With all the opportunities to profit off of assets of the modern university, NC State, as a public school, is taking advantage of none of them.

- no quick-path degrees that get you a job-skill filled degree in a short amount of time
- no full online degrees like the successful Phoenix model
- no satellite campuses ala the successful Strayer model
- athletic department losing money by not generating revenue via top-level merchandise and marketing and settling for inferior product
- corporate partnerships at zero
- liberal arts department eating up massive sums of money and providing nothing

Is it time we took up the cause of privatizing the entire property that is NC State?

1/14/2013 10:05:09 AM

centennial campus houses several companies. universities are about making people, not profits

[Edited on January 14, 2013 at 11:20 AM. Reason : k]

1/14/2013 11:19:47 AM

Untrue. Universities are about employing an ever larger number of administrators at insane salaries and NCState is no different.

1/14/2013 11:22:31 AM

would you agree that this plan would solve much of that by bringing in a more market based model?

1/14/2013 11:25:29 AM

Hey Hoops.

Chit Chat called.

It wants its thread back.

1/14/2013 11:27:01 AM

^^ No it wouldn't. your plan would make the problem worse. This is a management problem and the only solution is the threat of bankruptcy. Then, the powers that be will threaten to fire management unless they get running away costs under control by firing administrators.

1/14/2013 11:35:19 AM

Honestly, industry doesn't fund much



If you really wanted to attack the budget situation, you would prod your faculty to bring in more federal grants... which is what they already do. Industry money often comes with much more strings attached and as a general rule they're quite stingy, which is what you should expect from any business.

The reasons to partner with industry are different, but certainly there. Showing that someone is interested in commercializing something you're doing is the hallmark of doing useful work. You expect your students to go into industry anyway... so the real question is what kind of partnerships are important to form.

Quote :

"Then, the powers that be will threaten to fire management unless they get running away costs under control by firing administrators."

No they won't. The formula is that you fire management, and then hire a new group of managers who are even more overpaid under the justification that the positions are more volatile and we need people who have the experience to turn things around.

1/14/2013 12:08:57 PM

the point here is that nc state needs to be more business like and take lessons from successful education companies like Phoenix Online University.

What could we save if we went to an all adjunct program?

Research should be picked up by businesses who have incentive to better choose what they do due to profits.

1/14/2013 12:35:09 PM

Quote :

"What could we save if we went to an all adjunct program?"

What won't be saved: accreditation

Quote :

"Research should be picked up by businesses who have incentive to better choose what they do due to profits."

You seem to understand nothing about the world that you live in. The US stands out among the nations of the world in terms of the investment into research. Companies already do research, and if we stopped doing research and universities, there's no reason to believe that industry will pick up what universities stopped.

Federal research funds can be allocated based on the long term benefit it will have to more than one company. But it shouldn't matter to you anyway because if we're discussing NC State, we're not talking about how congress should spend money. Federal research funds are a vastly superior funding source to industry, which funds very little of NCSU's budget, and even less of the entire UNC System's budget.

1/14/2013 12:58:41 PM

phoenix and strayer are dogshit degree mills

1/14/2013 9:35:14 PM

1/14/2013 9:58:27 PM

Quote :

"phoenix and strayer are dogshit degree mills"

To be fair, given that front desk receptionist positions offering <$10/hr require a 4 year degree, it's not like a degree has any real meaning these days anyway.

1/14/2013 10:00:17 PM

Fair, I think if the requirement is merely a 4 year degree from an accredited institution, a Phoenix will work just about as well as anything else. However, if you start going into specific fields, I would put more weight on a NC State engineering degree versus a Phoenix one.

Also, to answer the OP questions, here are my thoughts:

Quote :

"- no quick-path degrees that get you a job-skill filled degree in a short amount of time"

That's if you're looking at just NC State. However, the way the state of North Carolina views it, NC State is part of a much larger system of the UNC schools and community college system. If you want a quick degree, you have the latter. NC State is for filling the 4 year degree/graduate degree niche.

Quote :

"- no full online degrees like the successful Phoenix model - no satellite campuses ala the successful Strayer model"

NC State does offer some full online graduate degrees.

Broader picture though, the value of the NC State "brand" is that students are able to access a core of professors and instructors in a centralized area and engage in research, particularly for students interested in pursuing advanced degrees in scientific, engineering and design areas that require tremendous capital costs in terms of lab space, tooling, IT infrastructure, etc. versus a more purely "teaching" oriented system like Phoenix or Strayer. The institutions have different business models and niches (though with overlap), and their model would not work for NCSU.

Quote :

"- athletic department losing money by not generating revenue via top-level merchandise and marketing and settling for inferior product"

Not sure I fully understand this.

Quote :

"- corporate partnerships at zero"

Unless things have changed drastically in the past few years, NC States leverages a lot of corporate partnerships, sponsorships, etc. at all levels from research to student development. A lot of this is happens at the department level however, so it may not be as visible.

Quote :

"- liberal arts department eating up massive sums of money and providing nothing"

At VERY least, liberal arts are required for the engineering program's accreditation by ABET (Criteria for Accrediting Engineering Programs, 2013 - 2014; 5.(c) "a general education component that complements the technical content of the curriculum and is consistent with the program and institution objectives.") That is in addition to the value that liberal arts brings to the overall education (writing, thinking, history, etc.). So we maintain them to maintain the value of our brand and product.

1/15/2013 1:00:17 PM

Quote :

"no full online degrees like the successful Phoenix model"

they fooled me

1/15/2013 1:13:39 PM

How are you all still getting trolled by this guy? Or is it that you enjoy being trolled?

1/15/2013 4:11:16 PM

They take it seriously.

You just flip out about someone on the internet being annoying and pretend you dont.

1/16/2013 6:18:15 PM

Who did they build this library for?

1/29/2013 10:34:38 AM

Maybe for the students that will live in the 6 dormitories that are currently under construction?

1/29/2013 11:12:24 AM