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(09-01-2020 06:34 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  The reason why engineering majors get a bad rap is because most engineers with any social skills quickly leaves the field after college and take one of the highest paying jobs in another field due to their superior training. About half of all engineers end up in management.

For example, 33% of S&P 500 CEOs had engineering undergraduate degrees. If you consider the number of people getting the degree, engineering majors are 8 times more likely to become CEOs than English majors. Engineering majors are 50% more likely to become CEOs than business majors (the only major that does better is economics).

Those who stay in engineering are mostly the socially dysfunctional nerds whose mid-career salaries average *only* in the low 6-figures.

Does any of this have to do with the current topic posted? Asking for a friend. Jeebus.

Ten University of Central Florida football players, including two projected starters, are opting out for the 2020 season because of concerns around the coronavirus pandemic, coach Josh Heupel said Tuesday.

Are opt outs losing scholarship? No play no pay?

(09-01-2020 06:36 PM)rtaylor Wrote:  Does any of this have to do with the current topic posted? Asking for a friend. Jeebus.

You're right. I deleted it.

One that hits closer to home - Being reported that UC Athletics cut 14 positions today. 7 were currently filled and 7 were open positions that won’t end up being filled.

(09-01-2020 08:44 PM)doss2 Wrote:  Ten University of Central Florida football players, including two projected starters, are opting out for the 2020 season because of concerns around the coronavirus pandemic, coach Josh Heupel said Tuesday.

Are opt outs losing scholarship? No play no pay?

I bet they will get to keep their scholarship.

(09-01-2020 09:50 PM)UCGrad1992 Wrote:  

Eliminating 40 positions? Just generalizing here but:
Could it be that they had too many positions before?

In the private sector, companies generally run very lean. My hunch is in academia And athletic departments they don’t.

(09-04-2020 10:17 PM)ZCat Wrote:  

(09-01-2020 09:50 PM)UCGrad1992 Wrote:  

Eliminating 40 positions? Just generalizing here but:
Could it be that they had too many positions before?

In the private sector, companies generally run very lean. My hunch is in academia And athletic departments they don’t.

+1

(09-04-2020 10:17 PM)ZCat Wrote:  

(09-01-2020 09:50 PM)UCGrad1992 Wrote:  

Eliminating 40 positions? Just generalizing here but:
Could it be that they had too many positions before?

In the private sector, companies generally run very lean. My hunch is in academia And athletic departments they don’t.

As an exec, companies I was involved with when times were really depressed the top people took twice the hit of the workers. It is amassing how fat an organization can get in good times. I am sure it is worse at colleges where making money is a foreign concept.

Oh. My. Gorsh. I've seen it all now...

Quote:Utah athletics director Mark Harlan confirmed that full department-wide furloughs and some layoffs are taking place as the coronavirus pandemic takes a toll. The postponement of fall sports, Harlan noted last month, could lead to an income loss of $50-$60 million on a $91 million budget.

“As I have previously shared, the financial challenges that we are facing at Utah has led us to make difficult — but necessary — decisions to mitigate the financial impacts of the pandemic,” Harlan said. “These changes include furloughs of various lengths for every department employee — including me, our executive cabinet and our head and assistant coaches. In addition, in some select cases, we have also eliminated positions through reductions in force. We also have eliminated all performance bonuses until further notice.”

Harlan explained that such decisions were not made on employee performance, but rather on the significant financial shortfall and the realities of the fall sports postponements.

“We are prioritizing the areas of our athletics operations that directly support our student-athletes,” he said.

On ESPN 700’s “Bill Riley Show” Friday, Harlan said that some tough decisions had to be made because you can’t wait for what might not happen.

“We’ve collectively thought as a group if we could all do this together it would minimize. We’ve had to lay off some folks in terms of job eliminations and that’s been really hard,” he continued.

Utah Athletic Department-wide Cuts

North Carolina

quote='XLance' pid='16976018' dateline='1599212195']
https://247sports.com/college/north-caro...151025959/

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. --- Due to the financial concerns surrounding the 2020-21 athletic calendar, North Carolina's full-time athletic staff members will take pay cuts or be furloughed for a 15-day period, effective on Oct. 1, 2020.

According to a letter sent to Rams Club members by UNC Director of Athletics Bubba Cunningham, Carolina coaches and staff members making $200,000 or more will have their salaries reduced by 20 percent. Coaches and staff members making $100,000 to $200,000 will have their salaries reduced by 10 percent and coaches and staff members who make less than $100,000 will be furloughed for 15 days.

These reductions will last until June 30, 2021.

