<story><title>University of Leicester firing all pure math faculty</title><url>https://twitter.com/wtgowers/status/1355184163020804099</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>inglor_cz</author><text>I wonder if the end game of higher education looks like purely administrative bodies with enormous tuition that just provide the students with leisure, varsity sports and regular events on the currently hot social justice topics.&lt;p&gt;I studied pure math in the Czech Rep. between 1996 and 2003. The administrative staff was about 10 per cent of the entire  body of employees.&lt;p&gt;Reading that administrators actually outnumber teaching staff at some American universities today, I cannot help but ask what went wrong. This kind of bureaucratic bloat would make late Soviet Union blush and professor Parkinson rewrite his books.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.washingtontimes.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;2013&amp;#x2F;feb&amp;#x2F;28&amp;#x2F;teachers-outnumbered-schools-administrators-suppor&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.washingtontimes.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;2013&amp;#x2F;feb&amp;#x2F;28&amp;#x2F;teachers-ou...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jancsika</author><text>&amp;gt; events on the currently hot social justice topics.&lt;p&gt;Namespace collision detected:&lt;p&gt;1. a lecture series or seminar by a researcher specializing in social justice movements, civil rights leaders, abolitionists, etc. Possibly focusing on insights from newly discovered primary documents.&lt;p&gt;2. events hosted by any political college organization whose participants may be painted with the derisive term &amp;quot;social justice warrior&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Definition #1 isn&amp;#x27;t an edge case-- most universities are chock full of such events and seminars. Shit like this: a linguist who was tasked with helping a Northern California tribe fill in the blanks in the documentation of their dead language so they could revive it. If your curiosity isn&amp;#x27;t peaked by that concept and it&amp;#x27;s associated practical challenges and sets of choices, I&amp;#x27;m not sure what you&amp;#x27;re doing on HN.&lt;p&gt;Definition #2 is like HN&amp;#x27;s version of cheating celebrity stories in the Enquirer. If you wanted to spend the rest of your life enumerating each case, you certainly wouldn&amp;#x27;t run out of bona fide material. But if &lt;i&gt;all&lt;/i&gt; you talk about 99% of the time is that-- to the extent that you forget definition #1 even exists-- you have to admit at least &lt;i&gt;part&lt;/i&gt; of your outrage is due not to your own free will but due to people clicking upvote buttons as if nudging trays of junk food close to where you&amp;#x27;re sitting.&lt;p&gt;Edit: typo</text></comment>
<story><title>University of Leicester firing all pure math faculty</title><url>https://twitter.com/wtgowers/status/1355184163020804099</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>inglor_cz</author><text>I wonder if the end game of higher education looks like purely administrative bodies with enormous tuition that just provide the students with leisure, varsity sports and regular events on the currently hot social justice topics.&lt;p&gt;I studied pure math in the Czech Rep. between 1996 and 2003. The administrative staff was about 10 per cent of the entire  body of employees.&lt;p&gt;Reading that administrators actually outnumber teaching staff at some American universities today, I cannot help but ask what went wrong. This kind of bureaucratic bloat would make late Soviet Union blush and professor Parkinson rewrite his books.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.washingtontimes.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;2013&amp;#x2F;feb&amp;#x2F;28&amp;#x2F;teachers-outnumbered-schools-administrators-suppor&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.washingtontimes.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;2013&amp;#x2F;feb&amp;#x2F;28&amp;#x2F;teachers-ou...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mola</author><text>I think the current mindset of american universities is commodification of  the concept of higher education.
Teaching, scholastic tradition and enlightment values are sidelined by values like customer satisfaction, marketing, and money making optimization.</text></comment>