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Cuts have consequences
When the California state budget was ratified seven weeks ago, none of us could have envisioned the economic challenges getting any worse than they already were.
Full Story: Eureka Times Standard
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The solution would be to cut out all the garbage teaching in the universities and focus on practical skills that are actually worth something. I am a CSU graduate and it seems like over 50% of the things taught in the schools are garbage and waste time (and money). Many, many teachers and curriculum are educating our young men and women to be morons. That's not true education.
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I have very little sympathy for the college system, when their professors are paid so much for doing so much less than us k-12 teachers do.
The HSU head makes almost $500,000 a year while the Eureka School Superintendent makes $140,000 a year & ECS is almost as large as HSU ! These mid year budget cuts are going to decimate the public elementary & high schools. That is where are first concerns should be. |
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Let me tell ya’ll a little story about college grads.
Several years ago I was taking an open, written examination for engineering technician. The group was made up of college grads with engineering degrees and people with only field experience. A couple hundred of us were sitting in a large room taking the test when a young man who had just gotten his bachelors degree from Berkley jumped up, threw his test in the air and screamed “I don’t know any of this stuff, they didn’t teach any of this fecal matter in college!” After a good laugh most of us finished the exam and went about our lives. Me I spent the rest of my career doing work that engineers couldn’t butt because I didn’t have a degree I couldn’t get the pay. Wanna know why the state is broke (broken), cause there are too many educated idiots running the place and not enough real workers. Wanna cut state spending and improve production, structure the work-force to the rule of seven. By doing this one thing through attrition, you could cut personnel costs by 15-20% in one year. |
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I'm not going to belittle the work k-12 teachers do, but likewise, I wouldn't belittle the work professors do. There are good folks and lazy folks in every institution. Many, if not most work 60-80 hours a week trying to do research, write grants, supervise grad students, committee and administrative work, all on top of teaching. And most aren't getting rich doing it either (not that k-12 are, I'm just saying). Top administrators are overpaid in my opinion, but the majority of my colleagues work their rear ends off trying to get everything done. |
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Why "research" at a teaching institution?
I pay tuition to get my children an education. Not to help their professors climb the career ladder. Instead, Teaching Assistants are teaching them while the REAL professors are off writing a book. |
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AOL |
Middle-O-TheRoa d said in post # 3:
"Wanna know why the state is broke (broken), cause there are too many educated idiots running the place and not enough real workers. Wanna cut state spending and improve production, structure the work-force to the rule of seven. By doing this one thing through attrition, you could cut personnel costs by 15-20% in one year." Middle-O-The Roa d. I think you are right. Kids are victimized by public school "teachers" for 12 years, being told they should get an "education" so they will not need to engage in productive labor, the same as they. The result is that large numbers of misfits end up wasting another 4 or 6 years seeking a higher "education" when what they need,- and what the society needs and could benefit from,- is their being trained in the crafts and trades. As the recent economic and social mess has shown, we have more than enough "educated" fools running things. What we need are more who are able to engage in productive labor. Ronald |
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I'm not going to knock the benefits of a decent skill or trade; they are useful and worthwhile.
Education has been far too long belittled in the country and as a result there are too many uneducated folks running the country. They've made a mess out of things because they didn't bother to learn the consequences of the decisions they made. Not everyone who gets a degree is educated, I'll agree wholeheartedly but the self-educated person is rarer still. People who can think through complex problems are the only salvation in a complex world. People who can't think brought us the Iraq war and the current economic mess. We certainly do not need more of them. Quit glorifying idiocy in the name of 'real' folks. It's a fallacy that has long out-lived it's time. |
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It's not a matter of climbing the career ladder; it's usually a matter of keeping your job. Plus research tends to make for better teachers and more current information as you keep up with trends in your field. If you really wanted to improve efficiency, make research grants easier to get. Right now there's so little money in some fields that you can spend 50% or more of your time just trying to get the money to run a lab. |
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HSU Profs make over $110,000 a year in pay and benefits. Its all public info
45% of CA's bloated budget is spent on educaiton. Dont tell us not to cut, we have to cut. If we dont cut education at all where do we cut? |
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Hey folks, lets put this in perspective. Here are some classes that could easlily be characterized as BullSh@t and why a lot of us believe that cuts should be made.
This is from the HSU fall schedule: Female Circumcision Feminist Science Fiction Ecofeminism Hip Hop Nation Philosophy of Sex and Love Shake, Rattle and Roll |
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Arcata Rebel, Arcata, CA.
First off, cut corporate welfare to the military support industry. Next cut "sole-source" contracts given to suppliers. Then issue debit cards so that operators of government motor vehicles can buy fuel at costco, arco etc. instead of buying at shell, chevron blah, blah blah! |
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My guess is you're looking at the top pay of full professors. That's not the average pay. I haven't looked in a while but I'd guess the starting pay is around $45k + benefits. That's not exactly a lot for someone who has a PhD. |
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The most chilling failures facing the future is the failure of the citizens to elect politicians with the knowledge or desire to manage our tax dollars in a reasonable fashion.