UNC had already cut sport budgets by 10 percent for 2020-21, implemented a spending freeze, halted non-essential travel and left 17 full-time open positions in the department unfilled.
[/quote]

(09-05-2020 06:09 AM)doss2 Wrote:  

(09-04-2020 10:17 PM)ZCat Wrote:  

(09-01-2020 09:50 PM)UCGrad1992 Wrote:  

Eliminating 40 positions? Just generalizing here but:
Could it be that they had too many positions before?

In the private sector, companies generally run very lean. My hunch is in academia And athletic departments they don’t.

As an exec, companies I was involved with when times were really depressed the top people took twice the hit of the workers. It is amassing how fat an organization can get in good times. I am sure it is worse at colleges where making money is a foreign concept.

This.

Any industry that has had boom times for 5 years will build up a lot of overcapacity. Much of it is to be ready for continued expansion, but a good portion of it is waste.

In industry, missing a quarterly earnings projection will cause stockholders to force cutbacks, and the waste gets trimmed.

But academia doesn't have stockholders. They only trim back the fat when there's a full-blown budget crisis. And universities have had boom times for the past 2-3 decades. That's a lot of time to build up waste.

(09-08-2020 09:10 AM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  This.

Any industry that has had boom times for 5 years will build up a lot of overcapacity. Much of it is to be ready for continued expansion, but a good portion of it is waste.

In industry, missing a quarterly earnings projection will cause stockholders to force cutbacks, and the waste gets trimmed.

But academia doesn't have stockholders. They only trim back the fat when there's a full-blown budget crisis. And universities have had boom times for the past 2-3 decades. That's a lot of time to build up waste.

College sports is almost as bad a bloated bureaucracy as higher ed. Think of all the non-revenue teams that are sent all over the country with this geographically expanded conferences that bring in no revenue and provide no exposure to the university. College sports should be streamlined to the revenue sports- football and mens basketball and whatever sports you need to make it legal under Title IX. There are other sports that are important regionally like baseball in the south and lacrosse in the NE that bring in revenue/exposure that should stay but I think we should be talking about 3/4 sports per gender; not the bloated mess we've got.

What's crazy is how huge some of these "P" school athletic departments are and how they can't weather the storm we're currently in. The money will be back. I guess they just realized how big they got and that now is a good time to slim down. UC seems lean and mean compared to the Iowas and Michigans of college sports. Hopefully, when we are able to increase our revenues, we can keep our overhead down so, when stuff hits the fan again, we don't have to make a bunch of cuts.

(09-04-2020 10:17 PM)ZCat Wrote:  

(09-01-2020 09:50 PM)UCGrad1992 Wrote:  

Eliminating 40 positions? Just generalizing here but:
Could it be that they had too many positions before?

In the private sector, companies generally run very lean. My hunch is in academia And athletic departments they don’t.

That's been my flavor between the private and public sectors. In academia they get a new requirement, e.g., expansion of Title IX. To handle this they just hire more people who can handle the requirements of Title IX. After all Federal Loans + dumb students + raised tuition = free money. In the private sector they get a new requirement, e.g., revision of TSCA . "Bob, in addition to your current duties you are our new TSCA expert." After all you can't pass the cost on to the consumer -- they will just buy elsewhere.

(09-09-2020 10:44 AM)Helicopter Wrote:  

(09-04-2020 10:17 PM)ZCat Wrote:  

(09-01-2020 09:50 PM)UCGrad1992 Wrote:  

Eliminating 40 positions? Just generalizing here but:
Could it be that they had too many positions before?

In the private sector, companies generally run very lean. My hunch is in academia And athletic departments they don’t.

That's been my flavor between the private and public sectors. In academia they get a new requirement, e.g., expansion of Title IX. To handle this they just hire more people who can handle the requirements of Title IX. After all Federal Loans + dumb students + raised tuition = free money. In the private sector they get a new requirement, e.g., revision of TSCA . "Bob, in addition to your current duties you are our new TSCA expert." After all you can't pass the cost on to the consumer -- they will just buy elsewhere.

You've clearly never worked in higher ed. At the moment, I'm essentially pulling three separate full time positions (teaching 12 credit hours along with research as a junior faculty, advising roughly 400 students on all manner of academic affairs and co-op/professional processes, and managing all external engagement for the College where I'm employed). If you think Universities are adding jobs for the hell of it, you're clearly out of touch...and most of those added jobs are done so through grants and gifts, not operational funds, anyways.

Just to frame something in mind so you understand why tuition is ACTUALLY going up, play along with this. Adjusting for inflation, public institutions in Ohio are receiving roughly 27 cents on the dollar versus the state support they received in 1980. The only place to recoup that is from their "customers" (ie. the students)...as would be the case in any industry. This loss in state support is 100% tied to the consistent cuts of corporate taxes and general education funding cuts over the last 3 decades...and it isn't stopping any time soon, something that was clearly indicated by the Lt. Gov's suggestion of cutting 20% of the state share of instruction this year despite not being willing to pull from the rainy day fun DURING A PANDEMIC, which was luckily moved back to only a 5% cut.

