Thursday, December 15, 2011

Diversity Thursday

Harmless, low cost Diversity initiatives - right? What's the harm? Via Heather MacDonald;
... last Friday, UC Berkeley’s Vice Chancellor for Equity and Inclusion declared that the rising tuition at California’s public universities is giving him “heartburn.” It should, since Vice Chancellor for Equity and Inclusion Gibor Basri and his fellow diversity bureaucrats are a large cause of those skyrocketing college fees, not just in California but nationally
....
Basri commands a staff of 17, allegedly all required to make sure that fanatically left-wing UC Berkeley is sufficiently attuned to the values of “diversity” and “inclusion”; his 2009 base pay of $194,000 was nearly four times that of starting assistant professors. Basri was given responsibility for a $4.5 million slice of Berkeley’s vast diversity bureaucracy when he became the school’s first Vice Chancellor for Equity and Inclusion in 2007;
...
UC Berkeley’s diversity apparatus, which spreads far beyond the office of the VC for E and I, is utterly typical. For the last three decades, colleges have added more and more tuition-busting bureaucratic fat; since 2006, full-time administrators have outnumbered faculty nationally. UC Davis,... offers the usual menu of diversity effluvia under the auspices of an Associate Executive Vice Chancellor for Campus Community Relations. A flow chart of Linnaean complexity would be needed to accurately map all the activities overseen by the AEVC for CCR. They include a Diversity Trainers Institute, staffed by Davis’s Administrator of Diversity Education; the Director of Faculty Relations and Development in Academic Personnel; the Director of the UC Davis Cross-Cultural Center; the Director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Resource Center; an Education Specialist with the UC Davis Sexual Harassment Education Program; an Academic Enrichment Coordinator with the UC Davis Department of Academic Preparation Programs; and the Diversity Program Coordinator and Early Resolution Discrimination Coordinator with the Office of Campus Community Relations. The Diversity Trainers Institute recruits “a cadre of individuals who will serve as diversity trainers/educators,” a function that would seem largely superfluous, given that the Associate Executive Vice Chancellor for Campus Community Relations already offers a Diversity Education Series that grants Understanding Diversity Certificates in “Unpacking Oppression” and Cross-Cultural Competency Certificates in “Understanding Diversity and Social Justice.”
...
In 2005, Harvard created a new Senior Vice Provost for Diversity and Faculty Development, responsible for $50 million in diversity funding, and six new diversity deanships. Whereas Harvard’s previous diversity bureaucrats collected mere diversity data about faculty hiring and promotions, the new SVP for D and FD would be collecting “diversity metrics.” Yale already has 14 Title IX coordinators (not enough to stave off a specious Title IX investigation by the Office of Civil Rights in the federal Education Department), but it nevertheless recently put a Deputy Provost in charge of assessing the “campus climate” with respect to gender and overseeing the 14 Title IX coordinators. All these new bureaucrats in campuses across the country — nearly 72,000 non-teaching positions added from 2006 to 2009 — cost $3.6 billion, estimated Harvey Silverglate in Minding the Campus earlier this year.
...
The Big Lie of the campus diversity industry has been that without constant monitoring by diversity bureaucrats, faculty and other administrators would discriminate against minority and female professors and students. In fact, anyone who has spent a day inside a university knows that the exact opposite is demonstrably the case: Hundreds of thousands of hours and dollars are wasted each year in the futile pursuit of the same inadequate pool of remotely qualified underrepresented minority and female applicants that every other campus in the country is chasing with as much desperate zeal. The hiring process has been thoroughly corrupted. Faculty applicants are brought onto campus who have no chance of being hired, either because the hiring committee incorrectly assumed from their names or résumés that they were the right sort of minority (East Asians don’t count) for a position set aside for just such a minority, or because, although they were the right sort of minority, their qualifications were so low that their only purpose in being interviewed was to fill an outreach quota.
Diversity Industry - indeed.

There are two important things to keep in mind - in the Navy we have the same problem. Take all the manpower documents and add up all the full-time Diversity BA/NMP. Include the multiple "Gender Advisors" as well. That represents a huge opportunity cost.

Then you need to add up all the money we spend on travel to all the various racialist "Affinity Group" awards and recognition efforts. All documented here over the years - that includes the millions spent on race specific recruiting and consultants at Annapolis - again all documented under the Diversity tag below.

Still, none of it actually does anything to go after actual discrimination or racists. No, it is more often than not a talking club and an effort of inoculating the Navy against the overseers and supporters of the diversity industry.

Especially for the younger generations - none of this reflects their day to day experience. It is always 1971 in someone's head.

People wonder why our budgets just don't seem to get much bang for the buck - why Staffs are so bloated. Part of the reason is that there are a lot of jobs that exist only to create things that justify their own existence. They define their requirements in such a way that if anyone ever tries to take the job away - either their job isn't done (because it is defined such that its work is never done) or if you try anyway ... you are a racist, bigot, etc.

Meanwhile we send exceptionally talented Sailors with 16 years and millions of dollars of technical training out the door via ERB/PTS with nothing but the taste of bile in their mouths.

