Analytics

Monday, May 16, 2016

Miscellany: 5/16/16

Quote of the Day
You can never plan the future by the past
Edmund Burke

Tweet of the Day
Image of the Day


Campus Conservatives

I can only speak from anecdotal evidence as a junior (untenured) professor) at 3 universities. It's not so much of speaking out conservative views and being repressed, but progressivism is so pervasive in the administration and faculty, even within a business school, that one knows not to speak candidly. In my case, it factored into annual raises or potential tenure. I've published these incidents in past posts. But I had a prominent female professor next door at UWM (we had coverered one or 2 of her papers in my doctoral research seminars) who was absolutely obsessed with my compensation. (This is part of the 77 center obsession.) I have NEVER discussed compensation with co-workers my whole work history. I wasn't interested in what other professors made; it was none of my business and vice versa.) I think she was worried because the market was very competitive the year I was hired. I only had 2 offers and didn't check notes with other applicants on what they were offered. (I would later heard a subsequent UH grad was making over $6000 more a year in St. Louis.) She wouldn't let it go, basically accusing me of a stonewall. It turns out she could get the information because state records were transparent. Apparently she was satisfied that her compensation was higher and basically rubbed my face in the fact she found out. She was also agitating for a compensation increase for the school secretaries.

Ironically, the same professor had a spot on the MBA Admissions committee which I took in my second year. We normally reviewed applicants who didn't meet minimal critera for automatic admission on upper-division GPA and/or GMAT. One example was some PhD from Canadia who wasn't happy the school made him sit for the GMAT and intentionally botched it; I think he got around the minimum score possible. We waived the exam results. W e normally had some heuristic criteria, and most of our decisions were unanimous doing up and down, although I was more likely to dissent from the group on a few dipping below cutoffs.

I'll never forget the last committee meeting for the academic year. I already had plans to leave UWM at the end of my 3-year contract and would not be on committee my final year. A woman of color was the candidate in question who fell well below our heuristic cutoffs on both criteria. There was a male chair, two female junior professors, myself and two older male professors (maybe senior/tenured). The chair pressured us to accept her, saying that the Dean not only wanted her but had awarded a stipend; it would embarrass the Dean, so we needed to approve her application. (Now my issues with UWM included the Dean, and I didn't care about hurting his feelings. That being said, I was a professional and would vote strictly on the merits.) The vote deadlocked 3-3, the chair and 2 female professors voting for. We knew the chair was the Dean's stooge, and the reason he had been pushing us is because he knew she fell short--and it wasn't even close. The two women didn't say a word through the whole process; they avoided eye contact. We three thought this was highly unethical; we had turned down applicants with better criteria scores. It was a clear violation of equal protection. We were at an impasse when the chair finally said, "Look, it's not going to matter because it's Ron's last meeting, and the Dean will replace him with a yes vote." At the point, I changed my vote to present, which pissed off all 5 of them: the two guys treated me like a traitor, and the other 3 knew that she would carry without a majority vote. I didn't think it was fair to the student to have to wait another month, but I wanted to send a clear signal that the vote results were corrupt. A 4-2 vote the following month would not raise eyebrows, although all 4 votes would be corrupt.

There were other things, too. I had caught 5 Asian students plagiarizing a group report (literally cutting and pasting from original, unattributed sources; the only thing original may have been the paper title). I called them in; two of them immediately confessed and begged for mercy. One of them was a hardass who was defiant, calling plagiarism an American cultural phenomenon. Let's pick up on the story a few months later. One of my new colleagues, teaching the DSS class I had previously taught, brought me a student paper, saying it "sounded too professional". I immediately recognized it as an extract from a classic group DSS paper from Gerry DeSanctis. It was probably from a book of readings or paper anthology I had used in my class. I glance up at the student's name: Mr. Hardass.

I then went to my colleague Bob, who taught the graduate service course (ironically one I always wanted to teach but never got to do; Bob was still finishing up his dissertation and just taught multiple sections). I told him, "You didn't by any chance have this guy." He seemed to remember. "You don't have any of his work?" Bob said, "Well, not unless he didn't pick up his graded paper at the end of the semester." We found it. Bob had graded it a B. I glanced and immediately recognized it as a copy-and-paste from papers in an IEEE collection I had required in my systems analysis course. I retrieved it and showed Bob, whose eyes almost bugged out when I showed him the first plagiarized passage. He then borrowed my book and told me later he had found every passage.

My two colleagues, also junior professors, did not pursue the issue, fearing the politics. My senior colleagues were horrified--at me. The above-mentioned female professor thought I had no right to look at the student's work in other courses, and our informal department chair accused me of trying to sabotage their foreign student program. I tried to initiate action but the business school blocked me. (I later went to the university administration.) This was a case where I had personally counseled the student and warned him against doing it again; not only did he do it again, he was using my own course texts to do it! It was like he was mocking me.



Poverty Inc.

This documenary is a production of Acton Institute (on my blogroll), a Catholic free market portal.




 Political Cartoon

Courtesy of Jerry Holbert via Townhall
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Vocalists

 Rod Stewart, "Rhythm of My Heart"

Posted by at
Labels: , , , ,