As best we can

I was looking through the half written posts in the file today and realized that most of them were never posted because they involve too much complaining about university finances.  The topic wears me out, but just won't go away.  While I keep meaning to drop it, every day brings a fresh punch in the face to those that truly care about educating students and advancing the science.

Today's sneaky left came from the university administration.  A message sent to the community contained the statement about priorities, "First, the quality of education for our students must be preserved as best we can".  "As best we can"!  Thanks for the loser mentality pep talk.  They might as well say "forget quality, its degrees per dollar that will rule the day"?  

"First, the quality of education for our students must be preserved as best we can"

The leaders of academia must have have gone to our underfunded library and studied the business model.  GM became the biggest car company by producing more cars than anyone else and reaped the benefit of economy of scale.  The heads of academia know it will work with higher education too.  Too bad we stopped buying books during the early 90's downturn and they don't know what happens when you disconnect quality and quantity.

My biggest concern is that the fields that cost the most to teach (science, engineering, etc . . .) require costly face-to-face instruction, including labs that just can't be converted to auditorium scale.  In spite of efforts to develop take home and online labs, I am not convinced they provide a Grignard reaction experience.  On the degree per dollar basis the technical fields just can't provide quality at the cost targets.  So, we will do the "best we can".  Degrees will be conferred and the administration will say that if we can sell degrees at a cost of a dollar per degree, we can do it for 75 cents.  And, we will do "the best we can" and continue to confer degrees.  When the quality is low enough and the quantity is high enough, the State like GM will wake up to lots of unwanted low quality product.

Since university administrations and State legislatures don't believe faculty or the ACS on the issue, could you non-academics please define the minimum of quality, thus defining what is the minimum we must do. 

Thanks,

T.S. Hall