If people are interested, this was just put out by VT on my LinkedIn feed:
After 12 years of service to the university community and the Commonwealth of Virginia, and a career dedicated to the advancement of science and the impact of public higher education, Virginia Tech President Tim Sands intends to step down in the coming months.
Sands made the announcement Thursday in a letter addressed "to Hokies everywhere."
"There is no better role in higher education than to serve as the president of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University," Sands said. "Stewarding Virginia Tech as president has been the most fulfilling experience of my career."
Sands said it was the right time to begin the process of stepping aside and provide the next president the opportunity to "take the baton at full stride" and continue Virginia Tech's significant growth and momentum, telling the community that "together we have transformed Virginia Tech for the better."
During his tenure, the university experienced a 30 percent increase in undergraduate enrollment, 200 percent increase in applications, 70 percent increase in extramural research expenditures, and 185 percent increase in the university's endowment.
Chevy. It's a fucking crime how GM has built these vehicles to die under 200k. I've got a transmission shudder in my '15 Silverado at 196k miles. I even deleted the AFM kit and dealt with the wiring harness issues. So frustrating because it would have been paid off by the end of the year but now I'm truck shopping under shit economic conditions and high interest rates. I've been a bowtie man my entire life but am tired of the trucks dying. I just rented a 2014 Tundra on Turo and drove it 1400 miles to two different art shows. Good truck except for the seats. My god they are awful. With driving 25,000 miles a year, I can't have a backache due to the seats. I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I will not buy a Ford.
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Sorry to hear that. One work F-250 has 350k miles and is still going strong. The other work short bed F-250 for plowing has 175k and is working great. My personal 2016 F-150 has 95k miles and no problems other than when a mouse chewed on a wiring harness.
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My old 2001 Silverado I had in college I sold for $5000 at 289,000 miles on it and only died because a semi crashed into it. My father had older Chevy work trucks for years that would easily eclipse 3,000. All of the new trucks are dogshit. Even the Toyotas
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I've got a boat trailer issue right now. When I pulled the pontoon boat from the water in the fall, I forgot to raise the motor and it caught, snapping the winch strap. Sure enough, when I released the trailer from the hitch, up it went in the air. Right now I have a cinder block under the back transom (?) of the trailer, holding it mostly down, but I'm going to have to figure out how to get the hitch all the way down to hitch it back up. Once I swap out the tires (which should be interesting, considering), I need to re-float the boat in order to winch it back up to where it should sit.
And then I can get to work replacing all of the seating, which looks like was eaten by rabid squirrels. But that's what you get when you inherit a boat with the house. /shrug
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Never a dull moment owning a boat. I too have broken a winch strap, though didn't have much of an issue with it. Put a floor jack under the back of the trailer and jack it up, which will cause the front end to drop down. Make sure to chock the wheels on the front end so the trailer doesn't roll forward when you jack up. Hopefully you'll be able to get it to drop close to the hitch. I'd advise a competent helper on this one to watch the trailer hitch as it falls.
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I've had some qualms with his tenure over the years, some major (athletics) and some minor (expanding the underclassmen so rapidly at times despite freshman not having anywhere to live), but he did a great job with fundraising and academics.
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The perception of VT academics rose a bunch under him, did he make some mistakes or even calculated losses, sure but its hard to find many presidents that haven't made mistakes for their universities
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Not shocked... the collegiate landscape - not just athletics - has been shaken up a ton over the last five years, and I'm sure there's much more to come. If Sands isn't interested in all that then it's probably a good time to get out.
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JMMF will be here as long as the funds/support are there. A large part of why Sands is stepping down earlier than expected is because all those factors were heard about being aligned (Pres to AD to Football/other sports), didn't really happen like they were suppose to after Franklin was hired. The people with influence are making those happen. We can't really afford to sit around to wait for Sands and Babcock to coast off into retirement on their own. Change is needed now. Hopefully this new pres will be good on the academic side while also finally getting everything structured properly on the athletic side as well
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I hear all that, but they have a Natty in football and basketball and just made the hockey Frozen Four. Find the middle between the good and bad and we would see a step up.
