UF has fired all staff in positions related to DEI.

Re UF,that is probably a valid opinion in some regards, but far to sweeping in it's entirety. To suggest UF doesn't ever make decisions in the best interest of faculty/students/alumni is way over the top.You can't please everyone all the time....but your view is overly cynical IMO.
We don't really see the "question" re NIL in the article, just a reference to Smith going off when asked about it. And again, this is a guy that has largely been absent from anything to do with UF for the 35 years since he left. That's fine, certainly his perogative to spend his time/energy/money/focus where he desires.....but to now present yourself to be the spokesman rings hollow.

 

My view is that when UF's best interests align with the best interests of its faculty, students, or alumni, it'll make decisions in the best interest of those groups as well as its own. When its best interests diverge from those of students, faculty, and/or alumni, UF will act in its own best interests. But that's true of the vast majority of other major universities.

Right at the start of the article, it says: "During a wide-ranging interview with USA TODAY Sports . . ." It then says later, "If that doesn’t provide the sense that one of the Gators’ most famous figures is rather steamed with his school, just ask him to reflect what it might have been like if college football players during his era in the late 1980s had received money from the type of name, image and likeness (NIL) agreements now allowed in college sports."

Yeah, the author of the article doesn't make it clear what the questions were, but the context sure sounds like they asked him a question related to NIL, rather than Emmitt going there on his own.

 

__ck Emmitt. He's embarrassed UF enough since his early departure.

 

Well I'm sure there are cases where those interests dont conflict with the school's primary mission of asset accumulation and capital/revenue generation. I dont think its overly cynical to suggest that education isnt the #1 priority at UF or many other schools for that matter.

 

higher Ed is a business. For the business to be successful there has to be investment in human capital. The ebb and flow of who gets the most support from admin is largely determined by who’s in charge, what the strategy is, the economic and political climate, etc. the reason Uf is such a shit show right now is there isn’t a broader strategy or vision so you have different people in their little fiefdoms each with different goals. Some are focused on faculty, some on students, everyone generally ignores staff lol. Still others are so financially mismanaged they are focused entirely on survival. Bottom line, there is not some all encompassing plan that is all about asset accumulation, unless we start to consider faculty and students as assets too - but that’s a whole different discussion.

 

Wow quite the stretch there. Do you understand or can you gauge sarcasm? You took my response as an allegation of falsifying billings? Geez man get outside and laugh some. You are wound waaaaaay too tight.

 

That's the big problem, yes. Business comes first, education second. This is the country we live in. Capital accumulation rules all and degrades everything.

 

it’s not all bad. When done right it means more program options for students. It can mean more resources for faculty. But it has its dark sides too. Like only using adjuncts to cut costs. That’s why good leadership is so important.

 

Education is a business first. And has to be. Because if you don't treat the school as a business, it runs out of money and struggles. Many have also closed. And a closed school can't service any students.

A big part of the problem is a drop in traditional students enrolling right out of high school. More and more college students are returning to school after spending years out of school, and are choosing non-traditional choices like online schools. Traditional schools have never been quick to adapt to changing environments, and there have been some schools like Purdue, that bought Kaplan, or University of Arizona that purchased Ashford that have dabbled in the online, non-traditional school space. But these traditional universities don't understand the model, and are struggling.

Now, back to Florida. It's a poor business decision to anger minorities. In the next few decades, Caucasians will no longer be a majority of the country, and decisions you make today often come home to roost only years later.

 

Wound too tight…it’s mostly what makes a good libbie.

 

Uggg . . . this is so wrong as a blanket statement. Yes, educational institutions must tend to the business aspect in order to provide quality resources. Education, however, is a human service profession. When education is treated strictly as a business, failure persists.

Edit: Teaching under employment circumstances may be considered a human service profession, but education obviously is much more than that. Calling it a "business first," though is an awful way to describe education.

 

Most of the problems with our education system can be traced to running it like a business.

 

Absolutely. When I started teaching, I thought we needed more business-minded people in the teaching profession. Years of experience taught me that I was wrong.

 

I think what academia needs is a better synergy of senior leaders with educational and business experience. You end up with tenure track faculty becoming senior leaders and suddenly being responsible for dozens of programs, hundreds of faculty and staff, and budgets over a hundred mil and outside of a few ballers with insane grant numbers few have any idea at all how to manage all of that, and the people that think they know often have an over inflated ego and no real business sense. You need both sides to be successful. I’ve seen so many incompetent senior leaders and generally their incompetence stemmed from a lack of business, management, administrative, and leadership skills.

 

Yes, but what you are describing is admin work. A similar tale can be told about people with outstanding knowledge of business, mathematics, engineering, chem, etc. but who couldn't teach a fish to swim. Yet we put them in the classroom at the highest level of education and expect them to magically be an educator. Professor is a very strange gig considering that many enter the profession having little or no qualified teacher training. To a great extent it's a learn on the gig gig (the teaching portion).

 

and I would argue it takes people with an understanding of teaching but also business sense to make effective decisions about human capital in higher Ed.