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What's Happening As The University of California Tries To Outsource IT Jobs To India (pressreader.com)
Long-time Slashdot reader Nova Express shares an epic column by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael Hiltzik. It details what's happening now as the University of California tries to outsources dozens of IT jobs -- about 20% of their IT workforce -- by February 28th. Some of the highlights:
- The CEO of UCSF's Medical Center says he expects their security to be at least as good as it is now, but acknowledges "there are no guarantees."
- Nine workers have filed a complaint with the state's Department of Fair Employment and Housing arguing they're facing discrimination.
- California Senator Feinstein is already complaining that the university is tapping $8.5 billion in federal funding "to replace Californian IT workers with foreign workers or labor performed abroad."
- Representative Zoe Lofgren (from a district in Silicon Valley) is arguing that the university "is training software engineers at the same time they're outsourcing their own software engineers. What message are they sending their own students?"
- 57-year-old sys-admin Kurt Ho says his replacement spent just two days with him, then "told me he would go back to India and train his team, and would be sending me emails with questions."
- The university's actions will ultimately lower their annual $5.83 billion budget by just 0.1%.
Until you realize that 0.1% on $5.83 billion is $58.3 million. That's not chump change.
0.1% of $5.83 Billion is actually $5.83 Million. Closer to chump change in a nearly-$6 Billion budget.
Professor here. Universities also create those internal empires for business reasons: there surely is a lot of ideology in universities, but never underestimate the almighty dollar's ability to trump ideology. The biggest internal empires, and not coincidentally some of the biggest money-makers, are the housing and food domains. These are areas that most governments tend not to tread, but universities often require students to buy food and shelter from them for at least one year: the university, like a totalitarian state, creeps into every aspect of a student's life. The revenue from housing and food (both are now often outsourced to private dorm and catering companies) supposedly pays into the university's general funds. They also provide employment to students (RAs, cashiers, etc), as do many of the other internal empires (secretary in the office of multicultural baskwetweaving, etc), which satisfies a requirement that students work in order to receive tuition reduction. Hospitals are another major internal empire for big schools, and they are ginormous money-makers whose budget offices have, between the cushions of their waiting room couches, multiples of the funds available to the academic wing of the university. Finally, you have empires that exist to employ former students who got their PhDs and never got real jobs in academia or outside: here you have the Diversity Officers and Campus Liaison Officers and other vague titles that cover up how worthless some degrees are, because a bunch of unemployed basketweavers would look bad and reduce applications, which might hurt revenue. Law schools are getting famous for this - it's hard to make it in the world with a law degree nowadays, so some schools are hiring their graduates to avoid having to admit how few of them get real jobs. In the end, somewhere in all that, there are a few professors still, although mostly replaced by non-tenured, lower-paid adjuncts who make less money than an elementary school teacher despite being far more qualified and often teaching more students. The most obvious cost-cutting measure in place is the elimination of actual professorships by attrition - a retiring professor will be replaced by an adjunct with no hope of ever achieving the same pay rate. It's all about the money.