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Tuesday, September 13, 1977
University Daily Kansan
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Comment
Unsigned editorials represent the opinion of the Kansan editorial staff. Signed columns represent only the views of the writers.
Reject AAUP plan
The KU American Association of University Professors (AAUP) apparently is taking seriously the idea of using teachers as administrators. The idea, in a different form, is not unusual. Administrators have taught, and will continue to teach, a limited number of classes at the University.
number of classes at the college. But AAUP members propose a different application of the idea, an application that would use professors as administrators for rotating periods of time. The University's leadership would be deprived of continuity.
Grant Goodman, an AAPU member,
recently told Chancellor Archie Dykes that faculty members should be appointed to administrative roles for two or three years,
“as part of their duty.” On a trial basis, he said, the faculty appointees could work for three years for salaries slightly higher than those they earned as teachers.
NO ACTION has been taken on Goodman's suggestion. Administrators would be wise to let the suggestion die.
But other AAUP members evidently agree with the substance, if not the exact details, of the instant-administrator idea. William Scott, president of KU's AAUP chapter, said last week that "some people are concerned about having a permanent group of administrators."
"The University is becoming more like a business, with a conflict of adversaries," Scott said in explaining Goodman's suggestion. "We should resist the tendency as much as we can."
The University, however, already is a business. As such, with a budget of $175 million for fiscal year 1978, it requires stable leadership from administrators thoroughly familiar with KU finances.
KU requires continuity not only in its administration, but also in its faculty. AAUP
is quick to point out that if faculty salaries fall behind salaries of other comparable institutions, an undesirable instability from faculty turnovers will occur. isn't it inconsistent to deplore instability caused by salaries while advancing a plan that also would lead to instability every few years?
would.
TWO YEARS ago, the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools visited the University. The association, which is responsible for accrediting KU, urged the University to continue efforts aimed at achieving administrative stability. That stability, to the association, was a factor in the quality of higher education.
Scott agreed that continuity was too important to overlook. He spoke of using five-year rotating periods, rather than three-year periods, and of placing faculty members in only the lower levels of University administration. But he added, "Perhaps the accreditors were wrong."
A university's reputation depends partly on outside evaluations, including those from groups such as North Central. Accreditors recognize that trained administrators need time to carry out long-range decisions.
the recent administrative changes at the KU Medical Center, changes that have resembled musical chairs, show what can happen when a faculty lacks consistent leadership. Eventually, the faculty resists any leadership.
Finally, it's too much to expect faculty members to fairly evaluate their former peers if those members suddenly are thrust into administrative positions overnight.
When poor old Ottman graduated from a public college with a degree in education, he didn't expect to end up as a lawyer.
Students shop for school's value
But because his school's placement department wasn't in touch with the job market, Otmarg got the shaft. He was cranked out as "just another teacher" and sent into a world where teaching jobs are slim pickin', to say the least.
Soon, schools like Ottmar are going to be held accountable for their actions. Prospective collegians will toss colleges and universities as a place of statistics aside as an owner would dead trees. They bear no fruit, so why spend money on them?
Those institutions that flaunt clean slates in all areas of education, including reasonable costs, called structured curriculum to the student's needs and a credible placement record, will bring home the bacon. That those in mockery will be bemused in mockery as they imprint in education takes over.
IN FACT, the trend to shop around before attending a post-high school institution already has begun. The American Association of State Colleges and Universities reports that the percentage of high school graduates going to college has been growing since 1968. At 32 per cent of this year's secondary school graduates will graduate from the traditional college.
Statistics from the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education indicate that between 5 per cent and 30 per cent of all college students participate. An article in Newsweek magazine revealed that as many as three-fourths of all college students
have signed up for college merely because society pushed them into it.
Tbaemert
Editorial Writer
Rick
Many students are examining alternatives to colleges and universities. Independent trade schools are two such options.
**IN AN INTERVIEW** this summer, Stephen B. Friedheim, executive vice president for the Association of Middle School and College Washington, D.C., said he endorsed independent trade and vocational schools because their curriculum is specialized. Because educators at these educational material is removed," he said, students who know what they want do not waste time taking courses in areas they are not speaking. Students can whiz through in about two years.
And placement is high. In a study by Gary Talley, president of Brown Macleach College, Salina, it was credited with placing 91.4 per cent of their graduates in their trained fields in 1974. Institutions other than public colleges and universities and 80 per cent of their graduates in fields related to their major.
Not all public colleges and universities fared so well. According to Loda Newcomb of the Education Department at the University of Kansas, about 50 per cent of last year's graduates found jobs, although they were not necessarily employed. The figure includes those students who failed to report back after finding a job.
