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How Will the Next 4 Years Change CRM? - Ep 302
280 Plays14 days ago
As the old adage goes, the one constant in life is change. How we react and prepare for change can make the difference in how it impacts our life -negatively or positively. This is part 1 of a 2 part series on how the next US presidential administration may affect the future of archaeology. Part 1 focuses on the academic side of our discipline; part 2 on CRM. Change is inevitable but growth is optional. How will you react?
Transcripts
- For rough transcripts of this episode go to https://www.archpodnet.com/crmarchpodcast/302
Blogs and Resources:
- Bill White: Succinct Research
- Doug Rocks-MacQueen: Doug’s Archaeology
- Chris Webster: DIGTECH LLC
- Andrew Kinkella
Kinkella Teaches Archaeology (Youtube)
Blog: Kinkella Teaches Archaeology
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Transcript
Introduction and Episode Overview
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. This is the Serum Archaeology Podcast. It's the show where we pull back the veil of cultural resources management archaeology and discuss the issues that everyone is concerned about. Welcome to the podcast.
00:00:22
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the CRM archaeology podcast, episode 302 for November 27th, 2024. I'm your host, Heather McDaniel McDevitt. And today joining me is Bill in Northern California. Good morning. Andrew in Southern California. Hey, guys, how's it going?
00:00:42
Speaker
And Doug in Scotland is going to join us for the second segment.
Future of Archaeology: Next Four Years
00:00:48
Speaker
Today, we are going to be talking about what we can expect from the discipline or in the discipline for the next four years. I wonder why we're talking about that. So we have two, and so we're going to actually do this in two different podcasts. The first one, because we started talking about this the hosts were like, there is so much information here. We really want to do it justice. We're seeing a lot of talk on social media and the intent of these, both of these podcasts is to really just lay down the facts. Not, we're not here to do, the sky is falling and you know, there's, we're really going to just look at the facts here. What are the realities um based on
00:01:37
Speaker
what really are the parameters of what can happen here, not just what we think might happen in the worst case scenario, but really what can happen from a regulatory and a law perspective. And then also, what did we see before? What have we seen just over the decades that have happened as there's been transitions in administration, both from the federal side, which we'll really be focusing on, but also on the state level.
Education in Archaeology: Challenges and Opportunities
00:02:04
Speaker
so Today we're going to focus on the educational side of things. so And so I'm going to, you know, this is not my wheelhouse. So a lot of this is going to be discussed by those that are in academia, our hosts, Bill and Andrew, and then when Doug comes in, Doug. So Bill, I think if you don't mind sharing some of what you shared with us. Yeah.
00:02:27
Speaker
Yeah, no. So I've been on this podcast since it started, but when it started, I was still in cultural resources. So I did cultural resources from about 2004, 2005. I started when I was a master's student.
00:02:42
Speaker
And then I started full time after I finished my master's in 2005. And I worked in cultural resources in Washington State. The company that I worked for there, it was mostly work in the state of Washington with a couple projects in Oregon and Idaho. And then I moved to a much larger company in Tucson, Arizona, where I worked on projects in California, Nevada, Arizona, Washington State, once again. And so I was doing that all the while.
00:03:08
Speaker
The reason I moved from Seattle is because of the first economic crisis. What was it? The first recession, the Great Recession, whatever. so By that time, my company was having a lot of problems in Seattle and I took another job in Tucson. and I stayed through that but until about 2012, 2011. Then that company also started to run out of contracts and you know folks were getting laid off. so Around that time, I had This kid, my sister who was in high school, she was living with us too. And so my wife and I were like, what are we going to do when I started to get this round of layoffs? I mean, of course you get layoffs throughout your career, but usually after you've been there, you know, 10, 15 years, you have a bit more ability to job hop and you know, you're not in trouble as much. So,
00:03:53
Speaker
when this next one came around and cultural resources was drying up at my company, I had to really think like, what am I going to do? Am I going to keep staying in cultural resources or am I going to find something new around that same time as when ah the first Obama presidency
Bill's Career and Economic Influences
00:04:10
Speaker
started up? so There was a lot of different things that he did that got these shovel-ready projects going and I was in Arizona and we had contracts in California and so both California and Arizona, they had different kinds of solar plants going up, different kinds of transmission lines and other stuff that were getting put in for these new sustainable energy plans and that was really what kept me going in Cultural Resources, all these different infrastructure projects.
00:04:34
Speaker
But the bad thing was I was constantly out in the desert. I was constantly out in Nevada and other places. but So it was rough on my family. And with the young family and kind of precarity at work, I decided to apply for a PhD. And so I started my PhD in 2014, which is during the second Obama presidency.
00:04:53
Speaker
And at that time I was a graduate student, I was a graduate student instructor, but I worked for the Bureau of Applied Research and and Anthropology.
Native Communities and Archaeology
00:05:01
Speaker
So our job there at Barra was to, you know, really help communities ah engage with the past in a way through these different like regulatory contexts. So what I did there was to help ah tribes learn how to do cultural resources, archaeology, to help pretty much do field school kind of stuff with native folks.
00:05:22
Speaker
but also do it in such a way that like the National Park Service could stay in compliance with regulatory contexts. So, my job was to really just kind of do CRM, but the reality was to help native people insert their own, you know, understanding and interpretation of the past in this rubric of like regulatory context constructs.
00:05:48
Speaker
So that's what really kept me going through my PhD program. And then in 2017, I got a job at my current employer, UC Berkeley. And at that time, you know, I'm switching over to be an assistant professor. And that's when we had another change in the presidency's rights. So that was the first Trump presidency.
00:06:06
Speaker
But, you know, I had been out of true contract, you know, contract by contract cultural resources for about four years. And I started up as an assistant professor with the idea of that I would just do the same thing that I'd done for Barra, just start doing different projects, but help communities insert their own, you know, understandings in their own perspectives in these regulatory kind ah documents that but government organizations need to use to manage resources.
00:06:37
Speaker
But, ah you know, being in the university and me not being the student, not, you know, just the beneficiary of the contracts. Now, I'm the one trying to get the contracts and looking at the financial situation. It really showed me a lot of, you know, interesting things that I i probably should have picked up on when I was a PhD student, but I really had my head down and I was focused on my degree. And I wasn't thinking about how the University of Arizona was managing itself. And, you know, even as a professor here, I don't fully know what the University of California system or UC Berkeley, like how they're managing their money or what their ah financial goals are or what their fiduciary obligations are.