Tuition at universities are high for the same reason - they are spending too much money on things that add nothing to the intellectual product they are there to produce. Just pet projects for pet theories that cannot exist outside the university or guv'munt lifelines.

Administrators and managers? They don't care - after all - it is other people's money.

11 comments:

Acquisition Specialist said...

As a Navy Recruiter I was told we would get double credit for minorities.  When I asked if they counted as two bodies on the Ship's Manning Document or on the Watch, Quarter & Station Bill (WQSB), I was told to shut up and get back to work.  Then I was told that we would get triple credit for minorities that could pass the Nuclear Power Screening Test.  Again, I asked if the reactor cared who was monitoring all the gauges and power meeters. "Shut up"  Finally, I found out we would literally meet our monthly quota (4) if we could find a minority, Nuke, BOOST applicant (I never found one).  The Officer Programs Officer (OPO) would not even let me into his office.  Things have not changed much.

Grumpy Old Ham said...

<span>Two points:  
 
1.  Crap like this is exactly why all donation appeals from my alma mater (another UC campus) are automatically routed to the trash, either physical or virtual.  Kal-ee-forn-ee-ah's complete fiscal irresponsibility just reinforces this policy.  
 
2.  I'm sure it was partially done for literary effect, and maybe I'm just extra cranky today, but Vice Chancellors don't "command" anything.  </span>

<span><span>"Tuition at universities are high for the same reason - they are spending too much money on things that add nothing to the intellectual product they are there to produce."</span>  
 
QFT, as the kids say.  Where's that self-licking ice cream cone graphic, again?
</span>

Spade said...

My college had a Vice Provost for Diversity AND a Vice Provost for Affirmative Action.
Plus several executive level assistants, staffers, etc. for each.

Old Nuke said...

Did anyone notice that the initials VC for E and I<span><span> really spells out VICE ... which is what all this diversity is.</span></span>

The Usual Suspect said...

The old Soviet Army political officers served a more useful purpose than the DivBuls.  At least they were encouraging ALL the troops forward to victory.  The end state brought about by the DI will result in the whole being less than the sum of its parts.

Cdr Ashore said...

The cost for a college education is ridiculous as a result of the distorted market place - where a college education is blindly accepted as the coin of the realm for future job prospects. Where expected future earnings are believed to exceed the mortgage size cost of education. Where an entire industry and government subsidize these myths by providing "low-cost" loans.

Once the cost is sufficiently high, then the university intelligentsia are free to implement whatever program floats their boat. Voila - the diversity cadre.

So to fix this problem, you have to start at the beginning. Puncture the myth of the value of "any" college education. Reduce the ease of funding said degrees. Eliminate the tax free status of higher education. Once the money even remotely begins to dry up, then the diversity folks can make their argument for continued funding. As long as we financially encourage these idiots, they will continue to be enriched and advance their idiotic quests.

John said...

The mere fact that only a handful of folks off on a porch are chatting about this, and that the media, and the Navy's [alleged] leadership is totally oblivious to the real impact of the diversity industry tells us how serious the problem is.

We have met the zampolits, and the zampolits have won...so far.

cdrsalamander said...

John,
Trust me on this; DivThu gets a lot more play than you think.  Once of the reasons I keep it going in spite of the fact I don't care too much for the subject every week.  It gets a lot of traffic from the "right" places, and the emails I get in response - from some very interesting places - keep it going as a place where some things can be dragged out from under the rock and in to the sunshine for a bit for all to look at it.  Though it may not seem like it - we are making progress towards a more equal and just meritocracy.  We just need to keep putting out there what the Diversity Bullies are doing.  It can't stand fresh air and light - it can only exist in darkness and silence.  That is why I get the hate mail I get -they cannot defend their racialist policies in open debate.

Have hope!

Latent Infantry NCO said...

<span>Lack of comments? DivThu can't shock us anymore. If Sal posted a memo from some office saying that E3 and below would no longer be allowed to make faces at the monkeys at the zoo on uniformed libo visits, I'd believe it. Heck, I'd believe there is an office in the Department of the Navy that will someday issue a sticker of a minority sailor to cover up the mermaid on my shellback card. This stuff is so far out there, I think almost the entire readership here just numbly shakes it's collective head. What else can you say?  
 
As Sal mentioned, at least it pings on the right hulls. When I read about my own words and actions in another person's report, they didn't seem very logical either (but this is not a libo thread =-X ). Maybe DivBuls have souls too? Who knows?</span>

Grandpa Bluewater said...

I do. They don't.  Sold 'em.  Suprisingly cheap, three bucks - that's 30 pieces of silver...err, dimes. =-O

Grandpa Bluewater said...

What these permanent shore staff boneheads haven't figured out is that the Ocean - Utterly. Does. Not. Care. Neither does machinery. Nor, most emphatically, does ordnance.

Death, at sea, is equal opportunity. Unless you are stupid or careless, then the grim reaper works on an affirmative action basis.