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David McElroy

making sense of a dysfunctional culture

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California teacher union gets power to veto online college classes

By David McElroy · October 14, 2011

More and more people are taking online courses today and doing well with them. For subjects that lend themselves to the format, the courses allow students to take courses more conveniently and they allow universities to save money. It’s a win for everybody.

Unfortunately, not everybody sees them that way. Even though they’re good for colleges and students, the union representing nearly half of the lecturers in the University of California system has won veto power over the university offering any more online courses. You see, universities obviously exist for the purpose of providing jobs to union members, not to educate students in a convenient and efficient way.

The new contract between the American Federation of Teachers and the UC system has a clause that prohibits any of the UC campuses from adding online courses that would result in “a change to a term or condition of employment” of any lecturer without union approval, according to the union’s president. He’s quite happy about it, of course.

Bob Samuels, the president of the union, says this effectively gives the union veto power over any online initiative that might endangers the jobs or work lives of its members. “We feel that we could stop almost any online program through this contract,” Samuels told Inside Higher Ed.

If you read what the university has to say on the subject, you’ll find an entirely different point of view. The university seems to think the provision just means the two sides would sit down and talk. The administrators quoted in the story come across as very naive.

I hate unions, and I’m not going to claim it’s just when their demands are “excessive.” If you don’t like the terms under which a company wants to hire you, don’t take the job. If you don’t like the conditions under which you’re working, leave. But don’t use your own implied threats of violence and other coercion to try to get what you want. Why would you even want to work in an environment like that? How do you expect to get anything except bad blood when the lunatics are allowed to run the asylum?

There are lots of lousy companies to work for, but I have a solution for that. I don’t work for them. If you choose to work for them, you’re just giving them permission to treat you that way. Have the courage to walk away from a company that doesn’t appreciate you. Of course, sometimes you might need to accept the grim reality that maybe you aren’t providing enough value to be worth appreciating. Maybe you need to be someone who an employer will want to hire. And maybe you’ll need to do what I’ve done for most of my adult life. I work for myself. I don’t take orders well, so I know better than to try.

When unions are involved, the purpose of a company or organization gets muddied. Employees feel that the company’s purpose is to provide jobs for them. That’s not the case. A company’s job is to make as much money as it reasonably can for its shareholders. Smart companies know that employing the best people and treating them with respect while also upholding high standards is going to achieve the best profit. The lousy ones just agree to whatever the unions want — and destroy whole industries, just as unionized madness has destroyed much of the U.S. auto industry.

In this case, both sides seem to forget that it’s the students — the customers — whose interests have to be protected. Of course, this is what happens whenever you give the state a monopoly over an industry. (Even though higher education isn’t technically a state monopoly, it is to the extent that state funding makes it far less expensive to attend, meaning the government-operated schools don’t have to compete on even footing with private non-profit and for-profit schools.)

There aren’t any good guys in this story. The union is confused about the purpose of a university, and the university administration is confused about who should be making decisions about which course to offer and how. Unions are bad enough in private industry, but they’re even worse with government-run agencies, simply because the administrators have no real incentive to compete and be the best they can be.

This new deal in California is a bad deal for students and for taxpayers.

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For “throwback Thursday, let me introduce you to For “throwback Thursday, let me introduce you to Sam. In 2009, I took in a young feral cat who I named for the early American revolutionary Samuel Adams. He was one of the most confident — downright arrogant, in fact — cats I’ve ever been around. He had an amazing personality and I immediately loved him. He was no more than 8 or 9 months old when he suddenly died for reasons that my vet couldn’t explain. Even though I had him only a short time, he was one of my all-time favorites. #tbt #cats #tabby #feral #birmingham #alabama
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On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

I should have expected this, but I honestly didn’t. The article I wrote last week about disagreements over treatment for autistic children brought me angry emails. You could almost call it “hate mail.” Of the five emails about it so far, two have been to tell me that I’m wrong to even listen to critics of the most popular therapy for autistic children — and the other three tell me I’m wrong for not condemning the treatment as the “obvious” abuse it is. If you read the article, you know I didn’t take a position on the issue, because I simply don’t know enough to have an opinion. But by talking about the issue, I stepped into a heated controversy. The emails from the two sides convinced me of nothing. But they did give me even more empathy for the unfortunate parents who have to figure out for themselves where the truth lies for their children.

Have you ever had what you thought was a new idea — and then discovered that “old you” had the same idea years ago? I had that experience tonight. And it’s been wonderful. I came up with an idea tonight for a very short satirical film that would be a promotion for a fictitious college. The point is to make the college promote — as good things — everything which is actually terrible about most modern colleges. Then I remembered a fake college that I invented back when I was in college. I had created student recruitment brochures and various newsletters back then, so I decided to call my “new” college by the same name I’d invented years ago: Ochita College. As I searched my computer for any old material I might still have about Ochita from the past, I discovered an email I sent to someone in 2009 — outlining essentially the same idea which I came up with tonight. Since I didn’t remember writing that, it felt like magic. So my next film project just might be this one instead. If all goes well, you might soon see “Ochita College: Your Future Starts Here.” This should be fun.

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