May 27, 2016 Podcast Recap: Why UW Alumni Support Ray Cross

[NOTE: If you're a Raymond Cross supporter, then click the "Support Letter RE: Ray Cross" tab to access an easy-to-send template by which to communicate your stance to the UW System Board of Regents.]

The vilification of Ray Cross is led by self-interested faculty. Rather uninterested in the value students are getting in terms of occupational prestige and actual respect from the labor market, i.e. value in terms of career prospects, too many faculty look pitifully inward at their imaginary personal hells; perceived perditions that do not exist because they've secured the privilege of salaried, white-collar work!

Such privilege among faculty invokes apathy from under-employed graduates who had matriculated under the same teachers' tutelage. Faculty don't know real occupational pain and suffering until they've resorted to working in a hot, noisy factory at wages that are far below what their degree says they should be (theoretically, if not actually) capable of earning.

So when faculty complain about an eroded sense of privilege, those outside academia generally throw it back in their collective face by saying, "Check -your- privilege, you hoard of professionally privileged guilt-mongers!"

Like lemmings, many students have marched in lock-step to ingratiate themselves with their instructors! That is why some student governments have jumped onto the "hate Ray Cross" bandwagon.

(I thought hatred wasn't allowed at a university -- though it would seem liberals deem those who are "intolerant" of tenure have self-designated as "acceptable targets" of impolite invective.)

If these blind student-followers of faculty had any sense, they would realize now is the perfect time to wring some quality-control concessions from faculty. For too long, faculty had the freedom to simply teach, without concern for how many of their students are being introduced to useful entry-level work through their academic programs.

Students voicing any concerns of this nature were habitually directed to the so-called "Career Development Centers," which were no better than a trip to the Internet jobs board (i.e. no unadvertised job leads or exclusive internships are there).

This perpetual buck-passing about creating genuine work opportunities for occupationally needy students amounts to a wide-scale school-to-work scam! Many young adults are failing to gain occupational prestige not by lack of education -- they've plenty of it -- but because they're getting stuck in dead-end, "unskilled" jobs after university degree conferral.

We do not know the extent of this problem in Wisconsin because the University of Wisconsin System does not monitor occupational outcomes in any systematic way. Graduation web pages and alumni foundation newsletters might cherry-pick successful grads, but even allowing for space limitations in such publications, these cumulative dozens are so of "successes" belie the thousands of "failures" bearing the UW brand on -their- resume!

This begs the question of quality control: Without capping enrollment or substantially toughening admission standards, how do we promote greater availability and acquisition of relevant work for students who are seeking internships, externships, and white-collar work?

(As opposed to dooming most students, by sheer volume, to a "student career" of serving food washing dishes, and sweeping floors, only to graduate out of those student jobs and be left with neither career prospects nor unemployment benefits.)