How to deal with student who told me that he pays for my salary?

[marshwiggle]

I don't know that people I know who received a non-US specialist/professional undergraduate degree are any less well read or generally well informed about the arts, or literature or politics than those who were required to take 6 credits of English, 3 of history and .....  Is it really general education or just a job protection racket for faculty and a hoop jumping exercise for students?

If you are talking about academics or people with advanced degrees generally you have a bad control group----these are people who would be well-read and cultured anyway because of their natural tendencies toward knowledge acquisition. 

Are you suggesting the portion of the general citizenry of the U.S. having completed a degree is that much more well-read than the citizenry of any other western country which doesn't have the gen. ed. requirements? Based on what? I'm really curious to know.
 

A bit in the vein of Polly's thought experiment of how she's re-arrange academia, I'd do the following:

-Part-timers must all be concurrently practitioners, or be retired fult-time practitioners. No limit on the numbers of part-timers colleges can employ, but their benefits, bonuses, etc must be at least the pro-rated equivalent of what the tenured faculty get. That way, there's no incentive to use part-timers as a way to save money instead of as a way of bringing in valuable outside expertise. This would be enforced by being a requirement for accreditation and for receiving public funding, incl. student loans, tax breaks, etc.
-PhD programs would be required to show their typical alumni are earning professional-grade wages and benefits, though not necessarily in academia. If the typical alumni are doing their umpteenth postdoc or are teaching for peanuts, the program gets shut down. I'd also force PhD programs to do psychometric testing of all applicants - this would eventually cut down the numbers of people in need of personality transplants in academia.
-Students can either do a specialist education (as is the norm everywhere other than the US pretty much) or they can do a generalist degree - but it has to have a high standard in multiple fields. In my view this means calculus-based STEM courses AND coding AND a second language to at least semi-fluency, for example. Folks not going to college can do modern apprenticeships (an extremely successful model in Switzerland and Germany) and folks who do go to college get a high standard of education.

Excellent suggestions!

[Wahoo Redux]

... Students should be taught by FT professionals.

Oh, come on. In many fields an active practitioner, or a retired practitioner, is going to be a much better instructor than a full-time academic - because of, well, hands-on experience as a practitioner - direct experience of the "real world" profession rather than academic research.

Oh, come on.  I agree for some disciplines and some classes.  We will probably not employ the sheriff full time as a professor but it would be nice if hu would teach some classes. Come on!

For other disciplines that is not the case or not nearly as necessary.  If you want nurses teaching future nurses, fine.  I am primarily speaking of English.  But in philosophy, languages, history, math, literature, writing, fine arts, and even music the faculty ARE practitioners (come on, you know that, right?) and they should be FT faculty so we don't make a complete hash of our educational system.

And I'd be interested to know what the "real world" is.  Seems to me the "real world" has benefited a great deal from academic research in all areas.

Polly's reading list would be greatly reduced if it weren't for all that academics out there with their piddling academic research.

A bit in the vein of Polly's thought experiment of how she's re-arrange academia, I'd do the following:

-Part-timers must all be concurrently practitioners, or be retired fult-time practitioners. No limit on the numbers of part-timers colleges can employ, but their benefits, bonuses, etc must be at least the pro-rated equivalent of what the tenured faculty get. That way, there's no incentive to use part-timers as a way to save money instead of as a way of bringing in valuable outside expertise. This would be enforced by being a requirement for accreditation and for receiving public funding, incl. student loans, tax breaks, etc.
-PhD programs would be required to show their typical alumni are earning professional-grade wages and benefits, though not necessarily in academia. If the typical alumni are doing their umpteenth postdoc or are teaching for peanuts, the program gets shut down. I'd also force PhD programs to do psychometric testing of all applicants - this would eventually cut down the numbers of people in need of personality transplants in academia.
-Students can either do a specialist education (as is the norm everywhere other than the US pretty much) or they can do a generalist degree - but it has to have a high standard in multiple fields. In my view this means calculus-based STEM courses AND coding AND a second language to at least semi-fluency, for example. Folks not going to college can do modern apprenticeships (an extremely successful model in Switzerland and Germany) and folks who do go to college get a high standard of education.

Yeah, okay.  My concern is that we are whittling down our educational system with an army of poorly paid part-timers and weakening our colleges. 

You do realize the number of "practitioners" you are going to need to find, right?

You also realize the extent of red-tape, government intervention, and paraprofessionals you've just created.

And you do realize your main criteria seems to be money.

Nope, dumb ideas.  You'd kill academia like that. 

[marshwiggle]

You do realize the number of "practitioners" you are going to need to find, right?

Read that again:

-Part-timers must all be concurrently practitioners, or be retired fult-time practitioners.

The requirement of "practitioner" only applies to part-time faculty. So if they're hard to find, that means more full-time faculy.

My concern is that we are whittling down our educational system with an army of poorly paid part-timers and weakening our colleges. 
.....

And you do realize your main criteria seems to be money.

No limit on the numbers of part-timers colleges can employ, but their benefits, bonuses, etc must be at least the pro-rated equivalent of what the tenured faculty get. That way, there's no incentive to use part-timers as a way to save money instead of as a way of bringing in valuable outside expertise. This would be enforced by being a requirement for accreditation and for receiving public funding, incl. student loans, tax breaks, etc.

By pro-rating salaries and benefits, there's NO financial incentive to make part-time positions over full-time ones.

You also realize the extent of red-tape, government intervention, and paraprofessionals you've just created.

How does reducing the incentive for creating part-time positions wind up creating more paraprofessionals?