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You have to remember that at one point, Sands had in his long-term plan to get enrollment to around 50,000! It was the state of Virginia that stepped in, on behalf of the smaller colleges & universities who are struggling with enrollment and staffing, to cap enrollment around 30,000. That is our current situation. We'd LOVE to accept lots more students, but the state currently won't let us.
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Yep, it's going in right next to the Prices Fork/N Main roundabout next to Kabrich St. Saw a whole comment section full of townies huffing and puffing about it myself recently.
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The townies need to decide which way they want the university to expand. It's going to expand, I would think expanding upward and near the university would be preferable to a 3 story sprawl.
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No argument here. Blacksburg long ago reached the point where there's weeping and gnashing of teeth no matter which plot of unspoiled land is built on next. Building up instead of out mitigates that to an extent.
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I had not heard 8 stories. I wonder how they are getting around fire code restrictions. I know the guy who owned Heaveners rental was approached and he laughed the developer off initially. Told them it would take a number with at least 6 zeros for him to consider. Then he sold within a couple weeks as they exceeded what he thought he could get.
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This seems early to me. I thought Tim Sands was dead set on getting aau membership. Maybe he's realized that his dumb olive branch offer to add Cal and Stanford to the ACC isn't going to be enough to get VT into the club. That's probably his biggest mistake of his tenure.
He wasn't going to make everyone happy all the time. After all, no one can. I acknowledge that he did make some strides for VT but overall I don't think he's been a great president for VT.
I wish him the best in retirement. I don't love the timing of this though. It'll be interesting to see who ends up replacing him. Could have significant impacts on the direction VT goes.
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I feel like it's either very surprising or very unsurprising that he bouncing right after dropping his OpEd about college athletics spending. As in either he's throwing his hands up like 'fuck this' or everyone's like 'you wrote this? you ain't it, bye falicia'
Am I wrong?
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Can't say either way but I've heard suspicion from people. Wouldn't put a lot of stock into it. Everything is speculation. I don't have anything reliable to pass along.
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Well this explains why Whit wasn't fired last year. New President is probably going to bring his or her own AD with them, and a big part of the AD hire is an understanding that they don't control football anymore.
Actually makes it quite easy to quickly pivot football into being its own entity within athletics if you're replacing the head of the department and splitting that away as part of the job description. And I wouldn't be shocked if this becomes the norm across universities going forward.
Also, I don't think its a coincidence at all that Sands put out that statement last week and then announces his intention to quit this week. He aired his grievances before taking his ball and going home because he knew he wouldn't be around to answer for what he said.
Academically, I have no idea where this will take us, he was essentially brought in to get us AAU status and he failed at doing that. Athletics had some blips, but largely sucked under him. Academics were propped up by a ballooning student population but not really pushing the envelope anywhere in particular. There's a good foundation for the next President to come in and build from, but we still have a ways to go to be where we want to be as a university.
At least maybe we'll get rid of this fucking stupid ass academic logo and just do the smart thing and unite the whole university under the athletic branding we are internationally known for.
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I know TKP is athletics forward, but I hope the next President is selected for their abilities in moving the entire university forward. I think that includes recognizing the direction that athletics is going nationally and making moves to position our athletes into the strongest position possible in the future; however, athletics should be about 10% of the President's focus.
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That would be a great goal but how does one do that? Professor pay isnt great at VT. We want to compete at athletics which cost a fortune, and the state isnt finding VT like they once did. Thats a lot if research grants needed to pay for faculty, and a lot of donations required, but what other avenues are you expecting?
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The president has little sway in that. It's up to the Board and the president is not a voting member of the Board. State support on a per-student basis is way down over the last 25 years. This is a political problem so I won't get into it on this forum but there's a reason why VT has to keep increasing its cost. We're getting less and less from the state and the next few years of budget look pretty dicey...
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Up north they are finding out politics matter a lot when the politics are anti education. What has happened at WVU is a mess and only just the beginning of the plans for that university as they develop the Washington center.
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I would love to see a real budget break down between instruction, administration, and facility upgrades. My take from my time in school and when I went through the process to be a student rep for the BOV is that admin and facility upgrade costs are out of control.
One recent example is the push to eliminate the LLCs due to overhead costs. As someone who was in galileo for 2 years, the things that made galileo good were free. They added nonsense expenses and staff when the true benefit is the concentration of students in the dorms and mentorship.
