So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[LizzieMaine]

It's being going on forever, but so haven't a lot of other things that aren't good.

 

[MisterCairo]

I pay four bucks a month EXTRA to recycle, rather than toss everything into one bin.

.

Bummer!

 

[Hercule]

Rereading this part of the thread, it occurs that the worst part of the situation is that we live in a world where an educational institution has to be more concerned about "staying competitive" than what would presume to be its actual mission -- a presumed institution of the mind reduced to the level of selling itself like a box of soap. God Bless America.

College is damned expensive and, anymore, increasingly worthless, so attracting and maintaining enrollment is a very big concern for private institutions. Sadly it seems that many undergraduate programs today are essentially providing what the high school education of yesteryear already gave. To really get anywhere one needs to go on to graduate school, so it's more schooling. For the colleges themselves it's these students who are paying the bill to float their large faculties (mostly adjuncts, afterall you can't have your vaunted tenured faculty wasting their time teaching menial survey courses) and staffs (or what's left of them). More and more students and families are seriously considering if it is really worth the time and expense pursuing a 4-year college degree, when in many cases vocational or more affordable community college programs (usually 2-year associate's degrees) will accomplish the same if not more in the end. I don't know where you got this "institution of the mind" business (cue Gaudiamus igitur), but higher ed hasn't been that in decades. Years ago my institution had a series of emergency town hall meetings to discuss declining enrollment and retention (a perennial issue - in my division the complaint is always "boo hoo we're not as good as XXXXXXX, but we're VERY nurturing."). Our president at the time summed up the situation with the observation that students don't come here because they don't perceive it as being "fun." Imagine that, college should be fun.

It's all in the $$

 

[LizzieMaine]

Exactly my point. Education, like health care, shouldn't be a business, and a society that determines the quality of either on the basis of how much you can afford to pay is fundamentally immoral.

 

[Seb Lucas]

I still can't understand why the Personnel Department became Human Resources. As for Chief Talent Officer, sounds to me like PC gone mad.

Maybe I've missed a nuance here, but why connect this to PC? I don't know that this has anything to do with trying to not offend anyone. This is more of the usual marketing nonsense - 'We need to make it fresh' or 'We need it to sound more like today' - these folk are always re branding or looking to 'make things stick' to use their awful language. We haven't used Personnel for 30 years it became HR and then People and Culture. I find the constant quest to redo logos and names and titles futile and tiresome. How about leaving the names and doing a better job?

 

[Seb Lucas]

Rereading this part of the thread, it occurs that the worst part of the situation is that we live in a world where an educational institution has to be more concerned about "staying competitive" than what would presume to be its actual mission -- a presumed institution of the mind reduced to the level of selling itself like a box of soap. God Bless America.

Well, yes, I am old enough to remember a time when society wasn't just a market. The market has become the only arbiter of what is right and wrong.

 

[Trenchfriend]

The german health care system of 2020 is now more and more scrap metal. Like I said before, the doctor's offices are market economy since 1995 (budgeting) and our hospitals since 2003 (fixed rate system). You have to find a good hospital and avoid the big ones!
We got a bigger hospital in our smalltown with staff of 1.400 and it's widely known as horrible "chaos store" and I personally know, it's true. And it was so even already in the 90s! Totally market-economy and shoddy service quality. In my opinion just too big and not managable.
To make more money, they build a cyclotron to produce radionuclides to make lucrative (!) radiopharmaceuticals.

Last week, my father was in the very small hospital in the neighbourtown and in the same station, which I know from 2003 and curiously, it was fine again!!

 

[LizzieMaine]

Maybe I've missed a nuance here, but why connect this to PC? I don't know that this has anything to do with trying to not offend anyone. This is more of the usual marketing nonsense - 'We need to make it fresh' or 'We need it to sound more like today' - these folk are always re branding or looking to 'make things stick' to use their awful language. We haven't used Personnel for 30 years it became HR and then People and Culture. I find the constant quest to redo logos and names and titles futile and tiresome. How about leaving the names and doing a better job?

Nothing says "forward thinking" like spending huge amounts of money on a new logo when the only thing wrong with the old one is that the present front office didn't think of it.

 

[Tiki Tom]

I'm sure I am not the only one here working at an organization that feels the need to re-organize about every two years... and certainly when a new department head comes onboard. Stick around long enough and the place gets re-organized to exactly how it was ten years ago.

 

[Hercule]

Well, yes, I am old enough to remember a time when society wasn't just a market. The market has become the only arbiter of what is right and wrong.

