to whittle away USM faculty. The difference between your real job in Mississippi and faculty at USM is that faculty are mobile across the country. Three faculty members in my area are leaving for other jobs, one to California, one to Texas, and one to Pennsylvania all for higher salaries and where no one is whittling away against the universities. Your time would be better spent working to improve your economic condition in Mississippi than trying to change USM. You cannot afford to fail at both endeavors

Date: Apr 4, 2006

S. Forbes wrote:

College professors . . . . We in the business and professional world will continue to do everything we can to whittle away at this fossilized work force.

Like Humpty Dumpty, you are succeeding in your goal. You might consider sending your kids to college out of state when the fossilized work force to which you refer is totally depleted in Misssisippi. Or maybe teach your children yourselves. Who need old fossilized college profesors anyway? Or, on second thought, let your kids skip college entirely and go to work in the old man's business instead.

Date: Apr 4, 2006

Want to lay odds that Mississippi does not get the half billion dollar bioterrorism research facility that Trent, Thad, and Haley are coveting? Why? Lack of an educated work force and mediocre medical and higher ed infrastructure.

Date: Apr 4, 2006

Cossack wrote:

S. Forbes states, Most people in Mississippi have real jobs in the real world. They don't have the option to sit around with a guaranteed job and bitch and moan about their employer. College professors have this anachronistic system of tenure. We in the business and professional world will continue to do everything we can to whittle away at this fossilized work force. In the end we will prevail since your productivity is poor in everything you do and you have no friends outside your own community. People with real jobs do not have time to waste posting on this Board or to do all they can to whittle away USM faculty. The difference between your real job in Mississippi and faculty at USM is that faculty are mobile across the country. Three faculty members in my area are leaving for other jobs, one to California, one to Texas, and one to Pennsylvania all for higher salaries and where no one is whittling away against the universities. Your time would be better spent working to improve your economic condition in Mississippi than trying to change USM. You cannot afford to fail at both endeavors

I agree, Cossack. I have never been more proud of the Hattiesburg campus faculty.

Emma

Provost

USM, D'Lo Campus

Date: Apr 4, 2006

S. Forbes wrote:

Most people in Mississippi have real jobs in the real world. They don't have the option to sit around with a guaranteed job and bitch and moan about their employer.

You'd prefer that we bitch and moan about your employer? We'll leave that to you, good buddy. You take care of your house. We'll take care of ours.

Date: Apr 4, 2006

S. Forbes wrote:

Most people in Mississippi have real jobs in the real world. They don't have the option to sit around with a guaranteed job and bitch and moan about their employer. College professors have this anachronistic system of tenure. We in the business and professional world will continue to do everything we can to whittle away at this fossilized work force. In the end we will prevail since your productivity is poor in everything you do and you have no friends outside your own community.

You obviously know nothing about the productivity of the USM faculty. Prior to the current administration, the USM faculty was the most productive of all eight universities in the IHL system by a wide margin. That was measured in terms of student credit hours produced per faculty member, full time students per faculty member, and dollars per student credit hour produced. USM also had the lowest faculty salaries of the three comprehensive universities. In light of these facts which you can verify with the IHL, don't you find it strange that faculty bashing occurred? Is it possible that the bashers didn't know what they were talking about, or were they playing a self promoting PR game with the ignorant? Think about it.

Date: Apr 4, 2006

No way, Jose wrote:

Want to lay odds that Mississippi does not get the half billion dollar bioterrorism research facility that Trent, Thad, and Haley are coveting? Why? Lack of an educated work force and mediocre medical and higher ed infrastructure.

This is true. Despite the political pull of our senatorial delegation, they won't be able to pull the facility here for two reasons. 1. Cochran has cashed in his chips with Katrina relief and 2. It is absolutely true that Mississippi cannot support such a high-tech facility. It lacks the infrastructure.

The bio-terror facility will be located in NC's Research Triangle Park, already the center of US pharmaceutical research and home to a massive EPA research faclity. I hear its pretty much a done deal.

Date: Apr 5, 2006

S. Forbes wrote:

College professors have this anachronistic system of tenure.

It is because of tenure that faculty members can question the credentials and suitability of university administrators. A university without a tenured faculty is vulnerable to all sorts of abuses by inept or unethical administrators.

Date: Apr 5, 2006

Back to work Jack!

