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The bad tempered ranting thread

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    The bad tempered ranting thread

    Not sure where else to put this so have created a thread where anyone can rail against the injustices of the world.

    My daughter starts university today (yeah I know it's early but it is what it is). After much toing and froing she chose to apply to go to the technical university in Budapest. (This one in case you're interested https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buda...cs?wprov=sfla1).

    She got accepted a couple of months ago and proceeded to fill in the application for a place in the student dorms/halls of residence). Last Wednesday we got the news that she didn't get a place. Now just to be clear here : (1) She heard that she hadn't got a place 5 days before term started; (2) She's a foreign student for fucks sake (yes she speaks the language, but she's a long way from home moving to a big city in a foreign country) ; (3)they initially lied to us when giving their reasons for not giving her a place - saying she hadn't applied in time, which wasn't true and which they retracted when we called to dispute this; and (4) what the fucking fuck?

    We have managed to come up with a solution at least for the short term (she'll stay with a high school classmate of my wife's who has the room, is a single mother and is grateful for the cash). But she's not going to have the community / social connections that she really needs to settle in and find herself. Plus I'm fucking steaming. Personally my inclination is to withdraw, take a gap year and firebomb the rector's office. Luckily not everyone in my family shares my sense of outraged indignation and anger (because people in Eastern Europe don't ever complain in case it makes things worse or you end up on the radar of the secret police. Old habits die hard.)

    Anyway, just wanted to get that off my chest. Cunts. (I am not even there to help. I'll fly to Budapest tomorrow and then will tussle with my other half as to whether I should march into the office for student services (if there is one, perhaps this is the issue) and launch an angry official complaint. She'll try and persuade me not to.

    #2
    I've nothing to offer but the utmost praise for the idea of thread, and useless sympathy.

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      #3
      Yes, that's all a bit shit. A similar thing happened to me when I was accepted (late) to Uni. All the residence rooms were allocated, and the off-campus flats were well-picked over. I ended up in a rooming house, which was divey...but ultimately fine. Good luck to Ms Hoc.

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        #4
        Bastards. Sorry to hear that, ad hoc. Hope your daughter settles in well despite the setback.

        University administration seems to be patchy the world over. When I was a civil servant back in the late 1980s before I left to become a lawyer, I did a stint as private secretary to the junior minister for higher education. The postbag of letters from MPs for him to reply to included quite a lot where the MPs were writing on behalf of constituents whose prospects had been messed up by admin errors of Uni admission departments (and where the official follow-up had established that the complaints were well-founded).

        Comment


          #5
          Originally posted by Evariste Euler Gauss View Post
          Bastards. Sorry to hear that, ad hoc. Hope your daughter settles in well despite the setback.

          University administration seems to be patchy the world over.
          Tell me about it. Almost every semester they fail to deal with my contract in time, which means everything from pay to benefits to my parking pass is delayed. But I've only been teaching there for twenty-two years, so I guess it's understandable.

          OTOH, back when I was a student, another university sent me the official transcript of someone with the same name as me. I could presumably have parlayed it into a career in something I knew absolutely nothing about.

          And yes my sympathies to Ms Hoc. Fortunately these things do usually get sorted out eventually.

          Comment


            #6
            Thanks for the catharsis idea, ad hoc.

            My rant. BMWs seem to be the car of choice of UTTER WANKERS!

            This is mainly because a dickhead in a red convertible BMW was bombing along a city centre road and swerved in front of me as I approached a traffic light. Which was red. So he had to stop in front of me. I wound down my window and shouted "Idiot!" at him.

            The lights changed. He shot off in the premature ejaculatory way you'd expect of any man who actually bought a red convertible BMW. Then had to stop at the next red light a few hundred yards away. Because we're in a fucking city centre not on a Nazi-built Bavarian autobahn you compelling argument for retrospective abortion!

            Meanwhile I parked up and the dillweed is still sitting at the red light. Mrs Thistle persuaded me not to go and punch him hard. In her words, "If he's the kind of person to drive a car like that you don't know how stupid he might be..."

            She has a point, but it left me fucking raging.

            Comment


              #7
              The trying-to-cover-their-asses by lying would be the bit that would bother me the most. If they just copped to it and offered some kind of solution or rebate, I wouldn't be so upset.

              If she'd like to go to a transfer to a very large but fairly well-regarded American research university in the middle of nowhere, I can put her up for a few months.



              Students here always whine about this or that administrative snafu, not only because they're entitled little snots or because the cost of education has created a toxic consumerist attitude toward education, but because things like that do seem to break down a lot.

              But they'd probably be no better off anywhere else because it's the same everywhere, apparently - from big universities down to small colleges. Keeping track of all that information for students plus faculty and staff is just a very difficult task, apparently. And the economic incentives for all the people who run the computers and administrative functions appear to favor overpromising and underdelivering. Lots of people in admin jobs have to justify those jobs by continually trying to improve systems, efficiencies and what not, but nobody is going to pick one university over another - especially after they've already enrolled in or been hired by one - just because one has a more efficient parking pass allocation system, or whatever. So they are incentivized to tinker with stuff and come up with new acronyms and ask for the moon in contracts with outside developers, but maybe there's not so much money, or concern, available to ensure that the big plan is executed smoothly or that the end users are really satisfied.

