I used to work for a university for a couple years. Also, one of my good friends was a professor at another university.
One thing I noticed is that these universities have foundations which make up the bulk of their private funding. These foundations have swank dinner parties. Large donors have big shots that have influence over school policies and spending and allocation of resources.
I also noticed, strangely, that there seemed to be lots of commingling of funds. So expenses were inconsistently expenses to the foundation versus the university or vice versa. Some staff even pulled salaries partially from the university and also got paid on the side by the foundation.
I can cite examples of politicians laundering tens of millions of dollars through universities and it not going toward the publicly stated goal of the funding. For every one example I know of, there's probably at least 20 others.
The selection of Deans and University Presidents is very political.
Many of the Universities have Boards. The big shots at the foundations spend a lot of time ordering the board members around. Sometimes the big shot donors become board members themselves, or a "musical chairs" occurs.
There were a few sex scandals at these colleges universities. One was a gay male teacher sexually molesting a student. The other one was a teacher student relationship. Also, staff are often banging other staff. I noticed many supervisor subordinate sex relationships in short time I worked there. Teachers are in lots of situations with students outside of school that pass as friendships. Lawsuits related to this are a big risk and HR imposes training programs to reduce premiums or prove in court they took active precautions and preventative measures. Some imposed local emergency contact systems near dorms. Boxes with blue lights with push-buttons for emergencies with intercom contact.
Many of the professors are people who just never left college. They were a student, then a grad student, than a research assistant, then adjunct faculty and substitutes or exam proctors and eventually became staff or faculty themselves. When people criticize university professors/staff for never having worked in the real world, it is often quite true.
I'd argue that university jobs are even easier than municipal/county/state government jobs. There's not much supervision, no hard deadlines, way more time than needed to complete workload, lots of internet surfing and passing time. I rarely remember anyone working late hours stressed out about meeting a hard deadline and making sure they were perfectly prepared. Supervisors were allowed to send staff home early. Lots of holidays for damn never anything and everything. Spring breaks and fall breaks and extra days off and very long Christmas breaks and very easy summers for both faculty and staff.
I used to work for a university for a couple years. Also, one of my good friends was a professor at another university.
One thing I noticed is that these universities have foundations which make up the bulk of their private funding. These foundations have swank dinner parties. Large donors have big shots that have influence over school policies and spending and allocation of resources.
I also noticed, strangely, that there seemed to be lots of commingling of funds. So expenses were inconsistently expenses to the foundation versus the university or vice versa. Some staff even pulled salaries partially from the university and also got paid on the side by the foundation.
I can cite examples of politicians laundering tens of millions of dollars through universities and it not going toward the publicly stated goal of the funding. For every one example I know of, there's probably at least 20 others.
The selection of Deans and University Presidents is very political.
Many of the Universities have Boards. The big shots at the foundations spend a lot of time ordering the board members around. Sometimes the big shot donors become board members themselves, or a "musical chairs" occurs.
There were a few sex scandals at these colleges universities. One was a gay male teacher sexually molesting a student. The other one was a teacher student relationship. Also, staff are often banging other staff. I noticed many supervisor subordinate sex relationships in short time I worked there. Teachers are in lots of situations with students outside of school that pass as friendships. Lawsuits related to this are a big risk and HR imposes training programs to reduce premiums or prove in court they took active precautions and preventative measures. Some imposed local emergency contact systems near dorms. Boxes with blue lights with push-buttons for emergencies with intercom contact.
Many of the professors are people who just never left college. They were a student, then a grad student, than a research assistant, then adjunct faculty and substitutes or exam proctors and eventually became staff or faculty themselves. When people criticize university professors/staff for never having worked in the real world, it is often quite true.
I'd argue that university jobs are even easier than municipal/county/state government jobs. There's not much supervision, no hard deadlines, way more time than needed to complete workload, lots of internet surfing and passing time. I rarely remember anyone working late hours stressed out about meeting a hard deadline and making sure they were perfectly prepared. Supervisors were allowed to send staff home early. Lots of holidays for damn never anything and everything. Spring breaks and fall breaks and extra days off and very long Christmas breaks and very easy summers for both faculty and staff.