Date: Apr 5, 2006

Tenure is the last refuge of scoundrels.

Date: Apr 5, 2006

So, Dr. Johnson, you think professors (including those in medical schools, law schools, and other professional areas) are scoundrels? That's a pretty harsh judgement. You must know a lot of bad professors to make such a statement.

Date: Apr 5, 2006

S. Johnson wrote:

Tenure is the last refuge of scoundrels.

Maybe S. Johnson is one of those "liberals" who want to do away with tenure and bring in labor unions for the faculty. Would you rather professors at USM had a labor union to negotiate with the IHL instead of having tenure?

Date: Apr 5, 2006

Joker wrote:

Would you rather professors at USM had a labor union to negotiate with the IHL instead of having tenure?

I'd cast my lot with the Teamsers Union but I don't think they are tough enough to turn this thing around.

Date: Apr 5, 2006

No Joke wrote:

Joker wrote: Would you rather professors at USM had a labor union to negotiate with the IHL instead of having tenure? I'd cast my lot with the Teamsers Union but I don't think they are tough enough to turn this thing around.

I just interviewed for an admin job at a school with a collective bargaining agreement. Although union shops have their own downside, both admin and faculty there were generally happy with the arrangement. Benefits are better for both, and raises are based on merit within rank (and admin raises are based on the pool of cash available for faculty raises). There was no neoptism or cronyism run amok (a la USM), and merit is real merit (not the friends and family plan). Despite expected severe cutbacks by the state, the Prez is shooting for 70 plus new faculty lines and expanding academic programs for the community. Athletics and boosters do not rule the roost. It was different than USM.

Date: Apr 5, 2006

The fastest (only?) route to faculty unionization in Mississippi -- a contract extension for Shelby Thames!

Date: Apr 5, 2006

Jean Moulin, my dad was a corporate executive. His company was non- union. He taught me that if an organization wants to remain non- uniion it must treat its employees fairly and with respect. Otherwise . . . Katy bar the door.

Date: Apr 5, 2006

Look for the Union Label wrote:

No Joke wrote: Joker wrote: Would you rather professors at USM had a labor union to negotiate with the IHL instead of having tenure? I'd cast my lot with the Teamsers Union but I don't think they are tough enough to turn this thing around. I just interviewed for an admin job at a school with a collective bargaining agreement. Although union shops have their own downside, both admin and faculty there were generally happy with the arrangement. Benefits are better for both, and raises are based on merit within rank (and admin raises are based on the pool of cash available for faculty raises). There was no neoptism or cronyism run amok (a la USM), and merit is real merit (not the friends and family plan). Despite expected severe cutbacks by the state, the Prez is shooting for 70 plus new faculty lines and expanding academic programs for the community. Athletics and boosters do not rule the roost. It was different than USM.

I agree. I worked at at a unionized system (SUNY). Shared governance was a much stronger reality; the President gave regular reports to faculty senate and relationships were generally quite civil. There were problems -- there were some older, tenured faculty members who really clearly had lost their edge and it could sometimes be frustrating to deal with their resistence, but by and large these were few. And in the end, I realized that most of these folks had paid their dues in long hours and hard work for many years before I ever met and worked with them. I learned to go to them for perspective and for an institutional history I simply could not get any other way. They were the folks to talk to about how to put together a tenure dossier, about which administrator might be a most sympathetic supporter of a grant proposal, about which professors to steer students towards. On the whole, I'd rather deal with that then what we have here . . . .

Date: Apr 5, 2006

stephen judd wrote:

there were some older, tenured faculty members who really clearly had lost their edge and it could sometimes be frustrating to deal with their resistencehere

I've been waiting weeks for someone to make an age related comment, but I had no idea that it Professor Judd would be the one to provide me with the opportunity to post this:

http://www.libertyhigh56.net/special%20pages/seniors/seniors.ht

Date: Apr 5, 2006

Corrected version:

http://www.libertyhigh56.net/special%20pages/seniors/seniors.htm

Date: Apr 6, 2006

Medicare Eligible wrote:

Corrected version: http://www.libertyhigh56.net/special%20pages/seniors/seniors.htm

Well . . . that was very funny. I think I've entered that time of my life when I can make those "age related" comments (but slectively of course) since am several years past my first invitation to join the AARP.