Over to UC

If you haven't been following the events unfolding at University of California, things are going down and it is crazy bananacakes. I feel bad even saying that because it undermines what's going on. Here is the New York Times take on its.

I feel like just focusing on the tuition hike is looking at the story too narrowly. Faculty have been furloughed, and asked to take their furlough days on non-teaching days. While that might sound like an innocent request (or demand), what it really does is make research and writing a non-paid activity. Research and writing is just much a part of an academic's life as teaching is; it's like asking a foreman to only accept payment for when s/he is interacting with workers on the floor, while the time that goes into planning and supervising goes unpaid.

Inherent in this is the fact that UC is probably not going to be an attractive option to brilliant young academics, and so the quality of faculty will suffer from this in the long term.

It's not just about the tuition hikes, it's what they mean and the ways UC is changing. Balancing the books, in this case, means screwing over the faculty and the students and that is just not cool.