University Funding Challenges
00:07:16
Speaker
I'm just a professor. But I did see some stuff in those time periods right that I saw you know a little bit of a change. right so
00:07:25
Speaker
Remember the first time that I when I was a PhD student, I was going to school during the Obama presidency. And so while they were opening up more job, more contracts for infrastructure and other things for CRM companies, I was in the state of Arizona, which I mean, I don't know if you've ever looked at the news, you have a pretty good idea of the, you know, government situation in Arizona. So you know, the governor at the time didn't super care about and higher ed, also was kind of reluctant to take any kind of money from Washington DC because he was protesting the existence of Obama and the fact that there is any funding. So, you know, that was not easy. And the University of Arizona system was
00:08:14
Speaker
because they're not really getting supported by the government, they really had to change their course. And so while I was a PhD student, I watched Arizona State, you know, just expand huge online, just try to get tons and tons and tons of more people to pay tuition and to go to the college to Arizona State.
00:08:34
Speaker
And at the University of Arizona, there was a combination of things. They didn't really go 100% online, but there was a bunch of reorganizations where smaller departments got put together into kind of like lump. I don't know if they're really departments, but just like confederations of departments so that they could save on admin staff, right? So they could get rid of all the front office people in four different departments by lumping them together into one, and then just kind of give all those people who were the front office more tasks.
00:09:04
Speaker
that were part of those organizations, right? And so, there was a lot of pressure on the departments to find new sources of revenue, right? Arizona State solved it by just trying to get anyone who could fill out a FAFSA and literally canvassing Southern California and telling folks that they're a cheaper alternative to any of the UC schools.
00:09:27
Speaker
and they just they that That was how they were handling their stuff. They made contracts with Starbucks to help individuals finish their degrees. and you know the thing that like you know it's It's higher ed, right? so Folks are trying to get degrees because they want to improve their life, they want to improve their situation, and they want to learn. you know People go to college because they want to learn.
00:09:45
Speaker
and so universities know that and they know they're the only one that sells college degrees and you know they try to get individuals to pay the tuition to get these degrees, right? And the deal is kind of like you pay for school, you get an education that's going to help you and it improve your life, right?
00:10:03
Speaker
but So there's nothing wrong with that. Folks who have not finished their degree, it is awesome that they can then finish them online because a lot of like the hugest thing of people who leave school temporarily or whatever else, it's not that they're really dropping out. It's that life happens and it's difficult to finish college. And so by providing these systems from the finish online, Arizona State, they tapped a huge resource of individuals to get tuition.
00:10:28
Speaker
Well, the University of Arizona, they didn't necessarily do the same thing. Of course, they were definitely marketing themselves and building you know ah improvements to the football stadium and doing well in baseball and a whole bunch of other sports. All of that stuff brings prestige to the university. It makes students want to go there. but They were also expanding housing throughout through these different kinds of like public incentives to get corporations to build student housing. I mean, its it was is still a growth oriented business but on the same side, they're trying to cut back on the budget and that means that anthropology and archaeology needs to show what they're worth. Now, the Bureau of Applied Research and Anthropology at Arizona was bringing in
Adapting Anthropology Departments to Funding Changes
00:11:06
Speaker
contracts. It was, you know, working with the Department of Defense and with National Park Service and Native people and doing the work
00:11:15
Speaker
And so, those contracts just more and more became like a central funding source for the staff in that department until you know after I left, it got to the point where you know the borrower was basically covering you know most of the front staff's benefits and salaries and everything. And the university had was like you know, taking away the borrow money to feed other departments, right? Trying to take the overhead from them so that they can keep other departments that don't have the ability to go and get outside grants, keep them alive and not make it sound like it's just purely the archaeology group. It wasn't. There were other medical anthropologists who were getting contracts with the National Institutes of Health. There were other people who were getting other contracts in classics and other stuff to continue their research as with every other university. It's just
00:12:03
Speaker
there was an incentive that if you weren't getting that money and if you weren't keeping the department alive, like it wasn't going to keep going, right? So, there was a lot of motivation for professors and scholars and stuff to go and get contracts. There was a lot of motivation to get scholarships. I mean, there was a lot of pressure to do that kind of stuff and they had a weekly newsletter that pretty much advertised every grant that everyone got. And we were taught that, you're you know, if you're not writing for school, you're not writing for your dissertation, you need to be hustling to get money. And that was the number one thing, like you needed to show that you could fund yourself because the university wasn't going to do that. Now, remember, that stuff was all happening during the Obama presidency. That was not happening during Trump. That was already going on, the cuts to anthropology and stuff. That was already a thing.
00:12:49
Speaker
I have a quick question for you Bill. but Just so that we can understand, because the whole thing here is also, I mean this awesome background, is to also really understand where, with respect to this financial financial aspect, where's the funding coming from? So my understanding, and what is the difference between federal and state funding? So federal funding is from, you know, grants for, as far as actually, you know, paying for the tuition, right?
00:13:19
Speaker
yeah then you know they do fund research projects, but a lot of that also comes from outside private entities where like a state, a CSU, if we're just talking about California, but a state university, their funding's a little bit different and it's smaller amounts, which is why maybe we see more cm kind of ah CRM programs coming out of state institutions. yeah Does that make, is that
Funding Opportunities for Graduate Students
00:13:45
Speaker
true? Yeah. Well, so, you know, like I said, I'm only talking about like I went to an R1 school for my PhD and now I work at one, right? So I don't know how the state funding situation is for graduate students, but I know that, you know, so
00:14:01
Speaker
When I was a student at Arizona, every student, they're getting their funding from a mixture of sources. It's not like the university is like, voila, there you go. Here's all of your tuition and all your fees and everything else. That's not really how it works. At Arizona, my funding was a combination of different fellowships and scholarships and other stuff that had been set aside by the university for specific purposes, right?
00:14:24
Speaker
so I was getting, you know, certain kinds of fellowships that were set aside for like, you know, students who are in their dissertation writing phase, right? Or students who already have a master's but need money to get their grants and, and you know, that money would come in a form of like tuition waiver or to cover my benefits, right? Because a student, a graduate student's what they take home is only a small fraction of the total amount that it costs to pay that student, right? So that's another thing. Just like in CRM, a graduate student's salary also includes all the other overhead, like all the other stuff that covers the university and everything, everything that you would have to deal with in a CRM. All their benefits, their insurance, the coverage for their
00:15:16
Speaker
but employment, right? So they're paying all those wages to the university. The university is paying out on taxes because you're an employee that works there. But also your tuition and fees, right? So your tuition is the cost that it is to be a PhD student at that institution. And then the fees are all the other overhead that they've you know decided to vote to have to keep like the rec center and to have athletics and also to have you know, insurance and a whole bunch of other things too, right? So if you look at your fees, there's tiny $1, $3 amounts and $5 and $6 amounts that all add up to hundreds of dollars a semester. And then the same thing with your tuition, rolled in your tuition is a calculation of the cost of paying your professors.
