stevebholt.bsky.social
Associate Professor. Public Management, Education Policy, Econometrics. https://stevebholt.github.io/
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Recommend Poker Face though.
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The bottom line: there is no level of independence at which you are not balancing genuinely hard trade-offs. The war is fought in culture, at ballot boxes, and - beyond a certain point of human rights violations and state violence - in the streets. There are no magically independent institutions.
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You can be appropriations dependent and that will insulate you from market pressures for enrollment and fed/foundation research funding whims to some degree, but you better hope your state politics stay sane and supportive of higher education.
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You can be research dollar heavy to subsidize the administration of the university. This frees you from some pressure from state gov and market pressures for enrollments, but then you are dependent on federal funders and foundation dollars.
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In higher ed, you can be tuition heavy in your revenue. But you are then dependent on college going norms, demographic growth/stability, & likely international demand for studying in the U.S. Sure, you're independent from some gov dollar or donor pressure, but you are dependent on market conditions.
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Finally, worth saying that higher education institutions are a good, simplified way to think about why it's going to be important to fight a fascist coup attempt head on and look at it for what it is. There *is* no independence and independence is bad. No institution or sector is insulated.
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I'll say, it's not easy to juggle. Maybe you accept the funds from big donor X to prop up "center on thing X cares about" but that lets you fund doc students to work at the center while they study. There are reasons to make the trade-off, but it's a sign of willingness to negotiate independence.
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I host this game night and regularly grill chicken with some oven roasted veg on the side and the friends that come over always rave about my fabulous chicken sandwiches. The big secret was that they were chicken thighs covered in Old Bay and slapped on the grill, heh.
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For most appointees to lead an agency, the incentive is to run it well and protect its mission and resources within the administration. Most people don't want the thing they lead destroyed. But if you appoint and confirm someone with no intention to actually lead the agency, here you land.
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"Your congressional representatives enabled these actions from Trump and devastated your business and communities. They are not fighting for you but I will." seems like it'd be effective in this context.
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Like, they hated loan forgiveness so much that they literally missed the forest of the larger point in the trees of the particular policy itself and I couldn't bring them back to the underlying point.
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I remember raising this as an example of why it's bad to not take court reform seriously bc delivering substantive benefits to the public can be blocked by the court, but *you* carry the political costs, but the anti-Trump grandmas I was talking too were so repulsed by loan forgiveness, I gave up.
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Brought to you by a Wizards fan who is tired of watching the management of the Albany stadium talk itself into another iteration of Arena Football like it's 1995.
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Create independent teams in second tier cities (Columbus, Jacksonville, Albany, etc.) from a pool of undrafted talent, free agent signings, and G-Leaguers. Bottom team from each conference gets relegated each year and top two from new league gets promoted. Kills tanking.
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Hello Your. Welcome to the department! I'm glad you reached out because there's a new committee on student engagement that I need someone to serve on and Dr. Name was the first name that popped in my head as an ideal fit.