Tag: James A. Bacon
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UVa’s Ever-Expanding Bureaucracy: Student Advising Edition
by James A. Bacon University of Virginia old-timers (like myself) remember what it was like to find help in picking courses and deciding majors. We’d latch ourselves onto a professor who took an interest in us, and he or she would walk us through the process. It did require some initiative on our part to…
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Let Me Get This Straight…
by James A. Bacon Wyatt Gordon writes about smart growth issues for the Virginia Mercury and Greater Greater Washington. Sometimes, he’s worth reading. But, then, sometimes, he’s not. As an example of the latter, he recently posted this on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter: So, let me get this straight. If…
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How Many UVa Students Feel Sense of “Belonging”?
by James A. Bacon As the University of Virginia Board of Visitors grapples with contentious issues such as equity, inclusion and racial preferences, it could benefit by knowing how well the policies of the Ryan administration have succeeded or failed in making UVa a more welcoming place for students across “every possible dimension” of diversity,…
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Last Year’s SOL Performance — Meh
by James A. Bacon The Virginia Department of Education is running two weeks late in releasing Standards of Learning (SOL) testing data for the 2022-23 school year. The reason cited by state Superintendent Lisa Coons, reports the Richmond Times-Dispatch, is to process retake data and appeals. The SOL results, as they appeared on a Richmond…
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UVa Spending on Staff Surges, Spending on Students Trails
by James A. Bacon Always alert for opportunities to arm the University of Virginia Board of Visitors members with statistics they don’t see in their board presentations, The Jefferson Council presents the table above, compiled from data published by the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV). The takeaway: UVa boosted overall E&G (educational &…
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Blue on Blue
Monica Lisle, a long-serving Alexandria police captain, has charged the city’s police chief with denying her a promotion to assistant chief by stacking the deck against her in favor of Black candidates in order to “fill certain unannounced racial quotas.” As Lisle wrote in an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint last year, according to The…
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Charlottesville Schools Ban Student Cell Phones
by James A. Bacon The Charlottesville public school system has banned the students’ use of cell phones. Superintendent Royal Gurley decries students’ “addiction” to the mobile devices, and teachers have complained that the phones have become a tremendous disruption in the classroom, reports The Daily Progress. The restrictions, school officials hope, will “increase connectivity between…
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Student Vets Win Back Their Space
by James A. Bacon The Student Veterans of America (SVA) at the University of Virginia notched up a small win Friday when Student Affairs officials reversed a decision to expropriate some of the Veterans Center space at Newcomb Hall. But the veterans’ battle for recognition and respect at UVa is far from over. What they…
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The Rats Return
by James A. Bacon Good news from the Virginia Military Institute! After seeing a drastic falloff t0 374 entering students last year, 491 students matriculated this fall. Last year’s decline capped off years of disastrous public relations stemming from a campaign by The Washington Post and the Northam administration to depict VMI as a racist,…
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The Real Deal
by James A. Bacon Who do you think provides the more authentic insight into the mindset of the American working class: elite media, which filters its portraits of blue-collar Americans through the cultural and ideological lenses of its Ivy League reporters, or a home-grown balladeer like Farmville resident Oliver Anthony? Anthony (real name Christopher Anthony Lunsford)…
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Faculty Bloat at UVa
by James A. Bacon A key cost driver at the University of Virginia is the increasing size and declining teaching productivity of its faculty. The topic appears to be taboo. The Board of Visitors hasn’t discussed it, and there is no indication from publicly available sources that the university administration has engaged in any introspection.…
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Hard Numbers on Administrative Bloat
by James A. Bacon A number of University of Virginia Board of Visitors members have expressed concern about UVa’s runaway costs. Administrative bloat has swollen the university’s cost structure, they say, and higher costs have been cited in turn to justify tuition increases. So far, the fiscal hawks have been unable to force a discussion…