00:16:01
Speaker
funding the entire institution, once again, more for the infrastructure. And then, you know, another huge thing with a lot of the R1s is paying off the interest and the debt on the bonds that they've issued to build the university even bigger, right? Because folks a lot of times don't think about how the university is actually, in fact, funded. The state and the government do not pay, like, even half of what it costs for each student, like, or each university. So, student tuition can it depends on the institution, the smaller the institution, the more of the revenue the the the tuition is, but student tuition is a chunk of it. The state pays a chunk overhead on grants like I was talking about from the National and Institutes of Health and the National Park Service. That overhead is also a chunk that comes. They get a certain amount of revenue from the patents and other things that professors invent.
00:16:53
Speaker
So, there's incentives as far as that. And then there's also endowment funds. There's money that's been invested for a lot of different specific purposes so they can, folks can donate money just for archaeology or just for AI and those millions and billions or whatever will be just for that. But then there's also like general endowment fund donations too that'll go to scholarships and you know, everything that you see at the university. so When you go to a building and it says, you know, this expansion was by the Doris and John so-and-so foundation, that is millions of dollars that was donated just specifically for that lab to expand that thing. And, you know, the university took a cut off for admin fees. They might have put some in for their investments or to pay back interest on their investments. They might have taken a cut for just more marketing to get more and more money. And then some of that money might have gone to the actual construction cost to build that thing, right?
00:17:46
Speaker
So the funding situation is like absolutely dynamic and it's put together in a lot of different ways. Everyone's salary is put together in a range of different ways at a university. but In the case of cultural resources, a lot of times CRM companies don't have outside investments and property and revenue
Complexities of University Funding
00:18:05
Speaker
and inventions and other stuff that are all going into the salary of the individuals who work there.
00:18:10
Speaker
but loud Yeah, I know, not always, right? But at a university, we're talking about billions of dollars like this in R1, like Arizona or Cal, you know? Yeah, that is a huge component. And so you can see, did any fluctuation in any of those, like a cut in government funding, where are you going to come up with the money, right?
00:18:29
Speaker
any kind of lack or slack in your research ah ranking and stuff like that. Where's that gonna come from? What's gonna happen when students don't come? So there's a lot of motivation to do all these different things and not everyone's gonna do it well but the R1s, you know, they're the one that most states like that's where they're putting the dough. That's the hood ornament for the state.
00:18:49
Speaker
and so that's kind of like demystifying the funny. I guess I should do an entire show that breaks down the where my salary comes from, right? Like people look online, it's publicly available, you can see how much money I make but it just shows you the dollar amount. It doesn't tell you exactly where the dough like how much comes from the university, how much comes from my own department, my own department's endowments, the university's endowments, how much of it comes from my outside contracts in and, you know, other things there. Like, yeah, I should should really talk about like, how how do I get my paycheck someday?
00:19:24
Speaker
Thanks, Bill. That's really a good, at least overview precursor. We're going to um end this segment, go into segment 2, where we'll talk a little bit more maybe from the community college side of things, some some of Doug's experiences, and then move into some actionable, like really, how is this going to affect us overall in the university system? We'll be right back.
00:19:48
Speaker
Welcome back to CRM archaeology podcast episode 302. This is segment two. We're talking about um what to expect for the next four years in our discipline with a specific focus on the educational side of archaeology.
00:20:04
Speaker
So we've talked quite a bit about the university system. And now we're going to talk, but I should say, it's still a university system, but more from our one school perspective. And now Andrew is going to give us some perspective as far as um maybe funding and other aspects from the community college side. Sure. Yeah, coming from ah an R57,000 school, as I believe, right about where I am.
00:20:30
Speaker
So you know listening to bill i thought it was this happened so often when i listen to bill talk about you know so his past and his experiences that you know at berkeley and before
Andrew's Academic Journey and Adaptability
00:20:43
Speaker
it's like i have the same experiences but in this case it's like eight years earlier so what i will say is.
00:20:50
Speaker
Yes, the sky is not falling. Stop freaking out. Right. Just just take one day at a time yeah and then go from there because I ah started in academia in the fall of 2004. I think before I've talked but about it in here somewhere where I had a lot of CRM jobs and I literally put my steel toed boots away.
00:21:13
Speaker
somewhere in mid August. And then then after a weekend that Monday, I was in like an office like prepping my stuff to be a college professor. So that happened in 2004. Right. And the reason why I bring that up.
00:21:26
Speaker
is that's during the George W. Bush years. So we are, you know, kind of one administration before what we were talking about before. And I remember that maybe a year after that, year and a half, there was like a funding crisis. And so all the new professors were all of a sudden like, oh, my God, are we going to get fired? And we you know we were really freaking out.
00:21:49
Speaker
And after that, too, if you look at the again, the years, 2008 is not far away from 2004. And I remember the housing crisis. And in terms of community college, we're funded more at the state level. Right. And I get paid at the community, at the sort of the district level, which is kind of a county level thing. Right. So I'm much more state focused.
00:22:12
Speaker
But if you're in California and then all of a sudden there's a housing crash, right, there's like no tax money and we were able to sail through that and there weren't massive, massive layoffs or something. I'm not saying there weren't one or two on the edges because there were, but it behooves yourself no matter what's happening.
00:22:35
Speaker
in in terms of the funding, the outlook, the future. What matters is that you are open minded and kind of go with the times. You know, just just be thoughtful. Be on it. See what's happening. See what the chess game is. Right. What would be smart for you to focus on for yourself? What will be smart for you career wise? Right.
00:22:59
Speaker
Just when there's a change from Democrat to Republican or whatever, it's just a new change of variables. Right. And you just want to go with that. I've seen lots of people work really well with those kind of things. Again, think for yourself. What will help you out? If you're a grad student, they even think worst case, you know, OK, worst case. Where can I work? What can I still do? What will close? What will still be open?
00:23:27
Speaker
Where can you connect is this lab gonna be around is this department gonna be around you know even if your department gets swallowed up by another department maybe you're still okay right it so i i don't want people to. Overly freaked out and i know everyone online you know looks and you see all these people going i'm just gonna leave the country.
00:23:49
Speaker
Yeah, like the proud American you are. Nice. You know, you're not going to leave the country. Why don't you stay and fight? Why don't you stay and make things better? That might be good. And again, what country are you going to go to? Come on. There's a reason why the border goes one way. And I would just I would just end with I was watching. I can't even remember why I saw this, but Doris Kearns Goodwin was being interviewed. And for those of you who don't know who she is, Doris Kearns Goodwin is a famous historian.
00:24:19
Speaker
And she has written like biographies on presidents and this kind of thing. And she was very. Uh, she had this sort of overall like positive outlook. I'm not, I'm not here to say she was happy with the current election or anything like that, but she was, she will, she just kept saying, look, you got to kind of fight, look for the positive, move along, you know, and, and do what's right. Like that's, that's where I'm coming from, from all this, right? why and That's my two cents.
