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Here’s Another Amazing Aria

University of Minnesota.

Thanks for the link, Bill.

Margaret Soltan, June 20, 2010 1:52PM
Posted in: heroines

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3 Responses to “Here’s Another Amazing Aria”

  1. theotherprofessor Says:

    I wish every voter, and every student, to hear these 3 minutes. It is sickening to watch Minnesota’s long-standing contribution to quality education erode and erode in the name of lower taxes. So strong is the hatred of elite faculty that few taxpayers have any idea where the real bloat is.

    Also nice, this student’s response (http://www.startribune.com/opinion/letters/96334114.html?elr=KArksc8P:Pc:UHDaaDyiUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUU) to Governor Tim Pawlenty’s embarrassing promise (on the Daily Show and, tiresomely, everywhere else) that future students can finally get their educations from the couch and not venture into the cold to hear “boring old professors.” Good God. By contrast, Jesse Ventura was an enlightened intellectual.

  2. Bill Gleason Says:

    This video is a cut from an hour open forum session sponsored by the Board of Regents (BoRe) at Minnesota. Each participant gets three minutes and it is well-larded with administrative types.

    To show you how seriously the BoRe takes these little tête-à-têtes, Chair Allen – he of the fast gavel – dismissed criticisms such as that leveled by Professor von Dassow as narrow in view.

    “I think some of the criticism may come about from the changing emphasis on disciplines,” Allen said. “But our world is changing and we need to keep up.”

    A statement such as this demonstrates a lack of understanding of higher education that is equivalent to that demonstrated by Governor Pawlenty’s recent diatribe about the University of Minnesota as a haven for boring Econ and Spanish profs that could easily be replaced by $199 courses from iCollege.

    I suggest that Professor von Dassow knows a whole lot more about changing emphasis on academic disciplines than does chair Allen, whose higher education experience appears to consist of having been head bean counter for Concordia College.

    Given the lack of knowledge about academics exhibited by Pfutz, our own CFO, this is scary indeed.

    The U’s website indicates that Chair Allen also did time as research director for the Minnesota Taxpayer’s Association, fondly known in some parts as the Minnesota Tax Evader’s League.

    And so it goes at Lake Woebegone U.

    Thank God we have some good students and faculty members. And that we are starting the search for a new president. but unfortunately, the BoRe is heavily involved. They declared the last search “failed” because they did not like the candidates. Then the picked their man, president Bruininks.

  3. Bill Gleason Says:

    Correction, last sentence: Then they picked their own man, now president Bruininks.

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