Having such extraordinarily low expectations of competence from those we elect from our own Party can not end well. California is unique. No other State is in such terrible shape. No other State's majority voters except constant failure by re-electing politicians from their own Party who don't have the slightest genuine concern for the citizens who elected them. |
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“HENCHMAN OF JUSTICE” Joined: Dec 28, 2007 Comments: 1593 McKinleyville ISP: San Francisco, CA |
How does a "publicly educated taxpayer" pay back a student loan with money that will never be earned because there exists a huge problem in the job market? Duped by govt., corporations and greed!
Also, physical labor(above posting) has been deprogrammed because of television. Kids grow up viewing what they perceive to be an easier life, especially tech. Then, when shit hits the fan, these same college students do not know how to do the simplest of things because mommy and daddy floated in the same boat of intellectual guidance. P.S. voting Republican and Democrat has consequences as well. The irony = parents set themselves up for future financial concerns because of being close-minded about realities' frauds; and, by not teaching their children their respectful place in evolution. Many say this is due to the failures of marriage between a man and a woman - a phenomena which is converting MEN AND WOMEN away from marriage in a biblical sense, go figure. Jeffrey Lytle McKinleyville - 5th District |
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Joined: Jun 20, 2008 Comments: 591 ISP: San Francisco, CA |
The school I went to, all the "misfits" who weren't on the college prep track were enrolled in shop classes that taught the kind of trade skills you are talking about. Those same kids then either went into a trade or attended the local tech school, where they learned more about their chosen trade. There was no shortage of people taking those classes. Anyone seen a mechanics shop lately that is desperate for workers? A lack of carpenters? A shortage of bricklayers? Which jobs did you have in mind for the kids who are currently in higher education, that you think should be laborers instead? |
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AOL |
another realist. The fact of the matter is that the fat cat public school industry "teachers" are some of the most heavily unionized part time employees in America. As an indication of their success, they have bankrupted the State of California. Big Union Bosses operate on the economic theory that reduced supply results in higher price, demand being equal. That is the reason the fat cat public school teachers promote high priced babysitting "education" operations and oppose useful schooling in trade and craft skills. The result has been not only to prevent America from successfully competing in world markets in goods manufactured, but in addition, the nation must import labor from third world nations such as Mexico. Such labor, while enthusiastic, is often on a lesser level of competency due to lack of formal training. Big Union Bosses even act as special interest lobbyists against the use of prison labor to pick our crops and even oppose permitting minor miscreants cleaning up their graffiti and to do other beneficial labor for society to enable them to repay, in part, their debt owed society. The result is that their victims are not only victimized twice, but adding insult to injury, fat cat teachers are sent into the jails and prisons to "educate" the malefactors. Ronald |
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Ronald:
I'm not even sure where to begin with your latest diatribe against education. Teacher's unions haven't bankrupted the State of California, Prop 13 has. If you think it's a cushy, over-paid job, heck, let's produce more teachers! K-12 education is a mess but most of that is from over regulation by the neo-cons who stipulate teaching to the tests rather than teaching to learn. You also have to realize that the world is in many ways a lot more complicated than when you went to school and we're now teaching way more subjects. As a result, there's less time spent on the traditional pattern of the 3R's. Could it be better? You bet! Are there crappy teachers who are burned out on babysitting? Yep. You ever wonder why there's so much babysitting going on in schools? It's because too many parents are not teaching their kids how to behave civilly and are teaching them a sense of entitlement to have everything handed to them. So if you're going to blame the teachers for the state of education, be prepared to place an equal, if not larger share on parents. School isn't a drop off point to turn little humans into responsible citizens, it's just one tool along the road. |
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Electing politicians who have zero understanding of where money comes from has been astonishingly destructive. Voting for any slug with a D beside it's name on the ballot betrays everything the Democrat Party once stood for in what's left of California.
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Joined: Jun 20, 2008 Comments: 591 ISP: San Francisco, CA |
Wow. What solar system is the planet you're on in? If you are a teacher for public school k-12, you are definitely NOT a "fat cat". You are underpaid, over-regulated, and end up spending a lot of your "free time" grading papers, coming up with lesson plans, and going shopping for school supplies for the kids using your own money, because the budget for supplies has been cut yet again. It's administration that is overpaid, not teachers. |
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1. There's nothing wrong with negotiating for pay and benefits. Every executive and manager in business does exactly that. 2. You can constantly look at this as though expenses are the problem, and simply keep lowering everyone's wages until they can't eat, or you can look at the other half of the equation - taxes on the enormously rich are too low. California is AWASH in money and riches of the most golden kind imaginable. Wealth is oozing from every pore. Mr. Muscleman, pretending to be a governor, posing as a leader, is simply protecting the Uber Rich classes from paying what they should to make the state run. There's nothing on earth wrong with a teacher making 75 grand a year in a state where so many people make 20 MILLION dollars for a few weeks work on a movie. You - and many others - are being deceived by a simple magic trick - claiming it's an expense problem when it is actually a tax problem. Nope, there is no need to raise YOUR taxes. I very much doubt you make $20M a year and post here. You simply need to understand that there are enormous unimaginable fortunes which go UNTAXED. Why beat up on the littlest people? |
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