00:24:49
Speaker
I got a small monkey wrench to throw into that, right? Like fine, but you know, don't run yourself into the ground.
Living Abroad: Experiences and Perspectives
00:24:54
Speaker
Cause some people already been fighting for years and years and years. Like you can hit the wall as I already have to. Oh sure. Countries like Spain. If you can afford it, go to Spain. and Okay. I know with better food and you know, it's nice. I like the place is beautiful and the people are laid back. So but you know what? I'm at the refuge to go there.
00:25:18
Speaker
I'm at the point with all that crap where I'm like, go, just go. All right. Because because look you're talking to somebody who's spent, if you add it all up, over two years of my adult life living in another country, right? Living in Belize. I know what it's like to live away from America for a very long time. And yeah I'm real happy when I come back to America. Right. Well, I wasn't doing a lot of Spain. That place ruled.
00:25:44
Speaker
It's great, too. I love it there. What are you going to do for a job long term? What do you do? Like, how are you doing? I mean, we're talking about millions of years. So, yeah, if I can find a way to do it. Are you serious? What? Wait, you're going to make millions?
00:26:01
Speaker
No, I'm saying you can do archaeology on sites that are, you know, hundreds of thousands pushing a million years old in Spain. Like, yeah. Well, yeah, I know. I don't know. but I'm just saying like if you if you want if you want to talk about like where to take a refuge, you know, where you're going to bail out. um I think that that would be a rad country because I've been there and I had a blast and I would totally retire there, live there, move my kids there. Spain. That's a pie in the sky. What are you doing for money?
00:26:29
Speaker
How are you supporting yourself? You never ask that. You ask like, where are we going to take a time out and hide from the administration, right?
00:26:38
Speaker
Hey guys, what i'm gonna guess I'm going to reel it back in for a second. so i think I think that you know the the one thing, if you look at this, it's the old adage of when you're investing money, right?
00:26:53
Speaker
Everybody says, you don't want to be reactionary. You don't want to be you know pulling everything out um out of a reaction to a downturn in the economy, right? You got to kind of just play it out long-term. And you people really should look at their vocation in the same way. There are going to be ups and downs. And I think that we have a responsibility as people that are a little more mature.
00:27:19
Speaker
I've been around a little bit longer to say, listen, you know yes, things are different. with it With every situation, they're going to be different. There are going to be changes. And you can't be so reactionary that, number one, it's going to give you stress and your you're going to hurt yourself or you're going to be did you know i don't depressed or or whatever your reaction is. But in general, just you know go with my thought is,
00:27:45
Speaker
you're really gonna hurt your discipline or you're gonna hurt your career if you're being reactionary. Just stay the course. Over time, over time, things will work themselves out. They go, there's ups and downs. And sometimes when you think there's gonna be a down, it's an up. And sometimes when you think it's gonna be an up, it's a down. like And as you live your life and you go through your career, you'll start realizing that things, for the most part,
00:28:13
Speaker
remain kind of even. They remain even. Why? Because we do live in a country that does have a lot of checks and balances that keep it that way. So that would just be my say. I know that Doug has something that he wanted to... Yeah. Well, i' ah I'm going to do some like side comments first. Andrew,
00:28:34
Speaker
Two years in another country, man. Two years as a long time, man. Well, it is compared to a decade and a half, man. On the Doug scale, it's not. Of course not. But doug Doug has made a life choice. That's different. I think in some ways, Doug is a great example and a terrible example in terms of his voices. That's what we did. We did talk to him about getting that merch on the ah There's a good example, a terrible example at the same time. Yes, you are. No, in terms of if I'm like 22 and I'm like, screw this country, I'm leaving. Look, Doug did it, you know, but you didn't do I'm guessing you didn't do it because of politics or because you went and visited a certain area of the country for two weeks. And you yeah and were like, this is a country of, sorry, certain another country for two weeks. And you think, oh, this is bliss, right?
00:29:31
Speaker
you know every Every country has this issue, so yeah yeah. I think that's what you were saying. I mean, two years is a significant amount of time to really understand how things work in and out. I mean, we talk about an anthropology, right? If you're gonna study a culture, you're gonna study at least for a year, right? So that you have a full understanding of a calendar year of that country. So I think it's fair to say that two years is a good amount of time to understand the differences between at least that country and countries like this. This is a throwaway joke. This is not like a serious thing. I was just, I just wanted to do it. Andrew was like, I spent two years. I was like, man. And he said like a long time. It's like, I fully support Andrew's comments there. This was just a little side joke there. I'm totally on board. None of us have us into human being.
00:30:23
Speaker
Don't want to hurt me. It hurt to the core. I'm leaving this podcast and I am leaving. No, actually, I'm staying in this country because you're in a different country. So that's my statement. My statement is I'm staying. Yeah. Deal with all sounds. All sounds good. All sounds good. um I'm I'm chill with that. i We exactly what Andrews over here. Now I've changed my mind. Now I'm coming. I mean, so yeah.
00:30:53
Speaker
ah My other throwaway joke one was just also to say, like man, like like built the food's great in Spain. I was like, like man, if you'd said like Italy, yes. Mexico. I haven't been there yet. But like I put like Spain on a yeah And then also like Spain, you get so disappointed there when you go and you like get a tortilla because like, yeah you're expecting like It ruins your entire experience when you ask for a tortilla in Spain. but for For the listeners who don't know.
00:31:32
Speaker
It's like an egg omelet. It's a tortilla in Spain. Yeah. So sometimes it's not even cooked hard either. It's still wet. Yeah. yeah Sometimes it's a whole plate, a whole plate of wet eggs.
00:31:46
Speaker
Yeah, without seasoning either, usually. Yes, that is also true. Yeah, so if you come from like American Southwest, that cultural shock of food, it burst. You'll be able to read signs though at least if you come from the Southwest, you'll be able to speak Spanish, like that helps big time, right? I guess I gotta go to Italy, that's all that's what I'm hearing.
00:32:07
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's kind of, but like also, sorry Heather's trying to keep us on focus and we're like going off on like, Hey guys, you're at the great vacation spot. and Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
00:32:22
Speaker
but yeah i'm sorry I'll bring it back. I'll bring it back. I'll do one more throwaway comment, which is like, Oh man. Like you're going from like essentially. So New Mexican Spanish is basically Mexican Spanish to like,
00:32:37
Speaker
Spain. Well, it depends because there's like six different types of Spanish in like Spain, but like the general one. Oh man, it's so hard to like follow along like that. They're like The pronunciation is just, it's all wrong. and It's all wrong. i habit it man That's how it's supposed to be pronounced. I know they have the official like King's Institute that decides what it should be. But, you know, when coming from the colonies back over, it's, it's rough, man. It's wrong. I really am curious what your perspective is on this. Yeah, me too. i higher e Yeah, Yeah, higher ed and any perspective having been
00:33:19
Speaker
you know, in the higher ed environment in another country too.
