For those who think The Hill can change the curriculum

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All good points, but at the same time those are two different vantage points – The board of regents wanting us to expand our engineering majors and Georgia Tech wanting to expand majors beyond engineering.

I don’t doubt that both our administration and the board of regents, although I believe our arguing slightly different topics, have a common theme in that they don’t really care about our athletics much.
Yep, there is a BIG difference between the BOR wanting us to expand our ENGINEERING majors and the BOR not wanting us to expand the OVERALL CURRICULUM. History alone proves the latter. Just ask Homer Rice, who actually managed to get the Hill's approval but was voted down by the BOR.
 

crut

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I’m not seeing the evidence, what you have presented there is heresay from two anonymous sources. Duke, Stanford, ND are not comparable to us, they are private schools, they can create any major they want and hide athletes there. I do agree with you that athletics is unimportant to the hill, that will likely never change no matter how badly we want it to.

Well its a fact that this is evidence that the issue is on GT Admin and not the BOR. Whether you or anyone else puts stock in this evidence is fair game. All I can say is I think at a minimum 2 of the 3 sources are highly reliable. And the fact that they all corroboate each other should be noted as significant in the argument as well.
 

crut

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All good points, but at the same time those are two different vantage points – The board of regents wanting us to expand our engineering majors and Georgia Tech wanting to expand majors beyond engineering.

I don’t doubt that both our administration and the board of regents, although I believe our arguing slightly different topics, have a common theme in that they don’t really care about our athletics much.

This is a fair point. But it also goes to show that the argument that the BOR is still anti-Tech because it gave uga engineering is false.

I am unaware of any modern evidence that the BOR wants to prevent GT from expanding majors. It is possible given your point that this evidence doesnt affect that argument, but on the slip side we DO have evidence that GT Admin strides away from expanding its offerings based on the comments above.
 

Deleted member 2897

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This is a fair point. But it also goes to show that the argument that the BOR is still anti-Tech because it gave uga engineering is false.

I am unaware of any modern evidence that the BOR wants to prevent GT from expanding majors. It is possible given your point that this evidence doesnt affect that argument, but on the slip side we DO have evidence that GT Admin strides away from expanding its offerings based on the comments above.

The BOR currently has 12 UGA folks and 2 GT folks. It’s on their website. If anybody knows either of those 2 folks, it would be an interesting lunch conversation to see what the goings on are.
 

Animal02

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Another point of resistance wrt to expanding majors is that it is expensive. My wife just finished the process of creating a new degree program.....lost of work invovle both internally and externally. She got course releases to do it ...which means someone else was hired to teach those classes.
Tech expanding it's majors "for athletes" means you are adding costs without necessarily attract new / more students.
 

crut

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Another point of resistance wrt to expanding majors is that it is expensive. My wife just finished the process of creating a new degree program.....lost of work invovle both internally and externally. She got course releases to do it ...which means someone else was hired to teach those classes.
Tech expanding it's majors "for athletes" means you are adding costs without necessarily attract new / more students.

I think there are reasons well beyond athletics to expand majors at GT. Athletics would just also get a boost.

I'm pretty sure some of these majors would be pretty popular at a world-renowned school known for its dedication to science, progress, and research: Kinesiology, Nursing, Nutrition, Forensics, Broadcasting, Journalism, Finance
 

Animal02

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I think there are reasons well beyond athletics to expand majors at GT. Athletics would just also get a boost.

I'm pretty sure some of these majors would be pretty popular at a world-renowned school known for its dedication to science, progress, and research: Kinesiology, Nursing, Nutrition, Forensics, Broadcasting, Journalism, Finance
Degrees like that are not just creating a new major, you are creating new departments , schools, and or colleges. The financial commitment to do something like that is huge, the payoff is not anywhere near guaranteed.
 

GTRambler

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Does Georgia Tech currently have the classroom space to take on the students for a larger curriculum?

And how much would it cost the Institute to hire the additional instructors for the new majors?

I suspect these might be constraining factors. I don’t really know.
 

IEEEWreck

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Guys guys guys, the answer is obvious. I think we can change the BoR's mind with swarms of autonomous drones dropping a stolen T on their houses before we run out of T's to steal.

