Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Less Academics, More Narcissism (at U. Cal)

Wow, that's really awful --- especially in light of the increase in faculty being only 28%. You may or may not be aware of university faculty hiring sprees earlier in the last decade when the NIH budget was increased dramatically. The huge number of new faculty is partially responsible for making it next to impossible to get a research grant (acceptance rates at NIH are commonly in the 5-10% range now, sometimes way less). So it seems that all those new faculty are just a drop in the bucket compared to administrators...ouch.



Here we go again with the distracting statements that deflect attention away from the topic at hand.

1. No one is bashing "diversity" itself. No one has said that minorities or whoever should be kept out of universities. Please don't make insinuations like that.

2. The topic is a perceived over-emphasis on administrator hires, including too many people focused on "diversity and inclusion" to the point where much more than just "computer science" has been cut. The cut courses included master�s degrees in electrical and computer engineering and comparative literature, plus courses in French, German, Spanish, and English literature. People have made what appear to be legitimate criticisms of this practice (which, again, I think is nonsensical).

3. This topic gets to the heart of gifted education. Most of the lost offerings listed above would be attractive to students who are "gifted in languages/humanities."

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm getting fed up with the increasingly poor standards of debate on this forum lately. We used to stick to the point and not throw ideology around as a way of silencing critics (and this tactic, when attempted, never worked before here).

If anyone thinks that the positions listed in the OP are more important than the cancelled courses, by all means, make your points. Use data or other objective measures --- that would be great. But please don't squelch discussion by making false accusations or introducing misleading statements that distract from the actual topic.