Trump Administration's Impact on Archaeology
00:33:25
Speaker
Yeah. So like, i I will bring that in as well. I think there's two things I i agree most of what a lot most pretty much everything you guys have said at the moment, what I would add into there is like, yeah, guys, we all lived through like the first Trump administration. It was an absolute shit show.
00:33:48
Speaker
And like, yeah the second one's going to be an absolute shit show as well. Yeah, I can't imagine it being any better. Yeah, and like, so trying to... trying to guess what's going to happen is like, I don't know, being like a pouncing guard under Nero. Like, man, is he going to ask you for a horse? Is he going to ask you for a sister? Oh, no, it's a goat today. And a manti. And you're like, wait, is it mantis? Like, aren't they only found in Florida? Don't think about it too much. Like, that's just like how it's going to be.
00:34:19
Speaker
And so doug I'm curious i'm curious in terms of but how really from an archaeological perspective, because we could go on and on and on about lots of different aspects of of ah of the different administration, the new administration coming in. What specifically is going to be, as you said, a shit show with respect to archaeology? Well, so that's just it. Like it can go it can go completely south. Like the president has a lot like I know we're going to save that for a different episode, but in CRM, one thing he's definitely going to do is undo the nash ah the ah national monuments that were put in. He's going to shrink a bunch of them. He could basically destroy all the national monuments in the US. There are opt-outs of CRM. He could just call a national emergency and like he did with the border fence on everything and basically eliminate all of the
00:35:15
Speaker
all our environmental laws, all our cultural heritage laws. And by the time it goes to- I'll challenge you on that, but we'll wait until the next segment for that, the next broadcast. Because I really have looked into this and he's not going to have that ability to do that. Well, on paper he will, it has to go through the courts because they never challenged, they semi challenged him and dropped him on the first term because he didn't make it to a consecutive second term.
00:35:43
Speaker
so like you know It would take years to go through. In that time, most of the CRM companies would go bankrupt, you know a lot of the environmental. It would be ah it be horrendous. They could essentially cut, you know again, going back to like higher education, you know someplace like Berkeley maybe only gets like 15% of their funding from the state or something like that. you know A lot of the funding, it's a lot student driven and grants and stuff, but like they literally could basically do a decimation of federal funding. And that would absolutely hurt a lot of the universities. yeah like And when Bill was talking about overheads, what most people don't realize is like
00:36:28
Speaker
It's amazing. The minimum, I've never seen really anything under that. It's like 50% on grants is overhead easily. Sometimes it's like 60 or 70%. When they're like, oh, we got a million dollars to study paleolithic, whatever, paleoindians and this, you know, it gets announced by the university. Always assume whatever announcements going on in the US, whatever amount for any science, cut that in half, of is actually possibly going to whatever science or humanities or anything like that. Like universities, literally, it starts at basically 50%.
00:37:07
Speaker
You can maybe go 40. In the range of 40 to 60%, just goes out the door. and That's not even like talking about like salaries or anything for people who are paying things. so like you know It could be an absolute decimation. I think this goes back, sorry, this is sort of a long thing. This goes back to what you guys have been discussing about like thinking about the long-term, not being reactionary, and having sort of plans. because you can't You can't plan for this. like It could go really far south or nothing could change. you know There's a whole range there. And because it is such is going to be such a shit show, it's going to be exactly like the first administration. I mean, look, he's already nominated a rapist and a pedophile for yeah secretaries, whatever. What was it? He went through more cabinet members in one term than almost every other president in two terms.
00:38:03
Speaker
You know, like nothing has changed. He's not grown up at like 78 or you know he's not going to suddenly become presidential at 82 or something like that. we're We know what's going to happen. It could go horrendously wrong. It could be no change whatsoever affecting archaeology. And it could be anywhere in between that. And there is no way to be able to guess or estimate. It's not like, you know, other sort of political parties or, you know, things where you're like, OK, well, this party's in. Things are not going to be great for us, but not great. It's like, oh, maybe they're going to cut the budget by like 10 percent sort of thing. Like, you can't do that. And so
00:38:51
Speaker
What we really need to be thinking about long-term is actually like what do we want, not on the short term, not what's going to happen with the Trump administration, not what's going to happen with wherever the next administration is or the administration after that. It's what we need to be thinking about. like What do we want to have long-term happen both in education and in CRM? Because I mean, like CRM, our laws were 1960s, 1970s, and we haven't actually changed any, well, okay, sorry, sorry, NAGPRA, NAGPRA 2, you know, there has been some minor changes here and there, but you know, been three generations but of the same stuff. And I think you could,
00:39:36
Speaker
be hard pressed to find an archaeologist who doesn't want to do some sort of change and think there could be an improvement. But I actually haven't seen any, any legitimate plans, like no one's planning ahead. I, maybe some universal individual universities are, but I haven't seen like a roadmap of ah what's the There's a couple of larger sort of university groups in the US, but there's not like a plan of like, this is what we want to see universities be like. I mean, most universities run on a semester, almost planning cycle of like, you're planning ahead for the next semester. You're planning for this semester. You're not thinking long-term. Yeah, hey day yeah we should talk about that yeah that. That is definitely what the third segment should be about. absolutely Yeah, absolutely. So we'll be right back.
00:40:27
Speaker
Welcome back to the CRM archaeology podcast episode 3 0 2. We are. Talking about what to expect in the next 4 years with a specific. Focus on the educational system. So.
00:40:42
Speaker
You know, i I'd like to, I know Doug has some things to say. I'm not, sorry, Doug, Bill has some things to add. I do want, before the segment ends, I would like to look at the responsibility of the, Andrew had touched on it a little bit as far as, you know, how are we, you know, universities and in every entity, and we'll talk about this in CRM as well, have a responsibility to evolve with the situation.
