Septimus Rex
Reginald Blackstone
Pipez
wanksmacgruber
Josh Being Josh
Moose Knuckle
I'm so hot AND I regulate like Warren G. Recognize.
Dear Colleagues and Friends,
I want to share some very, very good news with you today. After all of our hard work in letter writing, testifying, visiting legislators in Austin, and earning community support, we can declare victory in our efforts to secure a pathway for the University of Houston to attain Tier One status…Blah Blah Blah.
The Constitutional amendment will be put to a state-wide vote in November 2009, and we plan to engage the support of our alumni, our community leaders, and the UH System family in a drive to educate voters on what additional Tier One universities will mean in terms of economic growth for Texas. We are hopeful voters will pass the amendment.
My admiration and gratitude go to Blah Blah Blah.
Building upon this constitutional and legislative foundation, the University of Houston will be in the strongest position ever to complete our Tier One journey…Blah Blah Blah.
I’m so hot in red,
Renu Khator
The Random Guy’s Thoughts: I got this email this afternoon. Obviously she didn’t post this nor did she put the stuff in red. I feel like that should be understood without being said, but we have to be careful after Wanks almost got himself deported. This has been going on so long I went up to lobby for it as an undergrad. That wasn’t recently, know what I’m sayin? I always thought Tier 1 was the wrong direction – we should focus on being a great practical education and symbiotically feeding the robust Houston community with quality graduates prepared for the real world instead of getting penis envy over UT’s research bonifides. You know what research is good for? That’s not a rhetorical question, I’m actually asking. I spent over a year as a research assitant and was very close to pursuing my PhD in Clinical Psychology, but then I realized that nobody reads that shit except other academics. Those academic assholes are the Ouroboros, a closed-circuit snake eating itself.
But if we were going to chase that Tier 1 pipe dream, let’s get us some motherfucking money. So congrats to Chancellor Cougar (get it? get it?). Eat them up. Eat them up. Go Coogs Go.
Picture from here.
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You actually thought that TIER ONE was the WRONG DIRECTION? Wow, lemme get some of that stuff you were smoking.
Do you think Khator is hot?
I thought we should focus on the quality of the undergraduate and masters-level education and strengthen our partnerships with oil & gas and high-tech. UH’s competitive advantage should be Houston itself, and should act as a high-quality feeder into the workforce.
If you went to UH as an undergrad, most of your major classes were probably taught by other (usually PhD) students or tenured professors who didn’t give a shit about teaching because they are incentivized mostly based on research publications. Don’t tell me this education couldn’t have been a lot better.
Tier 1 is a distraction of effort and resources, and the opportunity cost is that we can’t primarily focus on being the most cost-effective, real-world working education in the state and beyond.
That’s what I’m smoking, Jack.
Tier one as a designation alone would bring greater recognition to a university which has rightfully deserved it for a long time, and how could tier one possibly be a distraction of efforts and research when such recognition will bring about more oportunities for research and such things with increased funding.
TRG is right, for majors like his research doesn’t matter. But for any science and engineering field research is very important to the quality of education. The more hands on experience undergrads can have applying the information they use in lecture, in the field, the less likely they are to forget it.
Not to mention that this country is quickly falling behind in science and research, because most of our college graduates elect to take easier paths (HRM anyone?). The CEO of Boeing (or Lockeed I cant remember) recently testified before congress that the top 3 PhD programs providing engineers to their company he could not pronounce because they were all in China.
What happens to our economy when other countries are out innovating us, and only our larger companies, who can afford to outsource all their R&D to China and India, can survive? I can’t wait until all the Japanese/Chinese/and up and coming Indian companies have better products, instruments, and computers than us, so thats who we end up supporting by buying their products
Yea, that’s already happened Pipez, has for years. Hence, Toyota and Honda sell the most (and best) cars, and Sony and others make the best electronics. The US has been a service economy for a while now, and hasn’t produced anything of substantial value for some time.
segway much?
we put out the best golf equipment too, fwiw
ok i think we’re beginning to go off subject here, my main point is that by having a tier one public institution located in the fourth largest US city, not only will it bring and keep better students, faculty, etc. into houston in greater numbers, but will also help the university become an even greater economic machine for the houston area (already brings in billions in exogeneous $) and will help the city gain greater recgnition and reputation in academics which is what houston, along with the state of texas as an entity, desperately needs.
Jack, Jack. We’d moved on to discussing the merits of drinking and horse racing. But I appreciate your vigor and will answer you in two parts thusly:
a) I would advise you to never ever take anything seriously that you read in a blog, unless the Pope starts a blog or something. Our third most read post ever is titled “Boobies, Anyone?”
b) Since we’re going there, let me lay out my argument for reals. My anecdotal and qualitative feeling is that UH has been focused on Tier 1 to the exclusion of the quality of the education itself. I was a psych major, but I know many students in many majors that also felt the quality of their education was rubbish. This is anecdotal, but besides Bauer (which does a damn fine job) and maybe math and hard sciences (which I know little about), the education didn’t live up to our meager expectations. I only had 3 major classes taught by actual professors, and 2 of the 3 didn’t put any work into the class. I graduated with 130+ hours and can count on one hand the number of instructors who were worth a damn. Why? Publish or perish. There was little incentive in raises and promotion for quality instruction. Dr. Lence was the only counter-example I can think of, and he was an anomaly in many ways.
I’m not saying this is solely because of UH’s penis-envy obsession with Tier 1, but I feel the focus on research over education was and probably is the largest problem with UH. And even if we get Tier 1, we’ll be a low-level T1 school at best. Why not put resources and effort into doing what we can do better than anyone else? In my not-so-humble opinion, that is to be the best cost-effective, real-world education in Texas. Tier 1 and the emphasis on research has an opportunity cost, and that is the exclusion of everything else.
Here is a terrible metaphor. I’m not very good at sports – I’m not tall or fast or quick or coordinated. So I was usually picked close to last in most sports. But what I can do well is keep going all day long. So a few years ago I stopped playing basketball and started running and biking and now I do triathlons. I’m not great, but I’m also not terrible, and I’m a lot better at it than I was playing a ball sport.
Jim Collins argues in his book Good to Great (I know this is trite) that companies should focus on what they can be the best in the world at. That is fantastic grammar on my part. If we succeed with Tier 1, we’ll be bottom-rung in Tier 1. Why not spend our energies focusing on what we can do better than the UTs and the A&Ms?
There is a lot about the hard sciences and engineerings I don’t know, so I could be totally wrong. All I know is I would have had a crappy education had I not taken it upon myself to go above and beyond the turd platter that was given to me, and a lot of other people feel the same way. I say focus on the student as the customer.