Any time you look at any level of education you see student numbers reasonably flat, teachers increasing just slightly more than students, and then administrative overhead going insane. At every level we keep throwing money at this black hole with no increase in quality of education and if anything the quality is decreasing as spending increases.
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My hometown in va has had shrinking student body for decades and finally consolidated the county and city schools into one. The whole point was to save money on buildings and admin.... They have MORE admin than before and are cutting teachers while spending more money than ever on less students than ever. It is mind boggling.
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Having two daughters with trauma and both in need of IEPs I have dealt with a number of non-teaching staff and it amazes me that when I grew up there were less than 10 non-teachers in my school off 800-900 students. And the librarian sort if taught, just not full time. Their middle school which is only slightly bigger than my high-school has more councilors than my high school had administers. Now I am thankful these exist for my daughters because they need the help but there are still tons of staff that I don't know what they do, its very different than 25 years ago.
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Unless they have changed things, NJ also requires a masters to teach, so teachers need to be paid more and on top of that they are union so they need to be paid more.
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I don't think NJ as a state ever required masters degrees for public school teachers but many of the districts are certainly competitive enough to be that selective.
Bachelor's Degree and Praxis is minimum for certificate
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I'll tell you what- while not huge the string of improvements to football facilities is coming on fast at a place where things don't always move fast. Merriman Lobby, Football taping room reno reviews in just the past few days.
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In the FT MBA program with the Aggies, my Financial Accounting Professor (also Dean Emeritus of the Mays Business School and CFO of TAMU), was a strong candidate for President of VPI&SU when Dr. Sands took the job. I personally believe he would have been a better President, and left VT in an even stronger position. Dr. Strawser was born in Md, but his father taught accounting at UVA and VT, so he spent considerable time in both Hooville and the Burg.
Culturally, he was a fit, too. He cares immensely about his students, staff, and the larger university community.
We often chatted about how VT and TAMU are very much sister schools. He also values extracurriculars, and particularly college football.
For example: We broke down the financial and economic benefits of having a strong FBS program. We also dissected why Jimbo Fisher needed to go, purely from an over compensation and financial perspective. I do not believe Dr. Strawser would have tolerated VT Football languishing, the way Dr. Sands did.
I personally saw more of Ut Prosim and Invent the Future mentality in Dr. Strawser, than Sands.
Comments
If people are interested, this was just put out by VT on my LinkedIn feed:
After 12 years of service to the university community and the Commonwealth of Virginia, and a career dedicated to the advancement of science and the impact of public higher education, Virginia Tech President Tim Sands intends to step down in the coming months.
Sands made the announcement Thursday in a letter addressed "to Hokies everywhere."
"There is no better role in higher education than to serve as the president of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University," Sands said. "Stewarding Virginia Tech as president has been the most fulfilling experience of my career."
Sands said it was the right time to begin the process of stepping aside and provide the next president the opportunity to "take the baton at full stride" and continue Virginia Tech's significant growth and momentum, telling the community that "together we have transformed Virginia Tech for the better."
During his tenure, the university experienced a 30 percent increase in undergraduate enrollment, 200 percent increase in applications, 70 percent increase in extramural research expenditures, and 185 percent increase in the university's endowment.
A letter from President Sands ➡️ https://lnkd.in/eMhYBdzN
Full VT News story ➡️ https://lnkd.in/e79vX75v
Well this certainly has the potential to shake VT Athletics up alot.
Also wonder what this means for Whit's job security??
Whit is out this summer.
Sauces or hunch?
Sauces. Juicy ones.
It's a marinade!
Nah, marinades need a sour element.
Oh, you want sour? Ask flyguy about his boat trailers.
Boat trailer?? You should see the truck issues I'm having right now!
Ford or Chevy?
Chevy. It's a fucking crime how GM has built these vehicles to die under 200k. I've got a transmission shudder in my '15 Silverado at 196k miles. I even deleted the AFM kit and dealt with the wiring harness issues. So frustrating because it would have been paid off by the end of the year but now I'm truck shopping under shit economic conditions and high interest rates. I've been a bowtie man my entire life but am tired of the trucks dying. I just rented a 2014 Tundra on Turo and drove it 1400 miles to two different art shows. Good truck except for the seats. My god they are awful. With driving 25,000 miles a year, I can't have a backache due to the seats. I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I will not buy a Ford.