00:41:06
Speaker
and and what what can happen we can't just sit back and say oh it's all changing and we can't change with it we do need to change with it and that's actually what's great about this country is that we do evolve based on what we're faced with and yeah you know and and we do need to look at what did happen you know Doug touched on a little bit what did happen in the first four years really not everything that A lot of what people are saying is going to happen in these next four years happened and when this administration wasn' in was in power in the first four years. It didn't happen. So we do have to be a little bit more realistic. But let's have Bill give you a sense and then I would really like to focus on some actionable things and what is it? Right. Yeah. Yeah. The university and students. so
00:41:57
Speaker
Take it away. In a nutshell, universities absolutely are responding and they are evolving. They're evolving on a you know constantly unfolding basis. One of the things that's happening is just where universities are being forced off of relying on the government at all for funding, right? Now, this is the kind of stuff that happened way back in the 80s when you know, the whole idea was to just basically defund the universities because back then we had an excellent president, right? And quotation marks Ronald Reagan who had many, many fights as governors of California with students at universities. And so one of his major ways to get this back is to start slashing funding for universities. So for the last 40 years, 45 years,
00:42:38
Speaker
universities have been evolving and universities are planning, universities are planning on a longer scale than a lot of people think, right? So the place that I work at right now, there's an entire motivation to do clean energy, not just for the environmental benefits, but also to save costs, right? To save costs on keeping all these different labs and buildings and stuff cooled and heated as in California. Now it's, you know, a hundred degrees in San Francisco, at least once or twice a year, which used to not happen when they built this thing 150 years ago. Another thing too that's happening is trying to address the situation with professors, right? Because at the top schools,
00:43:17
Speaker
you know, everybody knows it's really difficult to get a professor job, but it's also exceptionally difficult to retain professors because anyone who can make it in and get tenure somewhere has an excellent chance of job hopping to another university. And universities have incentives to pick up professors who are already proven candidates at other universities, right? So, you know, sorry out there, those of you who are PhDs, but when you apply to an assistant professor,
00:43:42
Speaker
position, you're not just going against other people who just got their PhD or recent postdocs, you're going against, you know, other people who are assistant or associate professors at other universities, right? And so there's a lot of reasons why professors would do that, but one of them is to negotiate a higher salary to get retained, right? And so this issue at other at top schools, you know, R1 schools is a huge thing. Like, how can you keep professors that have hundreds of thousands of dollars or multiple you know millions in research grants who could easily pull that cash and move to the next university that'll give them more money on salary. right So professors are playing that game. Another thing that they're doing is trying to use university funds to encourage and sponsor different kinds of developments and other patentable you know processes. right So if you work in certain labs or certain places,
00:44:32
Speaker
they'll give you ah time off to go work in industry, to go use inventions and stuff, to bring money back from those tech, chemistry, engineering companies. It'll be donated back to the university. So the professor leaves and goes for a year, they cover the salary work for a top corporation for a bunch of money. And then in return, they're going to make profitable and they'll take inventions that the university has the patent on, deploy those and use them in products with the return benefit being more money and research coming back to the university, right? And that's just, those are just like a sample of the huge things that universities are doing basically to become more entrepreneurial, right? And even in anthropology departments, a lot of folks are realizing that just, you know, sitting back and having the status quo, like applied anthropology is not just a fringe aspect.
00:45:22
Speaker
and that those who are doing theory can actually test those theories and apply those theories out in the field. And so, there is more motivation for universities to have people get contracts from the National Park Service, just like I was talking about at the Bureau of Applied Research and Anthropology. Anthro departments across the country are thinking about that. They are thinking about having field schools that are closer to home and you know trying their best to get individuals to go into cultural resources. Now, in the case of archaeology, like the industry doesn't put the kickbacks in that they do in chemistry and engineering. I get it. It's a smaller industry, right? But seriously, like what's going on right now is a really dynamic situation where
00:46:03
Speaker
you know, medicine, law, ah engineering, chemistry, mathematics, they are all having people go out and have these public private ventures. And it's not strange, it's just how it is. And in return, you get top people who will help work, you know, for X amount of time, or will help develop training programs that you'll get the perfect candidate that's going in there into your employer and stuff. I mean, this is, that's like what most industries are doing.
Adapting University Strategies and Student Advice
00:46:30
Speaker
Adobe,
00:46:32
Speaker
you know, all of them, Google, they all have these different incubators and connections to different labs on university campuses at Stanford, Cal Poly, Technic, UC Berkeley, like it's not strange for these kind of things to be going on. one The only industry that's dragging behind cultural resources.
00:46:51
Speaker
Yeah, I would say too, as we as we talk, you know, this this sort of brought something to my mind. If you're a student right now and you're like a grad student and you're working on your master's thesis or PhD, I would angle more towards the STEM world of stuff. You know, can you in your research design be more on the ground like, Oh, we're going to do carbon 14 dates. Oh, we're going to we're going to do these tests to kind of get yourself a bit more open to that, that more scientific background. You know, I think it's the worst time to be into just your next version of the Karl Marx philosophy of how society works. Right.
00:47:29
Speaker
don't do a dissertation on that. Do something more nuts and bolts where you can work with us. You can work with geologists, you know, you can work with chemists or something like that. Because I think on the funding side, you're way better off in that world. That's an interesting one. An interesting point that Andrew brings up because so this this is a point I was going to swing back to from my talk earlier was ah when we think about sort of long-term, you really do have to plan long-term goals for, you know, the future and I'll get to it, but I'm not sure STEM's always the way to go for that. But it was actually thinking about like, and this loops back into what Bill said is, you know, so the national endowment for the humanities has actually never recovered. ah So basically it was an upward trajectory, you know,
00:48:25
Speaker
1970s, it was doing good, Reagan comes in, cuts it. 1994, what they call it, the Republican Revolution, I forget whatever, they take back the House, they cut it again. and so like The National Endowment for the Humanities has been shrinking with inflation for you know but since the 80s actually. It's just it's been pummeled and it's never coming back, but there's actually never been a plan to bring it back. And you actually see this across like universities where a lot of humanities-based departments, and you know depending on what country you're in, archaeology would be lumped in with the humanities, ah not so much in the US, but there's been no plan. And actually, there has been no counter-argument of, you know STEM has been a big thing for,
00:49:23
Speaker
STEM was a thing when I was in university and undergrad, like, oh, you should always do STEM degrees. And it's been pushed so much. And it's, you know. Basically, you can you can actually look at the composition and go to the national statistics, and you actually see humanities-based degrees, even social science ones that encompass archaeology. The number of students taking them have gone down. What's gone up is like business and STEM-based, again, all vague terms. We don't want to get into the what's STEM, what's not, but most people have sort of a general idea.
00:49:58
Speaker
And they've pushed a lot of people into that. And you know those careers actually aren't bringing in as much money as they used to, because you now have, instead of a civil engineer was a, you really wanted to pay someone good money, and yeah there wasn't too many of them, you now have 40 people vying for the same thing. So there's this big push with that sort of thinking long term, definitely on going on STEM, instead of actually, hey, we have the humanities,
00:50:26
Speaker
one could actually argue that humanities-based disciplines probably bring in more money um than most STEM-based disciplines. And that's just because people don't think about it. But your movies, music, books, what do you think of it?
00:50:47
Speaker
I'm not going to tell, I'm not going to tell a student to be like a writer instead of a chemist. You know what I mean? It's like, who's going to make more money? The chemist or the dance major. You know what I mean? Like there's still a total truth there. It's like you don't, you're not planning ahead and you're not looking at the trends and actually, yeah, like potentially. but are the engineers in your opinion Doug, in your opinion, where do engineers fit?