I joke, I joke.

Instead the outcome is obvious- unless and until we start punishing Kemp and his ilk financially and punishing Purdue and everyone else who refuses to go to bat for GT to further their own career, we're going to be walked all over.

This go along to get along attitude isn't working anymore because the politicians know that no matter how egregiously they abuse our interests, we'll always chicken out and decide "well its better to participate than be left out in the cold".

You know who doesn't do that? Rich dwag donors. And so they get listened to and we get patted on the head. Ask Delta how well it works out.
 

crut

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Degrees like that are not just creating a new major, you are creating new departments , schools, and or colleges. The financial commitment to do something like that is huge, the payoff is not anywhere near guaranteed.

All of those except nursing fit into existing colleges (Kinesiology, Forensics, Nutrition to College of Sciences; Finance to College of Business; Broadcasting and Journalism to College of Liberal Sciences). Sure there's a lot of additions that would have to be made. But that doesn't mean it's not worth it.
 

Technut1990

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Graduation doesn’t factor into APR. It’s based on the number of students academically eligible at the end of the fall season.

Let’s say you have 85 scholarship players, a perfect score is 85*2 = 170. If 70 remain eligible at the end of the season, you get 70 * 2 = 140 points. If 5 players are academically ineligible but you keep them on scholarship, you get 5 * 1 = 5 points for those players. If 5 transfer out while academically eligible, you get 5 * 1 = 5 points for those players. If 5 players transfer out (or lose scholarships) while academically ineligible, you get 0 points for those players. So in this scenario, you’d have 140 + 5 + 5 = 160 points. 160 / 170 = .941, which is a 941 APR.

So graduation doesn’t factor in, only eligibility. How you game this: push all the difficult classes to the end of the student’s degree and only have him take the minimum course load. He’d spend his football career taking the easier courses with a light course load and would stay eligible. Then after he’s done with football, he has to take a ton of tough courses, where he presumably struggles. Those struggles won’t impact APR because he’s no longer a football player but could keep him from graduating.


so the ARP ensures that the powerhouses stay powerhouses and academic schools stay academic. Obviously any state BOR would assign their Georgia as the powerhouse (Tenn- Vandy, Georgia-GT, Texas-Texas Tech ) and schedule their SA's as you suggest. Knowing their Techs will resist doing this b/c essentially they are academically slanted
 

Technut1990

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Another point of resistance wrt to expanding majors is that it is expensive. My wife just finished the process of creating a new degree program.....lost of work invovle both internally and externally. She got course releases to do it ...which means someone else was hired to teach those classes.
Tech expanding it's majors "for athletes" means you are adding costs without necessarily attract new / more students.

but that's a chicken and egg argument, more SA means better sports programs = more money
 

Animal02

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All of those except nursing fit into existing colleges (Kinesiology, Forensics, Nutrition to College of Sciences; Finance to College of Business; Broadcasting and Journalism to College of Liberal Sciences). Sure there's a lot of additions that would have to be made. But that doesn't mean it's not worth it.
Not saying they aren't. But if you look at it from the academics side.....they see lots of front end costs with no evidence of a return. I see it all the time. ( My wife is a full proffesor at U of Mich.). The boneheaded decisions, outright lies,insider deals, etc just makes me want to punch someone.
 

Animal02

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Guys guys guys, the answer is obvious. I think we can change the BoR's mind with swarms of autonomous drones dropping a stolen T on their houses before we run out of T's to steal.

I joke, I joke.

Instead the outcome is obvious- unless and until we start punishing Kemp and his ilk financially and punishing Purdue and everyone else who refuses to go to bat for GT to further their own career, we're going to be walked all over.

This go along to get along attitude isn't working anymore because the politicians know that no matter how egregiously they abuse our interests, we'll always chicken out and decide "well its better to participate than be left out in the cold".

You know who doesn't do that? Rich dwag donors. And so they get listened to and we get patted on the head. Ask Delta how well it works out.
So tempting to make a political comment on you descriptions of groups.
 

