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Prudent move or politcal posturing by lawmakers?

http://www.press-citizen.com/article/20 ... 20337/1079" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Newly empowered Republican lawmakers in Iowa want to cancel paid research leaves for university professors in a budget-cutting move, even as the Iowa state Board of Regents considers approving them for dozens of employees for next year.

Incoming House Speaker Kraig Paulsen said taxpayers cannot afford faculty sabbaticals, a sentiment backed by the president of Iowa's largest public employees' union, in an unusual alliance. But professors said the savings Republicans are promising won't materialize, and the move would cost universities in grant money and productivity.

Sabbaticals -- a paid semester or year off from teaching to write books, conduct research, create classes and write grant proposals -- are standard practice at major research universities across the nation. But at a time when other employees are facing pay cuts and furloughs, they have become an easy target for critics and an area where universities can cut to show they are making sacrifices, too.

I think they need to be reviewed on a case by case basis. Some sabbaticals for worthwhile research are probably a good thing. Others not so much.

Plus what do these professors expect. Nobody in Iowa City votes Republican. Payback time!

HI54UNI wrote:I think they need to be reviewed on a case by case basis. Some sabbaticals for worthwhile research are probably a good thing. Others not so much.

Plus what do these professors expect. Nobody in Iowa City votes Republican. Payback time!

HI54UNI wrote:I think they need to be reviewed on a case by case basis. Some sabbaticals for worthwhile research are probably a good thing. Others not so much.

Plus what do these professors expect. Nobody in Iowa City votes Republican. Payback time!

Probably true on both counts!

The democratic caucuses are hilarious here though. I tell everyone that they should register as a Democrat once just to go do that, then they can go re-register as a Republican or whatever before the actual election.

I'm on the side that its political posturing, feeding off people who don't know how universities work. The comments about "professors are hired to teach!" is almost laughable, at least at universities that would be likely to offer sabbaticals. From a financial standpoint, the last thing you want to do is eliminate dedicated grant-writing and publication-writing time.

To put it differently, $6 million is between 4 and 10 good-sized NIH grants.

Lots of sabbaticals ultimately make money for universities from things like patents.

houndawg wrote:Lots of sabbaticals ultimately make money for universities from things like patents.

Yep and I have no problem with those. This came up about a year ago in the Iowa legislature but the R's were in the minority so nothing happened. There was a news story at the time about what some of the sabbaticals were for. A lot of research ones make sense. There was one that some prof was studying the mating habits of South American pygmy fire ants or something stupid like that. A lot harder to swallow that one. I was trying to find that article but there are so many about the recent story I couldn't find it. I did find one about a Univ. of Maryland prof that traveled around the world on his sabbatical and wrote a diary/book about it. I have a problem with that one.

Sabatticals - too funny.

Last Saturday, two professors were debating if they should take their sabbaticals. They can take one every six years...so, in their eyes, if you wait until your 7th year, you lost a year because you have a new six year time frame. So, over cocktails and food, I listened to these two guys decide that they needed to take them and it was facinating to hear the other professors talk about how they could easily arrange their sabbaticals around vacation plans...get funding...and get credit for work that they'd be doing anyway. The two were economics professors. Easy money...time off...and no real breakthrough research planned. As the alcohol flowed, the ideas got even more out of line.

My wife's brother is a professor in NYC, as is his wife. It is almost comical how they get grants...and what they've done with the money. The peer review process is also a sham.

Another neighbor gets some good sized grants, and somehow they all involve the use of his sailboat. Hey, I benefit, but good lord it is a laugh a minute.

I actually admire anyone who is able to get time off and call it work. And the grant money is another bonus. But let's not disguise what sabatticals are...they are perks needed for recruiting. Nothing more, nothing less. The professors who hoot and holler at the perks for business execs are engaged in the same behavior.

I'm sure it varies immensely by field. I sat and listened to a PhD student talk about her work researching something about how caves influence culture in Argentina or something like that and all I could think the whole time was "how the heck do you get funding for *THAT*? and why?" My science-based bias I guess.

I only personally know one professor that did a sabbatical and he worked very hard during it and it did result in new grants.

I have no problem at all with the regents putting up more stringent requirements about demonstrating why the sabbatical is needed, how much it can cost, or how many you can take. But a blanket ban is just talk to look good in the papers.

There's so much that goes into getting a Sabbatical. At most universities, you must first achieve tenure and then show that you are consistently excelling in your field/teaching. It's not always granted either. My dad took a sabbatical when I was younger and wrote a Chemistry text book, my major professor took a Sabbatical about a decade ago to write grants and collect samples from outside of the country that we are not allowed to have in the states.