00:51:15
Speaker
Would you consider them STEM? general Well, so like engineers, like a catch all term. Yeah, it is. You're right. But it's still, I'm just curious. It would mostly be encompassed by the STEM. yeah So like your chemical engineers, your mechanical engineers, usually that's, that's under like what people would call STEM. And the point, what I'm really trying to get at here though is like, you know,
00:51:41
Speaker
People are pushing everyone towards STEM. Eventually diminishing returns are going to kick in for a lot of people. And it's mainly because no one has actually had a plan for the last 40 years to boost humanities anywhere, you know, be it in universities. And so, you know, at a certain point, almost all the universities, except for maybe a couple of elite ones, are going to basically end up being like, you know,
00:52:10
Speaker
all looking the same, all looking like engineering and business schools. I agree with you, you know i agree you do but also talking about specificity and actually having a plan. So instead of, you know, I think these broad strokes of humanities versus STEM,
00:52:28
Speaker
Is a problem and the reasons it's a problem or one of the reasons because you know you have these little majors that hide under humanities, quote unquote, and, you know, and then we're also not acknowledging some very lucrative and always necessary.
00:52:47
Speaker
majors like engineering. i mean this So you have you know these some of these majors that are hiding under humanities and we're creating some majors that really are not producing and where students on the regular are not able to get jobs in these majors. And to me, you know these are things that I think the university system needs to really look at and instead of just always expanding.
00:53:11
Speaker
like I do think universities need to look at their system from a business side. Absolutely. And I know Bill will say it's too much. So. But we also, they also have to look at the market, just like. It's like you're saying, Doug.
00:53:27
Speaker
and control the expansion of certain types of majors. Like, look at what is ahead of us and not be like keep pushing all these majors that really don't produce anything. but Totally. And the professors lie to the students. I've heard it. You know, they lie to them about their possibilities in the future. There isn't jack shit in some of these. yeah This is not actually fact based because like so engineers The number is now only 15 to 20% of students with an engineering degree go into engineering. Like, so if you're talking like.
00:54:05
Speaker
Wow. Potentially. I'd like to see that. Archaeology is actually a better, it's amazing, but probably more people will go into archaeology, especially at the master's level, maybe not the undergraduate, actually end up in a career in archaeology. Maybe they don't stick with it, but that's across everything. Most students, it doesn't matter what your undergraduate degree is, at least half those students will end up in a career,
00:54:34
Speaker
that is not relevant to their degree. that's yeah And there's a huge argument about, well, you should do general degrees. You actually have to have majors. When you have an engineering major, there are lots of aspects of that that can correlate to other areas, right? Totally. To other types of careers. and Where when you have some of these majors, there are nothing majors,
00:54:58
Speaker
don't give you anything. They give you no skills. peer's these these got these made Some of these majors, they're producing, pumping out people that cannot write a sentence. And so where are they going to work? If they don't get the job, you don't need to write a sentence. like there and Also, there's there's a couple of things about all of that stuff too, right? Like, okay, so first of all, people think things like majors matter.
00:55:22
Speaker
right? As Doug was saying, half the people aren't going to go into it. And we've already talked about this before. You're gonna have five to seven, like if you finish a college degree, you have a very high likelihood that you're gonna live to be like 75, 80 years old, right? The discrepancies in health are between people who don't have college degrees and those who have degrees are living longer, right? And in that entire time, you're gonna have, you know, five to seven different whole careers, most people.
00:55:50
Speaker
Most people who enter archaeology are not going to stay there for 40 years. Most people who enter engineering are not going to stay there for 40 years because of exactly what we're saying. and The companies, you move real fast, right? They're not retaining people forever. None of us should be thinking about staying at these jobs forever. Everyone on this podcast has changed jobs like multiple times. The podcast is the one thing that's stayed consistent, our jobs have changed, right? So in that world, there is almost no way that a university major could ever prepare you for anything. By the time you get in, whatever they're telling you is the hot major will already be old and stagnant, just like Doug is saying, and because everyone else will have already graduated before you and took in those jobs. Secondly, it's the skills that you create or it's the skills you get after you get in the workplace and the network you create that's going to build your career and your ability to pay your bills, right?
00:56:41
Speaker
So, the university is selling the degree that's basically a thing that says you're more intelligent than the average individual and that you have the consistency to stick through something for four to five to however many years it takes to finish. That's what the degree tells you.
00:56:58
Speaker
Your projects that you do there is what showcases and demonstrates your skills and abilities. right No matter what skills and abilities we demonstrate in 2024, by 2025, there will be a whole different you know momentum going in a different direction. and By 2030, half of the people that are listening to this podcast right now will be in a whole different career. The goal is really to get the degree, which is the evidence that you went to a thing and did a thing for X amount of times, for the most affordable amount that you can afford, right? For people who can't afford very much, get out with the least amount of student loan debt. For those of you that are getting your stuff covered by your parents and family, do what you got to do to get the job that's going to you know make you satisfied because you actually have flexibility. Like people who have someone covering their expenses, they have a chance to fail. They have a chance to do archaeology and come back home to mom and dad because they can live there because it didn't work out, right? People who have their back against the wall, low-income students, they don't have those kind of options, right? Going home is not an option. Failing is not an option. Right now, if engineering in five years is going to be the good thing, that's what they got to think about. If we can tell them that CRM is going to be the good thing,
00:58:06
Speaker
That's what they got to think about because a lot of people have their backs against the wall and they don't have a lot of options. So, like, we cannot ask universities to prepare people for the workforce. I'm sorry, we can do the best we can. The only thing that we can do is have the workforce come and start telling us clearly what things do you want? How will they be taught? You know what they're going to say? Where are you going to employ those? They're going to say STEM and technical writing. You know what I mean? And then so we should do that. and We totally don't. No, that that's totally awesome. And if they did it and showed me exactly how to do it, like I said, man, I put my money on the line more than one time. I'll get the money. I'll find a way to do the field school. But I pretty much dare a company out there at this point to get in here and do some curriculum, find the site, figure this stuff out, right? Because I've been doing this podcast for years. I've been teaching for seven years. I've been doing archaeology for 20 years. And all I ever hear is CRM talk about how nobody's teaching those skills.
00:59:05
Speaker
I've been teaching the skills. um yeah You and me, but we're the outliers. Oh, my whole department. They've been teaching people how to do stuff now, whether they actually internalized it, whether they actually pull it off or whatever. That's up to them.
00:59:17
Speaker
How about we look at this from, I'd like to just play a little game here and look at this from the reverse. So I work for an engineering environmental company and I would say half of the people that work there have been working there for 30 years or maybe 20 years. I mean, they've been working there a long time. They started from the ground up. So, and this is a very heavy, it started as an engineering firm, a geotechnical engineering firm went into civil engineering. This is a a ah company that has amazing retention of their employees. Then you also look at, let's look at people just in CRM that are successful. People that have been in CRM for a very long time. So those people, what are they doing? It's not luck. It's not luck. Why haven't they changed and gone into a different career?