TALLEY'S FINDINGS paint an even grimmer picture of college placement:
"According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of graduates will exceed the number of jobs requiring college degrees) by about 800,000 between now and 1985, and their supply of college graduates per cent between now and 1985. The United States Census Bureau projects that in the next ten years from college into a world that doesn't need them.
In '1975, there were 30,000 law school graduates competing for 15,000 jobs. For years the colleges and universities have been forced to think that there are teaching positions. In the medical field, where there are still plenty of employment opportunities upon completion of the necessary education from the limited number of premedical students allowed into medical school.
"IN 1975, 15,000 premed students were accepted, but what lies ahead for the 35,000 applicants that were turned away? In 1976, a reporters three-fourths of the social science and two-thirds of the humanities majors who came out of college in the early 70s have had to take jobs not道德相关. The liberal arts degree has been called a ticket to unemployment."
According to statistics released this summer by the College Placement Council, Bettleheim, Pa., those trends are lingering as they would hire 18 players they would hire 18 sent more college graduates this year, they will not be in the areas of
humanities, social sciences,
education, psychology, fine
arts, communications and
foreign languages. Business
and engineering majors will be
sought after, however.
In the Talley study, it is pointed out by the National Board on Graduate Education that through the end of the 1970s, as few as an estimated total of 7,000 Ph.D.s a year, or a quarter of 35,000 pregraduates related to their training. Thirty-three per cent of the males and 67 per cent of the females have had to accept positions unrelated to their college majors in the 1970s.
PERHAPS THE most startling statistic is, "The U.S. Office of Education estimates that four out of five jobs created by teachers were vocational or technical training but not a college degree, and the U.S. Department of Labor confirms with its predictions that 20 per cent will require four-year education in 1970s will require four-year college degrees, while 80 per cent will require a high school diploma or training beyond the high school class less than four years of college."
A rap in the head with such statistics would make most college-bound high schoolers wary about what they are going. Going to Whatamata U. because the rest of the family did no longer is a justifiable reason for going to school. Nor is spending money on dollars that go to "have fun and live," especially when nothing awaits on the diseased job market.
GORDON SHULER, personnel director at the General Motor Motors Leeds plant, sees a need for an indicator of the ability to
learn." But an executive who has worked his way to the top by experienceing on-the-job training would call Shuler's recommendations to get a college education bunk.
James Rawlings Jr., a personnel manager for Trans World Airlines, said that regardless of a job offered, the degree is evidence to an employer that the job seeker can pursue a goal and reach it. Many job seekers, if asked to spend four years in the job search process, reach a goal, would brakely tell Rawlings where to fly.
College is not for everyone.
Nor is one particular institution
for everyone.
Although independent vocational and trade schools are substantially higher in cost, they have a certain requirement that is geared to job-readiness. Students who already have decided their vocation can enter high school to learn the skills needed, and begin working within two years.
PEOPLE WHO support public colleges and universities argue that a four-year program is conducive to becoming a well-rounded student and person. Shoving a student into a job after two years would tarnish the crown on high education's noble head. Learning in an institution, not job training, with the exception of several fields of study.
Soon, the prospective Otmars in the world will begin looking around, and the will help around. They also the institution that offers them the most. Those that waste the student's time and money, and pay for the work will be tagged worthless no matter what they teach.
Nobody wins Farah jeans boycott
By JAMES J. KILPATRICK Washington Star Syndicate
The great Haraj boycott began in August 1972. It ended in February 1974. In the annals of labor relations, this was an epic conflict. Now a little monograph comes to hand, offering a reflective judgment on the battle: Nobody won.
The monograph is the work of Harold P. Coxson Jr., director of the labor law section of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, based toward business, but little such bias appears in his paper. Coxson sets forth the facts, and lets us add up the pain of the injuries, was something worse than a scoreless tie.
In the great Farah jeans boycott of 1972-1974, nobody won. And considering the injuries to the company, workers,union, investors and consumers,the result was something worse than a scoreless tie.
before the boycott, Farah had an impressive record of sales
At the time it all began, the Farah Manufacturing Company of El Paso was one of three major companies manned by the famous wholesale trade. The company was a kind of lengthened shadow of Wilie Farah, a stubborn, hardworking, passionately loyal company. Under his directive, the firm had proposed.
COXSON LOOKED UP the figures. At their peak, Farah's factories produced 12,000 dozen men's underwear and their estimated annual cloth usage was 39 million linear yards. The company operated nine nine in San Diego and nine Easi. The payroll number 9,500.
and profits. In 1967, the company went public. Fortune magazine ranked it $8th among 1,000 companies in the United States on invested capital. Its stock traded from a low of $40 to a high of $90.
Over a period of several years, the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (AFL-CLIO) tried strenuously to organize the Farah workers. Coxson does not go into the background of the prolonged war but the bitterness and hostility have widely reported elsewhere. This was a rough one—a militant union, with some fire-eating leaders, pitied against intransigent management, strongly trenched the back and clashed. The union flexed its muscles and proclaimed a national boycott of Farah products.