I don't know what fields your family and friends work in Cluck, but if you knew the amount of time and work that went into writing a grant and actually getting it funded, you might have a differing opinion. I do sometimes wonder how people get funding to work on certain projects, but for the most part, those seeking mutimillion dollar funding for multiple years are not submitting "comical" research ideas. Plus, 50% of the money obtained from these grants go directly to the university and not the professors research. Sabbaticals may indeed be used as a perk to bring in quality faculty. If a professor is going to bring the university millions of dollars in grant money over his tenure at the university, offering sabbaticals may be a lucrative way to make sure these faculty members come to their university. These are "businesses" in the end, even if they say they're "non-profit."

JMU DJ wrote:There's so much that goes into getting a Sabbatical. At most universities, you must first achieve tenure and then show that you are consistently excelling in your field/teaching. It's not always granted either. My dad took a sabbatical when I was younger and wrote a Chemistry text book, my major professor took a Sabbatical about a decade ago to write grants and collect samples from outside of the country that we are not allowed to have in the states.

I don't know what fields your family and friends work in Cluck, but if you knew the amount of time and work that went into writing a grant and actually getting it funded, you might have a differing opinion. I do sometimes wonder how people get funding to work on certain projects, but for the most part, those seeking mutimillion dollar funding for multiple years are not submitting "comical" research ideas. Plus, 50% of the money obtained from these grants go directly to the university and not the professors research. Sabbaticals may indeed be used as a perk to bring in quality faculty. If a professor is going to bring the university millions of dollars in grant money over his tenure at the university, offering sabbaticals may be a lucrative way to make sure these faculty members come to their university. These are "businesses" in the end, even if they say they're "non-profit."

I was absolutely stunned the first time I saw the "indirects" (i.e. turned over to Uni.) percentage for a major grant.

Here's some good ones that the Iowa Board of Regents are considering:

You recall, surely, the item from two years ago reporting that University of Iowa associate professor Michael E. Lomax was going to the Philippines for his sabbatical to study how billiards “has been perceived as an alternate route to upward social mobility among young men” in that country. Well, he has reported in. According to documents on the Board of Regents website, Lomax “examined the Philippine experience in billiards....He conducted an extensive review of the literature on sport and globalization and Philippine history, collected several primary sources on Philippine pool players....He also constructed an analytical framework to conduct oral interviews of Philippine pool players. [Read: talked to some guys.] These activities will promote his research effort to analyze the ways in which the emergence of several Philippine pool players to an elite level contributed significantly to billiards evolving into a global enterprise.” The report does not explain how the study will “contribute to the improvement” of the university, as board policy requires. Lomax makes $63,200 a year.

Meantime, the three state universities — in an exquisite case of bad political timing — have asked the Board of Regents to approve 95 more sabbaticals at its meeting this week. New Republican House speaker Kraig Paulsen, who thinks sabbaticals should be canceled, surely will be watching. Among the proposals:

— Kimberley Marra, a professor of American Studies at the University of Iowa, plans to spend a semester writing a chapter of her book, “Fashioning the Thoroughbred Ideal: Show Women and Show Horses on New York Stages, 1865-1930.” This book will be “a cultural study of how human interactions with horses both empowered women and enduringly shaped dominant race, class, gender and sexual ideologies in the period when women entered the sport of riding in large numbers for the first time in the United States.” She will “use this material to enrich her courses in the curriculum of the newly merged units of American Studies and Sport Studies as well as her performance history courses in Theatre Arts.” Marra makes $97,240 annually.

— Asrid Oesmann, an associate professor of German at Iowa, plans to complete her book manuscript “Facing Trauma: Masks, Politics, and the European Avant-garde.” The book “is a comparative study of how masks were used in various European cultures during World War I and after, providing a critical analysis of a time and place where criticism and artistic production intersected to shape the modern world.” Oesmann makes $66,000 a year.

— Constance Berman, a history professor at Iowa, “plans an English translation of 13th-century building accounts for the French Queen. Important as earliest records for a large Gothic complex, they list the purchases of materials (nails, cut-stone, ropes, paneling) and horses, weekly wages....” These records “provide a view of both money management and the expense of medieval construction. These are of interest to students and wider audiences in business/management, art/architecture, history/medieval studies.” Berman makes $105,000 a year.