Sorry to hear that. One work F-250 has 350k miles and is still going strong. The other work short bed F-250 for plowing has 175k and is working great. My personal 2016 F-150 has 95k miles and no problems other than when a mouse chewed on a wiring harness.
My old 2001 Silverado I had in college I sold for $5000 at 289,000 miles on it and only died because a semi crashed into it. My father had older Chevy work trucks for years that would easily eclipse 3,000. All of the new trucks are dogshit. Even the Toyotas
I've got a boat trailer issue right now. When I pulled the pontoon boat from the water in the fall, I forgot to raise the motor and it caught, snapping the winch strap. Sure enough, when I released the trailer from the hitch, up it went in the air. Right now I have a cinder block under the back transom (?) of the trailer, holding it mostly down, but I'm going to have to figure out how to get the hitch all the way down to hitch it back up. Once I swap out the tires (which should be interesting, considering), I need to re-float the boat in order to winch it back up to where it should sit.
And then I can get to work replacing all of the seating, which looks like was eaten by rabid squirrels. But that's what you get when you inherit a boat with the house. /shrug
Never a dull moment owning a boat. I too have broken a winch strap, though didn't have much of an issue with it. Put a floor jack under the back of the trailer and jack it up, which will cause the front end to drop down. Make sure to chock the wheels on the front end so the trailer doesn't roll forward when you jack up. Hopefully you'll be able to get it to drop close to the hitch. I'd advise a competent helper on this one to watch the trailer hitch as it falls.
Never forget
Technically correct!!!!!!!
Summer starts June 21st by the summer equinox. So he was technically correct.
Thats what i said!!!!!!!
Do I get an extra 1000 leg bonus or something? Keys to the town of Blacksburg? A free rail at Tots?
Some legitimate TKP bragging rights.
Feel free to do it again, sometime.
I'll do my best!
Whoa
HE HAS TROUBLE WITH THE SNAP
AND THE BALL IS FREE
I've had some qualms with his tenure over the years, some major (athletics) and some minor (expanding the underclassmen so rapidly at times despite freshman not having anywhere to live), but he did a great job with fundraising and academics.
The perception of VT academics rose a bunch under him, did he make some mistakes or even calculated losses, sure but its hard to find many presidents that haven't made mistakes for their universities
Accessibility also drastically fell
Not shocked... the collegiate landscape - not just athletics - has been shaken up a ton over the last five years, and I'm sure there's much more to come. If Sands isn't interested in all that then it's probably a good time to get out.
How does this factor in JMFF staying at tech?
I imagine that depends quite a bit on who replaces Sands.
JMMF will be here as long as the funds/support are there. A large part of why Sands is stepping down earlier than expected is because all those factors were heard about being aligned (Pres to AD to Football/other sports), didn't really happen like they were suppose to after Franklin was hired. The people with influence are making those happen. We can't really afford to sit around to wait for Sands and Babcock to coast off into retirement on their own. Change is needed now. Hopefully this new pres will be good on the academic side while also finally getting everything structured properly on the athletic side as well
So new president then new AD?
We will have both next fall.
Go grab whoever the hell is the assistant AD at Michigan. They have been on a tear the last few years.
Except for keeping an eye on their new head football coach.
Co offensive coordinator fired for illegally accessing records of 150,000 people
Two staff members fired for DUIs
Sign Stealing Stalions
Or mens basketball with Juwan Howard punching a Wisconsin coach
Hockey Coach fired in 2022 for toxic environment
Robert Anderson Abuse Scandal $490M settlement with over 1000 people
I hear all that, but they have a Natty in football and basketball and just made the hockey Frozen Four. Find the middle between the good and bad and we would see a step up.
I mean take some names out of this and its just half of the B1G athletic organizations
I want nothing to do with anybody that has been at Michigan.
30% increase in undergrads was a bit much.