IN A NICE, ironical sense, the boycott succeeded. In Pittsburgh, which Coxson takes to be a typical city, Parma came from Philadelphia and on the shelves of every major store by June of 1973. The company
been hurturing. Its stock, which had traded between 19% and 49% in 1971, dropped to a low of 10% in 1972. In 1973, the range was between 3% and 12%. In 1975, the year after the boycott ended, the high was 9%. The company plainly didn't win.
when the labor troubles began, in 1969, the average starting wage at the Farah company was $1.70 per hour. The minimum wage then was $1.60. When Willie Hatlaz at last caved in, and we hired him opposing the union, a setaction reached the new startling wage was $2.50, but the minimum wage by that time had increased to $2.20. Put another way, the union won an 80-cent increase, but the workers would have had 6 cents anyway. At the 22-month strike, they had no wages at all. They won 20 cents, per hour. It is hard to see what the worker won.
PERHAPS IT WAS a union victory? Coxson did it. At the time of settlement, it was widely reported that the union had spent $4.5 million on the boycotт. The union obtained
5,500 new members, paying dues (at the税率 of) $3 a month. On that basis, the union would need 25 years to recoup its costs. The union also other companies in El Paso as a result of its success at Farah, but three years later, says Coxson, "only one-tenth of our dues was a union victory. it was a pyrhic victory indeed.
What of the public interest?
During the boycott, consumers had choices of two major products instead of three. No much public awareness of the dropout from 9,500 to 7,500 during the boycott; it since has dropped to about 6,500. Instead of nine plants, the company operates them at three dozen oven-baked items a day. Farah's purchases of material have dropped to 11 million linear yards.
"WHAT DOES ALL this show?" asks Coxson. "When a union implements a consumer boycott that reduces or eliminates for duty the primary product, nobody really wins. Employees lose jobs; the company and its stockholders lose money; competition stalls; and consumers have no less brand to choose from."
Coxson expresses a hope that the American public will learn from the Farah experience, but he hopes the war's injuries are—wearily expensive, but men keep fighting them anyway.
Not everything to be learned is locked in dusty volumes. The voice of the lecturer is not the only voice of knowledge. Jaded students may agree with this too readily. You'll look outside the prepackaged knowledge presented to you?
If you stay locked in the campus world long enough, you will not be able to see anything outside of your classroom. Attendance is leave. Go away from the campus and out of the city. Get away from the conference center and blaring stereos that play the 17th rendition of "Disco Duck."
Evenings of wild, drunken gyrations in a disco full of sweety bodies or hours spent drinking gallons of beer in a smoky bar are not the only sources of enjoyment.
Go down to the river. Even when humanity fools them, rivers retain their peaceful dignity.
Rivers provide campus escape
THE RIVER'S voice can teach you how to relax. It can put you to sleep or awaken you to realism or about reality that you never realized.
reality that is full of trouble, the river's voice and its cool, soothing touch help you realize that the problems that seemed so important are not the city's life, nor do amount to much. When you can reflect on your troubles in peace, few problems are more difficult to become swept down to the sea with the silt, leaves and other debris.
Ross McIlvain Editorial Writer
If you travel down the river, letting it sweep you along and feeling its strength, you see the other side, the unpaved side of existence. And it is well worth seeing.
But do not hurry away to paddle in a canoe race, even if it is against Kansas State University caneists. Hurling down the river in a race makes being in a calm, meditative mood difficult, if not impossible.
The flash of stroking paddies and the urge to stay ahead of other teams behind you destroy a mellow attitude. The attentiveness or race is more like a prize fight than a trio for contemplation.
The crowds that accompany a race destroy the serenity you sought to enjoy after you left the city and your daily life. Crowds turn on their car stereos to play "Disco Duck," and they pierce the calm with raucous drunken laughter. You are almost back
When your eyes are on you teammate's paddle so you can syncronize your strokes to increase speed, you do not see much of the scenery. Rare wild herons might fly past without your even being in time to look at them. They are really racing, a rare wild choreae aardvark could飞 past and you probably would not notice.
you laugh at people.
Go alone, or with just a few choice friends.
in the cacophony from which you sought escape.
The best place to make decisions or plan your life is beside, in on or the river. The stream and the woods on opposite sides form your thoughts what is important and what is not.
from the city and the campus. Clear the static and confusion from your mind.
So take time out to get away
Try looking at life from a slower speed. Model your thinking after the rivers' pace and learn from it.
But do not look for babbling brooks. Brooks do not babble. People bubble often, but brooks usually are wary and wisely. You should listen.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Editor
Jerry Seib
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