              The trend seems to be that as soon as everyone is familiar with a system and it's working reasonably ok - albeit a bit slow - the university will pay a lot of money - though maybe not enough - for a brand new system. It often isn't really ready to work on the first day of the semester and the wailing and gnashing of teeth begins.* Then, if, by luck, it doesn't crash a lot in the first few months - which it often does - it still creates headaches for users. Eventually, it will all be sorted out just in time for them to do it all over again.

              *In my line of work, it seems that there's a lot of attention on fixing the problems that the engineers care about, but not so much attention or money spent on fixing the issues the users care about. Sometimes, they're the same issues, but often not. I suspect that same problem afflicts large data and payment systems used by universities. However, computer people I've encountered largely deny this charge and claim the problems are from contracts that ask too much and change specs midstream, etc. That may also be true.
              Last edited by Hot Pepsi; 27-08-2018, 22:20.

              Comment


                #8
                There's no doubt that the finest minds in IT tend not to work in colleges and universities.

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                  #9
                  Word.

                  ad hoc, I will happily buy the petrol for your incendiary device and provide an alibi that can be confirmed by friends in Bucharest.

                  PT, at least among the "coastal elites" here, the role formerly filled by BMW drivers has been taken over by Tesla drivers.

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                    #10
                    Of the three places I teach as an adjunct, the private one is actually much worse than the two public ones. Absolutely no fucking clue about contracts, syllabi, etc, all done on the fly after I've already taught a couple of lessons. If we refused to work without a contract they would have to delay the start of term a week.

                    Another example: they have chosen to start Fall term on September 3: Labor Day. Nobody had the brains to delay it until Tuesday because they have fixed term lengths and have to finish on Saturdays. The public universities, by contrast, have started every day of the week from Mon-Thurs without a problem.

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Originally posted by Satchmo Distel View Post
                      Of the three places I teach as an adjunct, the private one is actually much worse than the two public ones.
                      That's my experience too. I concluded it was because making money was the primary raison d'etre of the school, so admin were basically concerned with maximising income streams (otherwise known as 'courses".) The students were only a means to that end (ie: they supplied cash flow via loans), and faculty were necessary because it couldn't really be called a school without them, but their ability and commitment varied enormously and no one, aside from some students really cared.

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Originally posted by Amor de Cosmos View Post
                        There's no doubt that the finest minds in IT tend not to work in colleges and universities.
                        But very frequently - most of the time, perhaps - these big projects are tackled by outside vendors, rather than people employed by the institution. I suppose a lot of the problems arise in that interface. A friend of mine used to work for Blackboard and her job was, essentially, to talk to the engineers so the goddamned customers don’t have to. (Thanks to Mike Judge and Office Space for that). But it’s a vital role.

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                          #13
                          Sure. Most college IT is support, but the small part that isn't tends not to be on the cutting edge of what's happening elsewhere. In microcosm they tend to be in the same position as the Canadian Government with the Phoenix payment system. Public institutions often don't seem to be able to keep abreast of their real technology needs, nor do they understand how to implement and maintain them.

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                            #14
                            I have a friend in university IT who says the same thing. So clearly there people there that can see that they’re not on the cutting edge and want to change it. But change - any change - at a university is always slow - too many committees, too many egos to appease, too many petty turf-wars, inertia, tradition, etc. Nobody, even the president, has the power to just push stuff through like a CEO.

                            And, I suppose, the IT people who really can’t stand that slow pace quit and join a start-up or whatever, and that means the people who remain are a bit more resigned to it. But, of course, working for a university has a lot of advantages over the private sector, so it’s not just laziness that keeps them there.

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                              #15
                              Originally posted by Amor de Cosmos View Post
                              There's no doubt that the finest minds in IT tend not to work in colleges and universities.

                              Boy, did I ever pick the wrong thread to read when at this new gig.

                              Comment


                                #16
                                Nothing to add here except sorry to hear people are being such knobheads. Again.

                                Comment


                                  #17
                                  In the defence of IT people in public sector institutions - they're dealing with public institutions where until someone can promise seamless integration of the new system, or considerate understanding of the difficulty of ever achieving that from their publics, then there's just no incentive. Doing the big roll out means fighting an argument that the institution needs to spend money on something, and where if you win the argument, you'll likely be called incompetant, idiot, leads to people wanting to outsource you, not lead to new-found respect of higher salaries.

                                  It's amazed they got away from DOS, frankly. That in itself was interesting - the Microsoft publicity blitz felt like it created an expectation at the University I was at at the time that systems should be upgraded from Windows 3.1, but most software upgrades aren't so demanded by their user base.

                                  Comment


                                    #18
                                    The phrase "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" has no currency among IT or administrators the world over, it seems.

                                    I hope Ms. Hoc gets it sorted. Just what is needed when starting something new.

                                    Comment


                                      #19
                                      Woohoo! I've been in Budapest about 3 hours* and she just got an email saying that they have considered her appeal and she has a place that she can move into at the weekend! Best news I can remember receiving.

                                      (*coincidence? You decide)

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                                        #20
                                        Good news. Though I have to ask. Did you mention that you were in town and had a special set of skills or something?

                                        Comment


                                          #21
                                          Our conversations are privileged, Snake.

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