UW Priorities - my schools’ Daily Bulletin from yesterday notes the priorities for the upcoming year:
- graduate expansion
- space
- income diversification
- international recruiting
- expanding professional program capacity
- strengthening industrial partnerships
Now, I complain a lot about the school’s priorities but I won’t go into that whole rant here. But if I were the president my list would look rather different. It might include crazy things like “improve the quality of education,” “improve student life,” “decrease tuition”, and “improve student-university relations.” Feel free to post your own suggestions (yes, I’m talking to the 0-2 people who read this that attend UW).
Kim
May 24 2006, 10:41 pmI think that these goals will actually contribute to the ones you’d like to see. Space, for instance, significantly affects student-university relations; decent social, class, and lab environments definitely enrich university life. Income diversification and industrial partnerships may protect us from tuition hikes, even if they don’t specifically lower tuition. Those partnerships may also result in more co-op placements, which is a good thing for many of us (both financially and learning-wise). International recruiting means recruiting from a bigger pool of talent, which means better profs, which means better education. Increased program capacity means more of us get the programs we need. So while I agree that the published priorities aren’t presented with much of a student focus, I think they’ll still benefit us overall.
mfagan
May 24 2006, 11:24 pmactually I agree with you a bit, I’m not quite as against these as I suggested on http://community.livejournal.com/uwaterloo/304326.html (there are additional comments there), that was mostly to get people’s attention
I’m not against “strengthening industrial partnerships” per-se, but I have a problem with how much more important the university sees its relationships with industry than with students. Just a simple example - my friend had already been accepted for a job through the coop system, and near the end of the semester they “decided” to change the company around and cancel the job. If a student had tried to back out at that point they’d probably be kicked out of coop. As for the company, I doubt the university so much as said “we’d prefer you not to do that,” and they certainly continue to try to hire more students.
Mattt
May 25 2006, 11:40 amIt is upper-class snobs like you that make me sick and lower the quality of our university as a whole.
* graduate expansion - oh, I’m so sorry that some people decide to go on to graduate school, rather than immediately seek out a job in the private sector.
* space - Just pack ‘em in like rats, eh? You must be the one who designed inner cities.
* income diversification - You don’t want to see people of diverse incomes? This is just another way of you saying you don’t want to see poor people on campus.
* international recruiting - So you’re racist.
* expanding professional program capacity - I can’t come up with anything funny for this.
* strengthening industrial partnerships - Now I’m surprised at this one. I thought you’d be one to sell out to industry.
Why do you hate poor minorities so much? You disgust me.
Anonymous
June 2 2006, 6:14 amIncome diversification actually means diversifying the university’s sources of income (i.e., more money coming from research, industry), not diversifying the student population.
alicia
June 12 2006, 6:59 pmUnforunately, I have come to realize that the main focus of UW has never been the education of its undergraduate students. It is run as a business, churning out co-op graduates and selling the co-op system to potential students.
The co-op system itself is run as a service catering to businesses. It’s not accountable to the students at all, it seems. Sure, there’s a committee with a FEDS liason, but getting in touch with this individual is difficult.
The power lies with the companies. with the money. In the end, the power of the corporation can destroy our individual will if we let it.
Mattt
June 27 2006, 1:35 pmAt the end of the day, the co-op system is awesome and has made my life infinitely easier and better.