You have to remember that at one point, Sands had in his long-term plan to get enrollment to around 50,000! It was the state of Virginia that stepped in, on behalf of the smaller colleges & universities who are struggling with enrollment and staffing, to cap enrollment around 30,000. That is our current situation. We'd LOVE to accept lots more students, but the state currently won't let us.
The town of Blacksburg would likely fight it too.
There is more and more student apartments going up. So they are prepping for more students.
I recall my two cousins say during their senior year of 2023 that nobody liked Sands because of how crowded school and town had gotten.
Was reading about a new 8 story residential building being built by a roundabout that seemed to have everyone in an uproar in Blacksburg
Yep, it's going in right next to the Prices Fork/N Main roundabout next to Kabrich St. Saw a whole comment section full of townies huffing and puffing about it myself recently.
The townies need to decide which way they want the university to expand. It's going to expand, I would think expanding upward and near the university would be preferable to a 3 story sprawl.
No argument here. Blacksburg long ago reached the point where there's weeping and gnashing of teeth no matter which plot of unspoiled land is built on next. Building up instead of out mitigates that to an extent.
I had not heard 8 stories. I wonder how they are getting around fire code restrictions. I know the guy who owned Heaveners rental was approached and he laughed the developer off initially. Told them it would take a number with at least 6 zeros for him to consider. Then he sold within a couple weeks as they exceeded what he thought he could get.
Great. Needed this to happen for part two too happen
I like the focus on academics, but really didnt like the cost escalation or rebranding (Invent the Future >>>>>> know your place)
Can we also get a single VT logo also? Guitar you in the running for the job so we can get this done.
This seems early to me. I thought Tim Sands was dead set on getting aau membership. Maybe he's realized that his dumb olive branch offer to add Cal and Stanford to the ACC isn't going to be enough to get VT into the club. That's probably his biggest mistake of his tenure.
He wasn't going to make everyone happy all the time. After all, no one can. I acknowledge that he did make some strides for VT but overall I don't think he's been a great president for VT.
I wish him the best in retirement. I don't love the timing of this though. It'll be interesting to see who ends up replacing him. Could have significant impacts on the direction VT goes.
@Guitarman any palace intrigue?
Plenty, but none I'm wiling to air out. Lots of rumors and concerns about the timing.
I feel like it's either very surprising or very unsurprising that he bouncing right after dropping his OpEd about college athletics spending. As in either he's throwing his hands up like 'fuck this' or everyone's like 'you wrote this? you ain't it, bye falicia'
Am I wrong?
Can't say either way but I've heard suspicion from people. Wouldn't put a lot of stock into it. Everything is speculation. I don't have anything reliable to pass along.
Maybe he is preemptively freeing himself up to take on some role to usher in the changes his op-ed was calling for?
I don't know if he's thought of that highly amongst his peers that they would follow his lead.
Also, he's 68. That's kinda old to take on a brand new career/project of that scale.
60% of the US Senate is over 60.
Not exactly a ringing endorsement for being effective 😂
/s
Wow, people weren't kidding when they said James Franklin gets what James Franklin wants, eh?
/s
Take your bullshit logo with you!!!
Well this explains why Whit wasn't fired last year. New President is probably going to bring his or her own AD with them, and a big part of the AD hire is an understanding that they don't control football anymore.
Actually makes it quite easy to quickly pivot football into being its own entity within athletics if you're replacing the head of the department and splitting that away as part of the job description. And I wouldn't be shocked if this becomes the norm across universities going forward.
Also, I don't think its a coincidence at all that Sands put out that statement last week and then announces his intention to quit this week. He aired his grievances before taking his ball and going home because he knew he wouldn't be around to answer for what he said.
Academically, I have no idea where this will take us, he was essentially brought in to get us AAU status and he failed at doing that. Athletics had some blips, but largely sucked under him. Academics were propped up by a ballooning student population but not really pushing the envelope anywhere in particular. There's a good foundation for the next President to come in and build from, but we still have a ways to go to be where we want to be as a university.
At least maybe we'll get rid of this fucking stupid ass academic logo and just do the smart thing and unite the whole university under the athletic branding we are internationally known for.
I think it's been shared multiple places (TSL, LAHokie, etc) that Whit was on the way out but Franklin wanted to keep him around.