01:00:04
Speaker
The reason i'm this is my second career is because my first career was definitely a short-lived career, and I knew it would be that. So I went into it because it was more of a passion thing for me. That was a choice that I made. So let's instead of just saying, overall, you know people that are going into and you know kids that are going into into different majors and they're going to change over time, maybe it's because they haven't been given a plan on how to stick with their careers.
01:00:33
Speaker
Another option might be they just didn't like it. My sister, she went to school for geology. She worked as a geologist. She's like, this is not what I thought it was going to be. I'm not enjoying this. I don't want to do this. And so those are other decisions. This isn't just because you know arbitrarily people change careers because there's no option to actually stick with a career. That's not true. There's a lot of companies that would much rather. I mean, trust me, from my perspective as somebody who hires,
01:01:02
Speaker
but It costs a lot of money to rehire people and to lose people. We're constantly talking about retention, retention. How do we keep people? So this adage that companies want to get rid of their people and have a constant revolving door is just not true.
01:01:20
Speaker
Across the board are there some companies to do that yes i'm sure there are although it doesn't make sense to me because it costs a lot of money. To do that so i think that we need you know we need to look at it from the perspective what dog was saying but i think we also need to look at it.
01:01:35
Speaker
how are these certain people being you know those that are being that are staying in the same career their entire career who are are successful at the same company how is that happening let's look at it from both angles not just one and then giving some dire you know prediction to students that they're you know guys just face it you're never going to have a never going to be able to stick with the same company you're not going to have the same career I don't give them dire. I tell them that, you know, you finish here, man. You, the world is yours. Finish this degree. Go be an archaeologist. When you're done with that, go be something else. When you're done with that, come back. We'll sell you another degree. Do something else, right? Like, the world is yours. You have flexibility. You have ultimate flexibility in your career, right?
Future University Funding and Partnerships
01:02:19
Speaker
I just, you know, when it comes to this whole thing about ah universities, I don't see a functional path forward regardless of who's elected. However, I do see more paths towards, you know, privatization, tuition increases,
01:02:34
Speaker
collapse of more outside funding for academia and and more pressure for public private collaborations. And that's really what I think we many of us want to see people who own companies start taking a hands-on approach and really start mentoring people up so they can get a better person that's going to work for their company. And also, you know, we can actually learn what CRM needs now. I've been out of the thing for like seven years, right? So, it'd be nice to see a refresher of what skills are needed, what they kind of want people to be able to do. But so far, it just has not happened. And I do think that if, you know, looking at the numbers and looking at the closure of social sciences,
01:03:15
Speaker
anthropology departments, the collapsing of anthropology departments, there is totally something lost when you lose a standalone anthropology department and archaeologists that are independent, you know, they can do their research and train students. so So, I do see that as being a headwind for having more archaeologists in the future. And I also definitely see it as being sped up by what's coming in, right? If it's a market first who cares about government support, that ain't good for universities. That's not good for students.
01:03:42
Speaker
It's not good for really anyone and it's definitely not good for the CRM industry. So if that is what ends up happening, I'm not saying that like everything's going to fall apart overnight, but I am saying that you're going to see a lot more students walk away from anthropology and go towards something different because they don't see a pathway forward. yeah and That's kind of the point I was going with is not I still see a lot of short-termism happening. even like even the thats are like What's trending now is STEM until everyone does enough STEM and then you know the value of those degrees go down. it's more I guess if I could leave everyone with a point.
01:04:23
Speaker
is like got to start planning long-term and not just long-term as in like a couple of years from now, but long-term as in like generational or decades away. and You got to have a plan and then you got to start putting objectives in there and you got to start actioning that. i think i've just and When this comes to universities, I think they need to do that. and I think a bit more diversity in universities, they all They're almost interchangeable at this point between different universities at that sort of top level. Community colleges, I think, are very something very different, but they're getting defunded.
01:05:02
Speaker
but There's a lot of different things. I think you know people really should be thinking like, hey, how are we going to keep our university around in 20 or 30 years? How are we going to keep it relevant? And what direction do we want to go? And how do we want to fund that? And how do we want to have things happen? Because at the moment, it's like, oh, well, you know we bring in funding from the government. And if something that's not there, they're they're panicking.
01:05:26
Speaker
and things go downhill. But you know if if you had someone making these thoughts or these plans 10, 20, 30, a couple of decades ago, the 80s when the first cuts really started to happen, the seventy late 70s when the ah first dip in student enrollment happened,
01:05:43
Speaker
you know If people were just thinking about these things now, we wouldn't have to be thinking about them. yeah or Sorry, if they're thinking back about them now, we wouldn't have to think about them now. so i i would just say is you know I agree with everyone saying long-term, but it actually really needs to be long-term. ah It needs to be more than just trendy long-term. We can't just say, go STEM. You have to have a plan and maybe it is STEM or maybe it's something different. Okay. Well, with that, we are way over.
01:06:13
Speaker
This is, I think we could have actually done two podcasts just on education alone, but I, and maybe we will, but I'll make one more. See, I was going to ask a question, but that's just going to ah open up in a whole other can of worms, but I'm going to make a statement and I'm going to run off and we're going to close off.
01:06:28
Speaker
You know, again, I think the universities need to take responsibility over their finances as well. They need to look at where where they can cut. I mean, right now, the chancellor at UCSB, which is closest to my home, is making $840,000 a year.
01:06:47
Speaker
And that's insane to me. When we're trying to cut money, you know, the administration to me needs to be number one. That needs to be the first area that we cut. How in the world can he be making that when you have people that are struggling just to raise the funds to go to school and when you have professors that are not making what their counterparts are making in the CRM field in some ways. So with that, this was a spirited conversation. Thanks everyone for joining.
01:07:15
Speaker
And since this will be airing on November 27th, we want to wish everybody a happy Thanksgiving and we'll see you in the field.
01:07:27
Speaker
That's it for another episode of the CRM Archaeology Podcast. Links to some of the items mentioned on the show are in the show notes for this podcast, which can be found at www.arcpodnet.com slash CRMARC Podcast. Please comment and share anywhere you see the show. If you'd like us to answer a question on a future episode, email us. he Use the contact form on the website or just email chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com. Support the show and the network at arcpodnet.com slash members. Get some swag and extra content while you're there. Send us show suggestions and interview suggestions.
01:07:57
Speaker
We want this to be a resource for field technicians everywhere, and we want to know what you want to know about. Thanks to everyone for joining me this week. Thanks also to the listeners for tuning in, and we'll see you in the field. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye. See you guys next time. Adios.
01:08:16
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his ah RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Cultural Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Rachel Rodin. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.