GT_05

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Not saying they aren't. But if you look at it from the academics side.....they see lots of front end costs with no evidence of a return. I see it all the time. ( My wife is a full proffesor at U of Mich.). The boneheaded decisions, outright lies,insider deals, etc just makes me want to punch someone.

Speaking of no return, these universities should be required to do a local/regional needs assessment on behalf of their students and not offer majors where there are no/few jobs in that field. I know, I know, academic freedom and whatever. IMO, it is unforgivable for a university to offer a crap degree and let students incur 10’s of thousands in debt just to find out that they can’t get a job.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

Animal02

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Speaking of no return, these universities should be required to do a local/regional needs assessment on behalf of their students and not offer majors where there are no/few jobs in that field. I know, I know, academic freedom and whatever. IMO, it is unforgivable for a university to offer a crap degree and let students incur 10’s of thousands in debt just to find out that they can’t get a job.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Theater, philosophy, womensw studies......even architecture. The is a school near me that pumps out 2-3 times the number of architect grads more than what the local job market can absorb.
 

HurricaneJacket

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This discussion began on the Potential Head Coach Hires thread but I thought it would be smart to move it to this related thread. @UgaBlows @takethepoints

The discussion was that one major reason GT struggles in recruiting is because of the limited majors - and that those majors are all STEM and are all relatively difficult to get athletes through. Georgia Tech does take athletic exceptions, but not to the level of other schools.

It was suggested that Georgia Tech add more majors, such as Kinesiology, Nursing, Nutrition, Forensics, Broadcasting, Journalism, Finance (new major instead of a business concentration). The rebuttal to this was that the BOR (Georgia Board of Regents) prevents GT from adding majors. Evidence of this being false has made its way onto GT boards this year. Here's a post from a different board from a big donor (who often sits next to CPJ at Tech basketball games):

"Also, this GT created myth regarding the Board of Regents should die away. I too have several contacts on the board and they have been wanting GT to add majors for years and begged GT to expand its engineering capabilities before they ever approved ga getting an engineering degree."

From another guy who seems to have a lot more contacts in GTAA than most of us:

"My understanding is that GT was told to expand its undergraduate engineering program to handle increased interest and qualifications of in-state students. GT faculty refused to do it instead wishing to drive even higher the academic qualifications of HS students coming in, and also pushed the requirements higher for out-of-state students (only accepted 19% last year compared to 37% in-state). In others words, the GT faculty wished to increase qualifications more over expansion....thus forcing the BOR to give the engineering expansion to UGA."

And from another donor:

"But at the end of the day, this is about Georgia Tech, the administration and Bud Peterson. They just don't care about football. Hell, I will take it a step further and say they don't give a **** about athletics in general. The buck(s) literally stop with Bud. This whole narrative about GT not having money is complete bull****. We raised over $1.6 BILLION dollars in the last capital campaign. Be have tons of money. THE ADMINISTRATION CHOOSES TO SPEND IT ON OTHER THINGS BECAUSE ATHLETICS ISN'T IMPORTANT TO THEM. That's the bottom line. Name one program other than women's tennis which has improved under Peterson's tenure? Certainly not any of our revenue generating programs. Some have remained at a high level like golf but what programs have improved?

Athletics in today's world, for many people, are the "front porch" of the university. We clearly don't want people on our front porch. Why has Duke improved? They committed to improving. They allotted money, time & effort to making football a priority. And, as much as I hate saying it, with Cutcliffe at the helm it's paying off. Athletic success and academic prowess aren't mutually exclusive. It is harder, no question about it. But it can be done.

So if you want change, it starts at the top. Changing coach might change our fortunes a little. But for any real change to take place we need to change the attitude about and commitment to athletics at Tech. For the record, I am NOT SUGGESTING WE COMPROMISE OUR ACADEMIC STANDARDS OR VALUES ONE BIT. We are not a farm team, we are an academic institution. But we can do better. We can commit to our fans, alums and athletes and give them the tools and resources they need to succeed. This starts with Bud. Until we get real change at the very top, it won't trickle down in any meaningful way."

If these quotes represent reality, this just reinforces my assertion that Bud needs to go, especially if we allowed UGA to add engineering with our professors blessing.