I love what I do, and I'd never have it any other way...but all you desktop lackeys who sit around thinking higher education is a cakewalk don't actually understand anything about the landscape, and it's hilarious to hear you try to self-rationalize an idea that makes no sense in reality. The primary source of bloat at Universities is in their athletics departments, and this is coming from a former College athlete who had his team disbanded this summer. My current institution runs a $322M Budget on the Academic arm of the nearly 20,000 student institution (we also have a hospital that doubles that number). At the moment, nearly 11% of that budget goes to an athletic department with nearly 120 staff members that only makes $7M/year in operating revenue without the support of student fees, that's in comparison to my own College which sees only 14% of that budget will making money to the tune of nearly $5M/year BACK to the University with only 103 employees (faculty and staff included) after that roughly $40M operating budget is covered through tuition credits, research expenditures, and developed gifts/corporate sponsorships. If you want a place to cut the cost of education, athletics is where it's at, and that pains me to say it as a huge college sports fan...but some schools just shouldn't be doing what they're doing.

If we're using the Private industry model as you state, wouldn't you expect a company to reallocate resources away from a division that is losing nearly 10% of the company's revenue every year? You and I both know the answer there.

(09-09-2020 10:34 AM)bearcatdp Wrote:  What's crazy is how huge some of these "P" school athletic departments are and how they can't weather the storm we're currently in. The money will be back. I guess they just realized how big they got and that now is a good time to slim down. UC seems lean and mean compared to the Iowas and Michigans of college sports. Hopefully, when we are able to increase our revenues, we can keep our overhead down so, when stuff hits the fan again, we don't have to make a bunch of cuts.

If UC gets into a P5 (which we all know won't happen), I would see them getting up to a 9 figure operating revenue really quickly....it's just how things work in ADs now. They'd probably be able to cut back on subsidies considerably, but even then, they'd still rely on them somewhat.

(09-09-2020 11:00 AM)BearcatMan Wrote:  

(09-09-2020 10:44 AM)Helicopter Wrote:  

(09-04-2020 10:17 PM)ZCat Wrote:  

(09-01-2020 09:50 PM)UCGrad1992 Wrote:  

Eliminating 40 positions? Just generalizing here but:
Could it be that they had too many positions before?

In the private sector, companies generally run very lean. My hunch is in academia And athletic departments they don’t.

That's been my flavor between the private and public sectors. In academia they get a new requirement, e.g., expansion of Title IX. To handle this they just hire more people who can handle the requirements of Title IX. After all Federal Loans + dumb students + raised tuition = free money. In the private sector they get a new requirement, e.g., revision of TSCA . "Bob, in addition to your current duties you are our new TSCA expert." After all you can't pass the cost on to the consumer -- they will just buy elsewhere.

You've clearly never worked in higher ed. At the moment, I'm essentially pulling three separate full time positions (teaching 12 credit hours along with research as a junior faculty, advising roughly 400 students on all manner of academic affairs and co-op/professional processes, and managing all external engagement for the College where I'm employed). If you think Universities are adding jobs for the hell of it, you're clearly out of touch...and most of those added jobs are done so through grants and gifts, not operational funds, anyways.

Just to frame something in mind so you understand why tuition is ACTUALLY going up, play along with this. Adjusting for inflation, public institutions in Ohio are receiving roughly 27 cents on the dollar versus the state support they received in 1980. The only place to recoup that is from their "customers" (ie. the students)...as would be the case in any industry. This loss in state support is 100% tied to the consistent cuts of corporate taxes and general education funding cuts over the last 3 decades...and it isn't stopping any time soon, something that was clearly indicated by the Lt. Gov's suggestion of cutting 20% of the state share of instruction this year despite not being willing to pull from the rainy day fun DURING A PANDEMIC, which was luckily moved back to only a 5% cut.

I love what I do, and I'd never have it any other way...but all you desktop lackeys who sit around thinking higher education is a cakewalk don't actually understand anything about the landscape, and it's hilarious to hear you try to self-rationalize an idea that makes no sense in reality. The primary source of bloat at Universities is in their athletics departments, and this is coming from a former College athlete who had his team disbanded this summer. My current institution runs a $322M Budget on the Academic arm of the nearly 20,000 student institution (we also have a hospital that doubles that number). At the moment, nearly 11% of that budget goes to an athletic department with nearly 120 staff members that only makes $7M/year in operating revenue without the support of student fees, that's in comparison to my own College which sees only 14% of that budget will making money to the tune of nearly $5M/year BACK to the University with only 103 employees (faculty and staff included) after that roughly $40M operating budget is covered through tuition credits, research expenditures, and developed gifts/corporate sponsorships. If you want a place to cut the cost of education, athletics is where it's at, and that pains me to say it as a huge college sports fan...but some schools just shouldn't be doing what they're doing.

