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From: mc68020@gilbbs.UUCP (Tom Keller)
Newsgroups: net.cse
Subject: Re: A slightly different topic...
Message-ID: <24@gilbbs.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 28-Feb-86 16:45:46 EST
Article-I.D.: gilbbs.24
Posted: Fri Feb 28 16:45:46 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 2-Mar-86 18:55:26 EST
References: <393@ur-tut.UUCP>
Organization: Gil's Place, Santa Rosa CA
Lines: 39
Summary: 'billing' seen as symptomatic of general decline in educational goals and quality.

In article <393@ur-tut.UUCP>, scco@ur-tut.UUCP (Sean Colbath) writes:
> I'm interested in hearing what attitudes various people have to 'billed
> computing' in an academic situation.  I have had experiences at various
> universites where different attitudes were taken, from no billing what-
> so-ever, to extremely strict 'billing'.  It seems to me that this attitude
> that all computing time must be 'billed' to someone, and accounted for in
> terms of real money is rather defeating, if you are not in a profit-making
> situation (ala CompuServe).  In addition, since these funds are usually
> 'funny money', it is rather silly to impose a limit at all.


   I see the entire concept of 'billing' for educational computing time as a
symptom of a much larger problem in education.


   Many years ago, RA MacNamara, then Secretary of Defense, decide that the
way to improve the efficiency and costs of the military services was to run them
as if they were a corporate business environment.  The result is clearly 
evident to anyone with a brain...specifically, unworkable bureaucratic
inertia and a virtually helpless military.

   In recent years, there has been a strong push (mostly from the right wing)
to run educationaly institutions as businesses.  The results will be much the
same, I fear.  Inordinate concern with cost factors, particularly cost factors
that do not really affect the overall financial picture, but APPEAR to be
significant (such as CPU cycles on an educational computer) results in the
needs of the students (and faculty) being ignored, or at best placed in a
less significant attitude vs perceived costs.

   In case I haven't made myself clear:  I'm a'gin it!

-- 

====================================

tom keller
{ihnp4, dual}!ptsfa!gilbbs!mc68020

(* we may not be big, but we're small! *)