I know TKP is athletics forward, but I hope the next President is selected for their abilities in moving the entire university forward. I think that includes recognizing the direction that athletics is going nationally and making moves to position our athletes into the strongest position possible in the future; however, athletics should be about 10% of the President's focus.
Id like to see the president have a focus on avoiding this exponential cost increase for students... Nearly 40k a year for in state is INSANE
That would be a great goal but how does one do that? Professor pay isnt great at VT. We want to compete at athletics which cost a fortune, and the state isnt finding VT like they once did. Thats a lot if research grants needed to pay for faculty, and a lot of donations required, but what other avenues are you expecting?
The president has little sway in that. It's up to the Board and the president is not a voting member of the Board. State support on a per-student basis is way down over the last 25 years. This is a political problem so I won't get into it on this forum but there's a reason why VT has to keep increasing its cost. We're getting less and less from the state and the next few years of budget look pretty dicey...
Facts shouldn't be political, but I hear you
Politics shouldn't be the driving force in selecting a new president, either, but it seems like it will be in this case.
Up north they are finding out politics matter a lot when the politics are anti education. What has happened at WVU is a mess and only just the beginning of the plans for that university as they develop the Washington center.
I would love to see a real budget break down between instruction, administration, and facility upgrades. My take from my time in school and when I went through the process to be a student rep for the BOV is that admin and facility upgrade costs are out of control.
One recent example is the push to eliminate the LLCs due to overhead costs. As someone who was in galileo for 2 years, the things that made galileo good were free. They added nonsense expenses and staff when the true benefit is the concentration of students in the dorms and mentorship.
Any time you look at any level of education you see student numbers reasonably flat, teachers increasing just slightly more than students, and then administrative overhead going insane. At every level we keep throwing money at this black hole with no increase in quality of education and if anything the quality is decreasing as spending increases.
Just take a look at education spending vs. numbers of students in just about any NJ public school district if you want to make your head spin.
My hometown in va has had shrinking student body for decades and finally consolidated the county and city schools into one. The whole point was to save money on buildings and admin.... They have MORE admin than before and are cutting teachers while spending more money than ever on less students than ever. It is mind boggling.
Doesn't surprise me in the slightest.
The admin to teacher ratio in our public schools these days is complete BS.
Having two daughters with trauma and both in need of IEPs I have dealt with a number of non-teaching staff and it amazes me that when I grew up there were less than 10 non-teachers in my school off 800-900 students. And the librarian sort if taught, just not full time. Their middle school which is only slightly bigger than my high-school has more councilors than my high school had administers. Now I am thankful these exist for my daughters because they need the help but there are still tons of staff that I don't know what they do, its very different than 25 years ago.
Unless they have changed things, NJ also requires a masters to teach, so teachers need to be paid more and on top of that they are union so they need to be paid more.
In most school districts the black hole of money is not teachers
I don't think NJ as a state ever required masters degrees for public school teachers but many of the districts are certainly competitive enough to be that selective.
Bachelor's Degree and Praxis is minimum for certificate
I'll tell you what- while not huge the string of improvements to football facilities is coming on fast at a place where things don't always move fast. Merriman Lobby, Football taping room reno reviews in just the past few days.
Q: You located in San Antonio area or South Florida? IYKYK
No sir
In the FT MBA program with the Aggies, my Financial Accounting Professor (also Dean Emeritus of the Mays Business School and CFO of TAMU), was a strong candidate for President of VPI&SU when Dr. Sands took the job. I personally believe he would have been a better President, and left VT in an even stronger position. Dr. Strawser was born in Md, but his father taught accounting at UVA and VT, so he spent considerable time in both Hooville and the Burg.
Culturally, he was a fit, too. He cares immensely about his students, staff, and the larger university community.
We often chatted about how VT and TAMU are very much sister schools. He also values extracurriculars, and particularly college football.
For example: We broke down the financial and economic benefits of having a strong FBS program. We also dissected why Jimbo Fisher needed to go, purely from an over compensation and financial perspective. I do not believe Dr. Strawser would have tolerated VT Football languishing, the way Dr. Sands did.
I personally saw more of Ut Prosim and Invent the Future mentality in Dr. Strawser, than Sands.
https://mays.tamu.edu/directory/jerry-r-strawser/