So far I have not blogged about something that has a lot of impact on my life. Especially on my bottom line. Turns out the University of California system has lost a lot of state financing (California is in quite a mess right now) and painful cuts are on their way. It is clear that the University will not come out unscathed from this incident. Although it will survive.
This finally made it to the main news media centers recently, as you can see from the New York Times article. Bottom line is it seems I will be getting some furlough days: these are so to speak ‘unpaid vacation’. There is little point in complaining too much about it as the budget shortfalls will not evaporate by doing so. We are not allowed to take those furlough days when we teach, or when we grade, so I’m wondering what needs to be sacrificed in order not to work for free (or just plain less).
The simplest thing to do is to stop researching, but that is a bad idea: no research, no grants. No grants, no summer salary. I’m looking for creative ways to do what I do in less time so that I can make a point of taking those furlough days off somehow.
There is also the issue of what to do with the extra `free time’. I probably should take up consulting, but I’m not sure what or whom I would be consulting for. Or maybe I should take up writing a novel. I also thought of becoming entrepenurial and writting some apps for iphones in the hope of winning the app lotery and getting rich quick. Additional days spent just surfing the internet and watching television is not that appealing to me. So if you have any ideas about what to do, please drop them in this post.
Team Fortress 2?
Seriously, on http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/ , Mr. Shedlock posted recently about the wonderful amount of money California is going to save by doing those furloughs.
Total amount over 18 months? Around 1.8 billion dollars. To help with a 26 billion dollar budget shortfall. Even firing everyone on the furloughs would be a drop in the bucket.
Everything I’ve read over the past few years indicates that maybe cities and states should stop paying stores like Wal*Mart to move in, stop developing new land for them, stop putting in intersections and traffic lights for someone who’s gonna pull out and build a new store across the street as soon as their 10 year lease is up, we might be in less of a crisis. (Seriously, you can see the old walmart from the new one, it’s literally kittycorner across the street – but at least unlike the South, we’ve managed to re-fill ours with a Burlingame coat factory…. assuming it’s still in business).
If you want my advice? Write childrens books. Dick and Jane + electrons and other quanta. Make science fun for kids and in 20 years we’ll have kids in college who are actually paying attention to the teacher in trig class instead of their Samsung Instinct (or at least talking shit about how funny it was their trig teacher confused i with the i that has the funny hat over it).
http://www.fqxi.org/community/essay
How ’bout $10K for originality?
When a company manufactures little of value for which there is no market in any case, it founders – while those riding it down to Hell get performance bonuses.
http://www.blackstudies.ucsb.edu/
“The department enrolls some four thousand students each year” [snigger]
Al,
I think 4000 students take classes from the department.
Tell your friends to ask the Regents to open up tech transfer to private equity funds:
http://brokensymmetry.typepad.com/broken_symmetry/2009/07/how-the-university-of-california-could-make-up-for-the-800-million-budget-cut.html
Take up lobbying for a federal bailout? (Only halfway joking. Given that, last I checked, on the order of a million children are going to lose their health insurance due to the CA budget crisis, I think many people are going to suffer and die if a federal bailout of CA doesn’t happen.)
Spend some of your time to research certain “crazy” ideas you might have and you didn’t have the time to explore or to really think about before. Who knows what might come out of it. You could also blog about them if you like:-)
If you can’t take furloughs when you grade or teach, then is it really a furlough? Why don’t they just call it a pay cut and be done with it. That’s what it is. You are still going to be doing the same amount of work.
I wonder if this is going to be an issue when people go up for tenure.
Rhett:
The main reason is benefit calculations and morale. Finding out that one has a pay cut is bad for morale. With furloughs, at least in principle, the dollar amount per hour worked has not changed.
Doing it this way impacts the non-academic staff in an obvious way, just not professors.
Also, this way if things return to normal, one does not need to approve across the board salary increases.
This is supposedly not going to affect promotions. However, most new appointments are frozen, and it is likely that retiring professors will not be replaced in the near future.
Does this affect most people in the department? How about postdocs?
Hi Velvet:
As far as I know, it will not affect people who get their salaries from external federal sources (people whose salary comes from grants). It will not affect student salaries either, but we have fewer student jobs positions available. It affects pretty much everyone to various degrees.
Back when we were (off and) on the gold standard adjusting people’s wages downwards was a regular and unavoidable thing. The civil war saw prices 3x the gold price, but the US bought back all the “green back” dollars and around 1879 (if I recall correctly) got back on the gold standard. That meant that wages were decreased by 66% over a 15 year period. Something similar happened during the great depression.
What will happen in the current situation is that the US dollar will drop in value and we’ll see a steep increase in prices. So California will be in balance again and will pay you your full wages. And people’s whose houses are currently underwater will have big profits in them when they sell. Uh, you won’t be able to afford to put gas in your car, and if you have to buy a new house it will be frighteningly expensive, but you will get your full wages.
Over the long run, I expect that California’s anti business policies will kill the goose that laid the golden egg. Probably the most hilarious incident was the one where you made the electric companies sell power for less than the cost of production while simultaneously not allowing them to build new plants in state. The “NIMBY” syndrome. So the county where we’re building our ethanol plant sold you the power you needed. The profits were so high that everyone in this rural county gets subsidized cable internet. We’re better wired than you are. And some of the businesses you drove out of state (by rationing electricity in favor of consumers and against business) have moved up here so we also have the jobs you used to.
Entrepreneurial?
Maybe you cut into Garrett’s unique manufacturing production of surf boards and make canoes at let’s say $15000 a pop instead of his 10000?:) On the West coast, lots of cedar.
Then you can do all the research specific to your desires and be cost effective to your own mandate and write nice papers in your spare time.:)
Just a thought.
Why not try to be invited as a long-term visiting scientist in some university ?
In my lab, they will pay travel and accomodation expenses, as well lunches for visitors.
Uncle Al to the rescue! Here’s the pitch: The Bureau of the Public Debt buys jokes.
https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=3014e950a92dbb0f7e066f9e088a301f&tab=core&tabmode=list&cck=1&au=&ck=
“The presenter shall refrain from using any foul language during the presentation.”
I wouldn’t want to be to elitist by suggesting that you volunteer to tutor, or help at a local shelter, so I won’t.
However, if I had time that I had to take, I would seriously consider taking some art classes. Personally, if I could find somewhere to learn to do metal working, that would be my particular favorite.
If I was on a limited budget, I would sit through some of the free lecture series that are now available online from Stanford, MIT, Harvard etc.
Although, I would offer that volunteer work is always a good way to meet people, so if you are looking to be social that’s always a good way to go…oops, I did mention that…sorry
Yes, that is an idea worth considering. It’s been a while since I took art classes. My technique is kind of sloppy.
Working at a shelter, that is another idea worth considering.
There’s auctioneering. Drop by the place where they auction off the surplus equipment unneeded by the university (and other universities in the area). Usually, buying cheap is easy, the hard part is figuring out who wants to buy it. Getting good prices at auctions takes all day and the way most places gives you a little more exercise than just sitting around in a chair.
Go to http://www.auctionzip.com for a list of general auctions near your zip code. For example, if one of your hobbies is coin collecting, you can probably make money buying coins at auction and then selling them again (perhaps at other auctions). First few times you go, don’t spend more than $20, find out how the system works.
My buddy and I found out about this when we bought a scanning electron microscope on eBay. When it arrived, it had been cut in two by the stupid State of Oregon. We sold it back on eBay with a complete description and nearly doubled the price. People who are literate and understand equipment can buy and then write good ads, and make a whole lot of money.