Oh I'm sure the market has always been in the driver's seat to varying degrees, but I get your point. When do you think that evolution began? While it was surely different for different spheres of our society (this topic has regarded academia), I would venture to guess that it pretty much parallels the proliferation of television. Though as I think about it the post-war baby-boom era probably figures in there as well.

 

[Edward]

Nothing says "forward thinking" like spending huge amounts of money on a new logo when the only thing wrong with the old one is that the present front office didn't think of it.

Not evne the hal;f of it in academia. In this business it's not enough to be good - all that matters is being innovative, and having spent your term in whatever office putting your own stamp on it. Change for change's sake. One of the big name universities here in the UK currently has aprincipal who never even went to university. His degree is still valid - from an in-work conversion course, and I don't question the quality of those.... it's just a bit galling when you know how madly someone is running a major institution, making crazy, money-driven demands, treating their own staff as nothing more than a "cost" (and grousing openly about their desire for a liveable pension).... with zero experience of thed service provided at the user end. Meanwhile, said individual draws a salary five to seven times that of many senior academics... A pox on your 'market forces'.

 

[tonyb]

^^^^
A person of my acquaintance has worked for not-for-profits. This person has also served on the boards of directors of other NFPs a time or two.

In the search for cost savings during budget crunches a board member can expect to hear the executive director and perhaps other higher-up staffers argue that they just can’t live on any less than they’re making now but the operation can get by without some of those staffers earning half of much. Or, you know, we can at least cut back their hours. And benefits.

 

[Seb Lucas]

Oh I'm sure the market has always been in the driver's seat to varying degrees, but I get your point. When do you think that evolution began? While it was surely different for different spheres of our society (this topic has regarded academia), I would venture to guess that it pretty much parallels the proliferation of television. Though as I think about it the post-war baby-boom era probably figures in there as well.

TV is no doubt partly responsible. I worked for Network TV for a while and I remember a producer telling me 'the ads don't interrupt your show - your show interrupts the ads.' To me this is when the market is interpreted in the wrong way. But in general terms I put the worst of this coming from the late 1970's and on.

 

[Seb Lucas]

^^^^
A person of my acquaintance has worked for not-for-profits. This person has also served on the boards of directors of other NFPs a time or two.

In the search for cost savings during budget crunches a board member can expect to hear the executive director and perhaps other higher-up staffers argue that they just can’t live on any less than they’re making now but the operation can get by without some of those staffers earning half of much. Or, you know, we can at least cut back their hours. And benefits.

Some NFP's are pretty dreadful and yes, some behave just like any ruthless private corporation.

 

[Edward]

I don't envy anyone trying to run a full time charity either. I remember a friend who used to work in that sector would often be verbally attacked by people who always claimed to be donors to that particular charity or cause (I had my doubts...), who would say "I don't donate to Charity X to have that money spent on you / your petrol / your salary." They never seemed to have any answer, however, as to what she was supposed to live on while working full time for a charity with no wage and always covering her own travel costs on behalf of that charity, as they expected her to do.

It bugs me when people take advantage of the charity sector with shady practices and embezzelment, because that has in some quarters here in the UK led to vicious abuse of the charity sector, often by people who want to believe the worst of it, perhaps because they don't want to contribute and that's how they justify it? There's one newspaper in particular, whose online version claims to be the biggest news website in the world.... the views openly expression on its reader comments re even the very most transparent and legitimate of charities is quite shocking.

 

[Hercule]

TV is no doubt partly responsible. I worked for Network TV for a while and I remember a producer telling me 'the ads don't interrupt your show - your show interrupts the ads.' To me this is when the market is interpreted in the wrong way. But in general terms I put the worst of this coming from the late 1970's and on.

I think I would tend to agree. Back in Connecticut when I was growing up there was a building/development boom that started in the mid 70s. Area farms had died back during the 60s and it seems that they cashed in the land about 10-15 years later. One could could perhaps see a societal/market shift begin at about that time.

 

[GHT]

Clothes too clean for the washing machine, but not so pristine for the wardrobe.
Welcome to "the chair."

 

[tonyb]

Just saw a TV ad for an LG refrigerator/freezer that makes “craft” ice.

I just might need two of those.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Pfft, craft ice. How petit-bourgeois. The real conoissieur uses only natural Llanquihue glacial ice gathered from the Patagonian Ice Fields by indigenous ice-gatherers. Its aged and mellow flavor accents any upscale beverage and reveals the imbiber as a First Worlder Of Distinction.

 

[Hercule]

Designer ice, the latest rage. My wife wants one too. Remember in the mid 80s when there was a craze for "imported" arctic ice? As it turns out that fad was manufactured by the uncle of a college classmate. I actually had some at the time. It had a slight effervescence about it.