N.D. HIGHER EDUCATION: Shirvani makes pitch for adding more university staff
January 15, 2013 at 12:00 am in Grand Forks Herald
Chancellor Hamid Shirvani made an early pitch to legislators Monday to justify why the University System should expand its staff by 30 workers instead of the seven new employees included in Gov. Jack Dalrymple’s budget proposal.
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I don’t think using Minnesota as a benchmark for number of employees is a wise thing. If you look at the state of their budget vs ours you’ll get a better picture.
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Big education is out of control in this state.
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Is this really surprising? Shirvani is just doing what all university administrators do: bloat the bureaucracy. In a Wall St Journal article last week, it was stated that in the last decade, the number of administrators at Purdue went up 64%, while faculty went up 8%. I’d be interested in what the figures are at UND, seeing that over 50% of the students take 6 years to get an undergraduate degree. My bet is the Herald will never touch the subject, preferring to run PR puff pieces about how wonderful adjuncts have it at UND. Administrators view themselves as indespensible, even though they contribute nothing to education. Most of them fled the classroom for the big salaries and perqs. But this is the direct result of universities following a quasi business model, where revenue is the priority and “mission of education” is used a a come-on for high school seniors and their parents.
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Two wrongs don’t make a right.
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It seems you are correct. Every time someone new takes over one hopes that things will change and that there will be new ideas…unfortunately it appears it will be the same old, same old….
In the Federal Government they call it “empire building.” Every new administrator comes in citing ambiguous or amorphous goals. These goals are so hazy no one knows what they mean.
Meanwhile, the real agenda is to see how big a budget they can garner for their particular agency or department….because that is how they (the administrators) judge their own self worth.
They judge themselves on how big a budget they manage.
Too bad…I had hoped Mr. Shirvani would be different.
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I find him rather disingenuous. He was on the 630pov tonight trying to make his case to the people. When the subject of more employees came up, his case isn’t that they are over worked. His case is that he wants to build a ‘world class system’.
He also stated that Universities were ‘just like corporations’. God I hate to admit it, but Kevin might be right.
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Grindberg said the key word in Shirvani’s plans is “quality,” something he said no one could oppose.
Grindberg should understand that some folks will at least try to figure out what the Pied Piper is playing and where he is leading. No matter the tune (aka ‘word’) played.
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