This really pisses me off.
 

IEEEWreck

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This discussion began on the Potential Head Coach Hires thread but I thought it would be smart to move it to this related thread. @UgaBlows @takethepoints

"Also, this GT created myth regarding the Board of Regents should die away. I too have several contacts on the board and they have been wanting GT to add majors for years and begged GT to expand its engineering capabilities before they ever approved ga getting an engineering degree."

From another guy who seems to have a lot more contacts in GTAA than most of us:

"My understanding is that GT was told to expand its undergraduate engineering program to handle increased interest and qualifications of in-state students. GT faculty refused to do it instead wishing to drive even higher the academic qualifications of HS students coming in, and also pushed the requirements higher for out-of-state students (only accepted 19% last year compared to 37% in-state). In others words, the GT faculty wished to increase qualifications more over expansion....thus forcing the BOR to give the engineering expansion to UGA."
So I probably agree with the part of this post I didn't quote, but I feel like I need to push back on some of this here:

This seems like it's conflating two different attacks on Tech by the BOR (and don't kid yourself, they were designed and intended as attacks on GT).

1. The BoR, like a damn stereotype of marketing idiots from a Dilbert strip, got a half formed idea in the inbred malignancies they use instead of brains that Georgia needed these new, exciting engineering disciplines just like Ohio or Wisconsin or whatever their golf buddies told them they read about in a magazine this one time. These new engineering disciplines included agricultural engineering, computer systems engineering, and mechatronics engineering. Now, it may shock ya'll to hear this, but I could be a big pompous *** and throw contempt all over the very idea of these programs like I do at the BoR. Well, the BoR deserves it. But I can rightly point out that none of these 'engineering' programs are ABET accredited anywhere. Additionally, those that aren't a euphemism for something else entirely are kind of cross engineering degrees, like mechatronics. The trouble with that is that it really screws your students over. Sure, in the heat of the moment there may be some opportunities around robotics, but when that industry experiences a downturn (and don't kid yourself, EVERY industry eventually is subject to cycles) you find yourself beat out for jobs that are written specifically for EE and ME professionals. Hell, any AE graduate can tell you this is painfully present in their industry and AE very genuinely contains disciplines and knowledge that EE and ME do not. Just the reality of the market.

Of course, being concerned about the well being of our students and daring to suggest we might have more insights into the engineering market than the finance degree from U(sic)gA and the 20 years in the company pappy left to them strikes the old BoR as rank elitism. Sure, guilty.

2. GT made a proposal considered at the same time as the U(sic)gA to expand the CE, ME, and EE programs by more students than the leg humpers intended for 3 million less in state money. The problem, of course, which this anecdote twists on its head, is that GT was intending, and in fact showed the BoR, that we could do so without substantially lowering the quality of accepted student to the Institute.

Well that just made 'em madder than a skinhead watching the Jeffersons, because that was in the middle of the intelligence backlash school building era. You see, not just GT but U(sic)gA, GSU, Georgia College, and Southern were all raising their standards and getting harder to get into in the wake of the Hope program. And so when the BoR's precious baby prince glue sniffer got out of high school, he just couldn't get into one of the state colleges. By Gawd, he'd sat in a high school class for four years and he sprang from some very illustrious loins so he's ENTITLED to immediately get into a four year college! It's an outrage! Never mind you can get into any of those school guaranteed (except the nut lickers) through a transfer program from the state two year college system. Those families are much too rich and their families give way too much money to politics to have to suffer the indignity of a junior college!

And now you know.

 

MWBATL

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Instead the outcome is obvious- unless and until we start punishing Kemp and his ilk financially and punishing Purdue and everyone else who refuses to go to bat for GT to further their own career, we're going to be walked all over.

This go along to get along attitude isn't working anymore because the politicians know that no matter how egregiously they abuse our interests, we'll always chicken out and decide "well its better to participate than be left out in the cold".

You know who doesn't do that? Rich dwag donors. And so they get listened to and we get patted on the head. Ask Delta how well it works out.

The political board is over there.

Please keep that stuff over on that board. I have made that error myself once or twice and regretted it. I want my sports to be politics-free please!!
 
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