
Budgetary Hemlock - robg
http://www.bostonreview.net/BR36.2/todd_edwin_jones_nevada_philosophy.php
======
_delirium
An odd additional factor is that philosophy departments are actually quite
cheap, and at many schools _turn a profit_ (see e.g.
[http://www.today.ucla.edu/portal/ut/PRN-bottom-line-shows-
hu...](http://www.today.ucla.edu/portal/ut/PRN-bottom-line-shows-humanities-
really-155771.aspx)). Their faculty earn relatively low salaries, grad
students are paid little to nothing, and there is no equipment to purchase or
maintain. They're so dramatically cheaper than some other fields that the
total expense is often actually less than the tuition charged for the credit-
hours they teach.

~~~
michael_dorfman
Obligatory joke:

Dean, to the physics department: “Why do I always have to give you guys so
much money, for laboratories and expensive equipment and stuff? Why couldn’t
you be like the math department? All they need is money for pencils, paper and
waste-paper baskets? Or even better, why aren’t you like the philosophy
department? All they need are pencils and paper.”

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tomjen3
That makes sense, seeing as most philosophy isn't that useful.

Let the students read some Socratese, some Stoic, some John Locke and some
Aristolean writings - that should enlighten them enough.

~~~
jbooth
Huh? If you're having the students read that, presumably with a professor to
direct discussion, isn't that just _having a philosophy dept_?

~~~
yummyfajitas
A philosophy department is the waterfall approach to teaching philosophy. You
come up with a plan for how many students you will have in 10-30 years, hire
professors to teach that number of students, pay about 2x the necessary cost
so the professors do research as well [1], and hope your big design up front
works. With this plan, you incur huge fixed costs for very little benefit, and
impose big limitations on your future choices.

Instead, you could go lean. Hire some PTLs, pay them no benefits, just a lump
sum per class. If enrollment drops next semester, you cut the number of
classes and don't renew their contract. Don't pay them for research at all.

[1] A heavy teaching load is 4+4. That's 12 hours of classtime/week, maybe
20-30 hours of actual teaching related work. This typically gets full time
pay, great benefits, and "can't get fired" job security.