— Douglas Gentile, an associate professor of psychology at Iowa State, will head to Singapore “to analyze data of a four-year longitudinal study on the effects of video games on 3,000 Singaporean youth and an associated project on cyberwellness and cyberbullying.” Gentile makes $71,400 annually.

— Kimberly Zarecor, an assistant professor of architecture at Iowa State, will travel to Ostrava in the Czech Republic to explore “the effects of post-1989 housing policies on Czech urban development and neighborhood life....This scholarly research will provide international exposure for Iowa State University expertise.” Zarecor makes $63,255 a year.

— Jian Li, an associate professor of sociology, anthropology and criminology at the University of Northern Iowa, plans to live in a village in China for seven months and “examine the major socioeconomic impacts of...a massive rural-to-urban migration upon a farming community in rural Southwest China since the 1990s.” Li earns $54,673 a year.

The universities say the replacement costs for the 56 men and 39 women seeking sabbaticals will be about $250,000. However, that doesn’t include any of the salaries of the people taking the time off from the classroom. Most sabbaticals are for one semester at full pay.

The billiards one is outstanding. I went into the wrong field...

Based on those few-line descriptions, the mebison board of regents would likely approve the "effects of video games" one, and the "rural-to-urban migration" one. I'd need more convincing and info about where the research is headed for the "Czech urban development" one and the "translation of building accounts" one. The other two would have a serious hill to climb to convince me of usefulness.

Again, though, costs can be pretty misleading, especially printing their salaries. Only a proportion of those salaries go toward teaching so the university is only paying some over-educated, under-employeed recent PhD grad to lecture, which will be MUCH cheaper than hiring someone for the full salary, as the article sort of implies is done.

mebison wrote:The billiards one is outstanding. I went into the wrong field...

Based on those few-line descriptions, the mebison board of regents would likely approve the "effects of video games" one, and the "rural-to-urban migration" one. I'd need more convincing and info about where the research is headed for the "Czech urban development" one and the "translation of building accounts" one. The other two would have a serious hill to climb to convince me of usefulness.

Again, though, costs can be pretty misleading, especially printing their salaries. Only a proportion of those salaries go toward teaching so the university is only paying some over-educated, under-employeed recent PhD grad to lecture, which will be MUCH cheaper than hiring someone for the full salary, as the article sort of implies is done.

On the salaries what I think is funny is these people have PhDs and some of them don't make shit compared to what they have spent on their education. I know a lot of people with 1 or 2 year tech school degrees that make as much or more than some of these profs.

HI54UNI wrote:

mebison wrote:The billiards one is outstanding. I went into the wrong field...

Based on those few-line descriptions, the mebison board of regents would likely approve the "effects of video games" one, and the "rural-to-urban migration" one. I'd need more convincing and info about where the research is headed for the "Czech urban development" one and the "translation of building accounts" one. The other two would have a serious hill to climb to convince me of usefulness.

Again, though, costs can be pretty misleading, especially printing their salaries. Only a proportion of those salaries go toward teaching so the university is only paying some over-educated, under-employeed recent PhD grad to lecture, which will be MUCH cheaper than hiring someone for the full salary, as the article sort of implies is done.

On the salaries what I think is funny is these people have PhDs and some of them don't make **** compared to what they have spent on their education. I know a lot of people with 1 or 2 year tech school degrees that make as much or more than some of these profs.

That's because the PhD has been greatly cheapened and diluted by being granted for stuff like Early Childhood Development. It takes more work and effort (and intelligence) to get a BS in a science or Engineering than it does to get a PhD in half of the watered-down psycho-nonsense they grant them for today.

houndawg wrote:

HI54UNI wrote:
On the salaries what I think is funny is these people have PhDs and some of them don't make **** compared to what they have spent on their education. I know a lot of people with 1 or 2 year tech school degrees that make as much or more than some of these profs.

That's because the PhD has been greatly cheapened and diluted by being granted for stuff like Early Childhood Development. It takes more work and effort (and intelligence) to get a BS in a science or Engineering than it does to get a PhD in half of the watered-down psycho-nonsense they grant them for today.

A PhD isn't the way to big bucks in engineering either. Upon finishing your PhD, if you go on for a post-doc in a research lab, you are looking at ~$38,000/yr. Following that, you might wind up as a professor somewhere for ~$70,000/yr. Only some of the most successful profs of engineering break 6 figures. Of course you can do better if you leave academics and go into industry (or, even better, military).

Contrast that with the people who go straight into industry out of undergrad. The people I graduated with circa 2005 took jobs for about $65,000/yr. Let the company pay for your MBA, slide over to a management/business track and you can do pretty well for yourself.