Week 4 – Isabel Fajardo

Isabel Fajardo

Week O4

AO3

            Reading this article reminded me a lot of what Professor Valverde was speaking about in the beginning of the quarter. It’s scary that we, the students, are paying for the universities to hire more administrators to help the system instead of the students themselves. The imagery of having more vice-principals than teachers in high school is so mind-boggling. I find it hard to imagine but it is actually happening in real life, which is just so hard for me too wrap my head around. When my friends complain about decreasing parking spots because of the conversion of student parking in favor of administrators make so much sense after reading this now. It angers me to think that the school is increasing parking for administrators and decreasing parking students when UC Davis flaunts having bigger incoming freshmen classes.

            It also makes me sad to hear about Purdue University converting every piece of the campus to fit their prim and perfect mold of their university. It makes me feel for the student body there – how can the university encourage diversity and creative among the students when the administrators expect appearances to be uniform. It really solidifies the view that colleges now are not perfect equalizers: they are businesses that want to get money from unsuspecting students who want to survive in the real word.

This line stuck out to me the most: “I wish that committed student activists would recognize that the administrators who run their universities, no matter how convenient a recipient of their appeals, are not their friends.” I personally wish the UC system provided us with more people who are on the students’ side while they go through a period of tough deadlines and lots of growth.

Our professors deserve more. We deserve more.

Question: What more can we do, other than protesting, to prevent our schools from hiring administrators?

References:

DeBoer, F. (2015, September 9). Why We Should Fear University, Inc.. The New York Times Magazine. Retrieved October 15, 2017.

Duginski, P. (2015, October 17). Administration growth [Chart]. In Los Angeles Times. Retrieved October 15, 2017, from http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-uc-spending-20151011-story.html