Quote:
Originally Posted by shatteredshards
We have people trying to buy lottery tickets with their EBT cards (I wish I was making that up), but let's cut staffing and programs and raise costs at the schools and universities? Good plan there.
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Welfare abuse is certainly a problem, but the major issue is within the education system itself. The director of PHEAA was fired not too long ago for stealing grant money.
And honestly, while I dream of becoming a professor, I can't deny that most professors are a bit overpaid. Not only do they get a salary just for being there, but they get a huge bonus per credit hour (and the average class is 3 credit hours, plus our profs usually teach 4 classes a semester), or per head (for online courses). Not to mention that they take advantage of being able to order things through the department and purchase $100 flash drives, expensive cameras for one-time projects, etc...not that they aren't, to an extent, justified, and yes, they have PhDs that they've worked long and hard for and they deserve a decent paycheck, but most professors take it too far. Pay them to be there via salary or credit hour, don't do both, and be more strict about what equipment they can order, especially when you consider the fact that most of what they want can just be borrowed from another department, no muss no fuss! (I work at the educational technology center; I've seen thousands of dollars worth of equipment professors buy for one project and shove in our faces when we usually have even BETTER equipment that we could have leant them for free, plus provided support for that equipment.)
And let's get rid of the really money-suckers, shall we? They're freezing almost every MA program on our campus, which is somewhat understandable, but then they're leaving lights on in certain buildings all night, allowing people to use the campus computers for social networking and video gaming and porn (no, I'm not joking), and filling the breakrooms with gratis goodies. So instead of turning off the lights in the dining halls and letting the street lamps do their job, restricting computer usage to academic purposes, and just letting the fat and lazy librarians I have to put up with every day bring in their own goddamn lunches and buy their own goddamn chips and tea, you're just going to freeze academic programs and make departments pay for their freaking inter-office envelopes and turn off the heat once a week when it's -10 outside?
Oh, and dear President of the University, who gets free housing, doesn't pay taxes, and has a monster paycheck: why don't YOU take a paycut and stop having fancy luncheons at your house? I work on campus in an office, I see the invitations for your dumbass parties.
Lastly, stop building expensive housing buildings, then accepting too many students for said buildings, forcing them to live 10 to a room in a BASEMENT because you can't freaking count. In fact, stop fancifying buildings all together; I've seen other PA campuses, and it's time we accepted our campus for what it is, which is small, old, and lacking architectural beauty but at the same time being much more "quaint." Why not put a lean on distant education, too, because it's cheaper, instead of whining about how you want to stay the "premier residential university" (which you are not)?
Oh, and the parking passes? Um, how's about you only give out as many passes as there are spaces and charge what most schools do, which is $100 a space, instead of handing them out like candy for a mere $25. More people can take the bus; I do it every day, or I walk, and I am perfectly fine and have never been late to class.
Learn to tighten your own belts, you selfish douchebags, before you suck money up from the students.
And I KNOW my university isn't the only one doing stupid crap like this. Before we go around sucking money up from other parts of the state system, let's reconsider what we're wasting within the actual higher education system. Because it is A LOT.