If we're using the Private industry model as you state, wouldn't you expect a company to reallocate resources away from a division that is losing nearly 10% of the company's revenue every year? You and I both know the answer there.

I am a professor.

About 1/3 of professors in my discipline have worked outside of academia, including myself. Until 2020, every single professor I've ever heard complain about the workload has come from the other 2/3.

2020 is special because for most of us, it's the first time there's ever been substantial changes in the expectations placed upon us.

BearcatMan, I'm going to steal some of those talking points when I finish my PhD and have to consider the academic route. Good post.

(09-09-2020 11:46 AM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  

(09-09-2020 11:00 AM)BearcatMan Wrote:  

(09-09-2020 10:44 AM)Helicopter Wrote:  

(09-04-2020 10:17 PM)ZCat Wrote:  

(09-01-2020 09:50 PM)UCGrad1992 Wrote:  

Eliminating 40 positions? Just generalizing here but:
Could it be that they had too many positions before?

In the private sector, companies generally run very lean. My hunch is in academia And athletic departments they don’t.

That's been my flavor between the private and public sectors. In academia they get a new requirement, e.g., expansion of Title IX. To handle this they just hire more people who can handle the requirements of Title IX. After all Federal Loans + dumb students + raised tuition = free money. In the private sector they get a new requirement, e.g., revision of TSCA . "Bob, in addition to your current duties you are our new TSCA expert." After all you can't pass the cost on to the consumer -- they will just buy elsewhere.

You've clearly never worked in higher ed. At the moment, I'm essentially pulling three separate full time positions (teaching 12 credit hours along with research as a junior faculty, advising roughly 400 students on all manner of academic affairs and co-op/professional processes, and managing all external engagement for the College where I'm employed). If you think Universities are adding jobs for the hell of it, you're clearly out of touch...and most of those added jobs are done so through grants and gifts, not operational funds, anyways.

Just to frame something in mind so you understand why tuition is ACTUALLY going up, play along with this. Adjusting for inflation, public institutions in Ohio are receiving roughly 27 cents on the dollar versus the state support they received in 1980. The only place to recoup that is from their "customers" (ie. the students)...as would be the case in any industry. This loss in state support is 100% tied to the consistent cuts of corporate taxes and general education funding cuts over the last 3 decades...and it isn't stopping any time soon, something that was clearly indicated by the Lt. Gov's suggestion of cutting 20% of the state share of instruction this year despite not being willing to pull from the rainy day fun DURING A PANDEMIC, which was luckily moved back to only a 5% cut.

I love what I do, and I'd never have it any other way...but all you desktop lackeys who sit around thinking higher education is a cakewalk don't actually understand anything about the landscape, and it's hilarious to hear you try to self-rationalize an idea that makes no sense in reality. The primary source of bloat at Universities is in their athletics departments, and this is coming from a former College athlete who had his team disbanded this summer. My current institution runs a $322M Budget on the Academic arm of the nearly 20,000 student institution (we also have a hospital that doubles that number). At the moment, nearly 11% of that budget goes to an athletic department with nearly 120 staff members that only makes $7M/year in operating revenue without the support of student fees, that's in comparison to my own College which sees only 14% of that budget will making money to the tune of nearly $5M/year BACK to the University with only 103 employees (faculty and staff included) after that roughly $40M operating budget is covered through tuition credits, research expenditures, and developed gifts/corporate sponsorships. If you want a place to cut the cost of education, athletics is where it's at, and that pains me to say it as a huge college sports fan...but some schools just shouldn't be doing what they're doing.

If we're using the Private industry model as you state, wouldn't you expect a company to reallocate resources away from a division that is losing nearly 10% of the company's revenue every year? You and I both know the answer there.

I am a professor.

About 1/3 of professors in my discipline have worked outside of academia, including myself. Until 2020, every single professor I've ever heard complain about the workload has come from the other 2/3.

2020 is special because for most of us, it's the first time there's ever been substantial changes in the expectations placed upon us.

Yep...same here, worked for a structural engineering firm for 5 years before moving into higher education. I have no issue with the work I've got on me, I love being busy...but there's a whole hell of a lot of people who make statements about us collecting checks and not doing a damn thing who stare at their computers all day on spreadsheets acting like they're busy .