Covering the business of education and training

The root cause of the union problem is not the salaries but the benefits. Health care is killing GM, that is not the unions fault. In education no one has a problem with high paid teachers. They have a problem with high paid incompetence.

People will be forming into niche groups more and more, that means unions will only grow.

The key is to seperate the wheat from the chafe. And for unions to change their benefits to fit the times.

(nice blog on a great topic by the way)

Health care is killing everyone. The US health care industry is broken and no one is fixing it.

I have strong opinions about unions...some founded and some not perhaps.

I think people make unrealistic demands...they want too much in exchange for too little...and too little share in the overall responsibility.

But then owners can be untrustworthy as well...especially when I read about the huge cash reserves that some companies have.

Thanks for reading and your encouragement.

Bill, thanks for this thought-provoking post. Chartreuse makes a good point that "No one wants to pay for incompetence." Non-fopro universities are in a position where they have to grant tenure,and this leads to holding some faculty past their "prime." My sense is that fopro universities save a lot of money by hiring only a handful of full time professors in a given field, and such faculty seldom teach but rather save money by hiring a great many adjuncts. What do you think?

Robyn,
Were you walking the halls at the fopro where I teach not long ago?

This is precisely what happens. The full-timers are fopros get much of the administrative duties dumped on them.

I shared an office with a friend who got promoted to Dept Chair. This friend was teaching 6x4 hour classes. But when she moved up to chair, her teaching load was halved and her admin load mushroomed.

Among her admin responsibilities is keeping enough adjunct around - constantly interviewing, recruiting and training.

The full-timers are the fopros are a different kind of fopro. I did it for a while and it wasn't for me.