Comments on: No Fig Leaves

By: VL

VL — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 19:05:05 +0000

You’re absolutely right, the ‘rule of reciprocity’ accounts very well for the facts (in Hollywood and at UVA). What is nevertheless clear from the unfolding accounts is that these Ã¼ber-rich BOV members are quite a tight-knit little group, and Dragas was a busy little bee working up enough support over the pa st several months to oust Sullivan. It strikes me, in fact, that this is one reason some conspiracy theories seem so plausible: if one inhabits a small plutocracy, it’s quite likely the plutocrats are in cahoots, especially when the majority have been appointed by the same conservative governor. (The right is generally much better at closing ranks than the left.)

Speaking of conspiracy theories, though, over at Language Log there are links to one additional, quite different conspiracy theory having to do with preventing Michael Mann (climate change scientist) from coming back to UVA to become the Kington Chair of Environmental Change (http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4031). I somehow think this was not a driving force behind Sullivan’s ouster, but I can well imagine the very conservative business types on the BOV salivating over the prospect of killing two birds with one stone. It’s swift and efficient — strategic dynamism (or is that dynamic strategism?) at its best.

By: Timothy Burke

Timothy Burke — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 12:07:21 +0000

Yeah, that’s an interesting piece. I’m normally not a fan of conspiracy theories, but at the least, I think one thing that may have made David Brooks-level hucksterism irresistable to the BoV is that they all know people who are getting rich off of selling online education, whether in for-profits like Phoenix or Kaplan or in new intiatives like Coursera. You don’t have to conspire directly to operate by a rule of reciprocity–that you talk up and encourage someone else’s ventures and expect that they’ll do the same for you. It’s how dumb big-money film projects get the greenlight in Hollywood–someone’s paying off a guy who paid them off in the past.

By: VL

VL — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 03:13:41 +0000

It may be far worse than “bungling”: as more info comes out about the BOV, the behind-the-scenes machinations look positively Machiavellian. And I just stumbled across this blog post, which, though written last week, seems quite astute:
http://www.annemarieangelo.com/?p=40

I hope some good investigative reports come out soon….

By: Gavin Weaire

Gavin Weaire — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 15:18:30 +0000

UVa’s classics department is a very distinguished one, even among equivalent research institutions. I’ve never heard that they had any particular trouble with enrollments (an impression which the Slate article appears to confirm). I doubt that faculty salaries in classics total some astronomical sum. Bluntly, I don’t think it’s just disciplinary solidarity that suggests to me that there is sheer prejudice at work here.

By: Timothy Burke

Timothy Burke — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 17:24:07 +0000

I think this is one of the great snake-oil myths of the last thirty years: that corporatized management in public institutions produces efficient attention to return on investment, careful use of human resources and so on. What it really produces is the ability to hide operations behind the veil of the private, shield management from accountability, and to have ‘customers’ (e.g., citizens) who have no choice but to accept the product as offered.

By: MoXmas

MoXmas — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 16:13:40 +0000

The idea that managers in business are generally competent at this sort of thing is belied by most all of the evidence I have seen working in marketing for a number of years in a variety of positions. Most managers aren’t in place long enough to care about knowledge of their space, let alone ROI that doesn’t directly correspond to them geting promoted to the next level. While I have worked with tons of managers who are exceptions to that, they tend not to work for public companies.

Perhaps it works differently in positions, like operations, where the turnover is less, but that has not been my observation, either.

By contrast, almost every academic I know — including my sister who works at a state school — are well-versed in every key success metric they have, from graduation rates to resource allocation to staff salary and benefits. And they consider it bizarre when I tell them how seldom I run across that in “the real world”.