Getting past a paywall is easy if you know how. All you have to do is disable JavaScript. If you’re using Chrome, click the link, click the lock icon next to the web address, click “site settings,” and disable JavaScript. Once you do that, the article will load.
thanks for the tip 
I just tried it on the Wall Street Journal’s site, and I am sorry to report that it didn’t work.
The Jeeps I have driven were not that many years ago. At age 13 (1965) I drove military surplus Jeeps towing irrigation pipe trailers. My 2 buddies who were a year older had to assemble the irrigation pipes while I drove back for another load. Why? My Father had taught me how to drive a Manual Transmission and double clutch which allowed me to operate the Jeep “crash box” 3 speed. I was paid a whopping $1 per hour. I would have paid for the fun I was having!!! The M151 jeeps I later drove in the Army were not very good.
Yes. During World War II, Bantam produced 2,605 pre production vehicles for testing. They had no where near the production capability required. Willys produced 363,000 Jeeps and Ford some 280,000.
I loved the jeep I drove in Nam. Lot of fun.
Back to Iacocca.
The one thing I hated about Iacocca was during the early 80’s and that advertising he did about “Buy American”. At the exact same time those commercials were being aired…he was modernizing many plants with Robotics made in Korea. Also during that period Chryco went from 20% foreign steel in their vehicles to 40% (some vehicles over 80%). Chryco almost overnight starting buying electronic components from Japan and Korea. Here he is asking American’s to buy American products, but Chryco was now increasing their foreign buying. That is as two-faced as you can get.
I think we can all agree that a vehicle can be “fun” and “not very good” at the same time
As for auto executives telling the public one thing, yet doing something very different behind the scenes, that seems to be quite common. It might just be the nature of the beast, for all I know
Agree 100%. It did it’s job for me.
I have no idea…what I do know is that decision by Chryco caused some large layoffs in several industries in the US. I have no problem with companies making financial decisions like that. I do have a problem with their attitude about buying OUR product because it’s made in America, yet they don’t follow that same philosophy.
2 Likes
I read the book “Talking Straight” by Lee Iacocca. In his first six months as CEO of Chrysler, he dismissed 33 of the 36 vice presidents. Iacocca asked each VP “What do you do”? If the VP couldn’t tell him specifically what the VP’s position entailed, that VP was gone.
I thought Iacocca would have made a good university president. At Chrysler, costs have to be controlled. If too many costs are passed on to the consumer, the consumer will just buy a competitor’s product. At a state university, if the state decreases the funding, the administration just raises tuition. When students don’t have the funds, the students are encouraged to take out student loans. Little or no effort at most universities is made to contain costs.
I had two offers to be an administrator. The salary was much higher than I was getting as a faculty member. I turned the jobs down. First of all, I liked teaching and working with students. Secondly, when I read the position description, I could do the job in no more than a week. I couldn’t figure out what I was supposed to do in the remaining 51 weeks.
I think Mitch Daniels, who was governor of Indiana and then became president of Purdue University may have read Lee Iacocca’s book. He froze administrators’ salaries. There hasn’t been an increase in tuition at Purdue for eight years.
1 Like
I personally object to that statement, and I’d like to see some evidence if it exists.
Being a conscientious custodian of taxpayer funds is a big part of what I do. Sometimes, when it comes to faculty and administrators, it’s a counter-cultural activity, but where I work our purchasing systems and processes are designed to save money. If your plane ticket is anything other than coach, you have to justify it. If your hotel bill is more than a certain amount per day, you have to justify it. If you can’t justify these things, they either don’t get approved or you have to reimburse the university.
There is a constant struggle for resources, including money, between colleges and departments. Likewise, there is a focus on stretching those resources as far as possible.
The state of Florida has instituted a performance funding model that directs money to universities that meet specific performance metrics, leading universities to direct their resources to where they will improve those performance metrics.
Likewise, Florida has had a freeze on public college and university tuition for several years.
Regarding salaries, would you rather pay a faculty member who brings in no research grants $50,000 a year, or would you rather pay a faculty member who brings in $3,000,000 in research grants $150,000 a year? You might think doing the former saves you $100,000 a year, but you’d be wrong.
There is an inherent danger in oversimplifying problems to fit your proposed simple solution, and you have definitely oversimplified the issue of university budget management. Sure, you can freeze faculty salaries, but the result in reduced morale could lead to my university missing its performance goals, leading to further reductions in performance funding from the state. How would that help the students?
@Whitey. There is a book by Benjamin Ginsberg: “The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All Administrative University and Why It Matters”.
Ginsberg was a Professor at Johns Hopkins before he retired. He cites examples of what is happening in higher education at universities all over the nation.
In many places, tuition has far exceeded the increase in inflation, but faculty salaries in many institutions have not kept up with inflation.
I did research and brought in grant funding. My wife had an administrative position before we retired. When she retired, they hired three people to replace her.
1 Like
In the past 25+ years University Salaries have dropped drastically by means of eliminating tenure positions and hiring part time adjuncts professors. When I went to college the faculty was at least 80% full time professors. Now that same university (and most others) - 80%+ are adjunct professors. Full time positions pay OK. At very high-end universities many professors make up the salary gap between teaching and industry by getting research grants or by publishing.
One neighbor of mine works at 4 different Boston Universities (Harvard, BC, BU and Tufts) teaching 1 and sometimes 2 at each per semester.
Top and middle tear universities get grant money. But there’s only so much money to go around. Most universities/colleges get ZERO grant money.
You’re citing an eight year old book as an example of what is happening currently? I asked for evidence, not a lesson in history. I am actively involved in university budgets and performance funding now. Eight years ago we faced different challenges and an entirely different funding model that was based only on enrollment with no emphasis on performance metrics.
Some of the factors that contributed to that are increased operating costs, particularly energy and construction costs, an oversupply of Ph.D.s seeking tenure-track positions, and budget cuts from the state before they adopted their performance funding model. In 2011, when the book you cited was written, gasoline was selling for $3.60/gallon. Today I fueled up my motorcycle for $2.43/gallon.
One job I recently applied for includes duties from a job I used to have, at almost twice the salary, but the new job also includes duties I wasn’t qualified for eight years ago, so I imagine the college where the position resides has been reorganized in ways that I (or you and your wife) might not be aware of.
The more you try to paint a simple picture, the more I see what is missing from it.
At any rate, I remember him talking about the black days and how the radiator supplier was refusing to ship anymore radiators without payment which would have shut the entire plant down. He resolved it somehow and kept the line going. It was almost a daily event trying to avert a complete collapse. So in that sense the greater good was trying to squeeze every spare dime you could to keep the plants open. Ya do what ya have ta do shifting money, begging, borrowing, slashing costs to keep going. So I think it a little unfair trying to label buying foreign materials at a lower cost as not in line with buying US. The idea was to boost sales by buying his cars and not a competitors and also to keep operating. Makes perfect sense.
Yeah too bad the folks that came after him didn’t learn a little about history and drove the place into the ground.
@MikeInNH. You hit the nail on the head about the changes in colleges and universities replacing full time tenured faculty with adjunct faculty. Also, many institutions have a lot of on-line classes which cost less than regular classes. Our son was working toward a Ph.D. at one university. The last year of his coursework was only available in on-line classes. He left the program and began again at another university. He worked with his major professors and had publications to his name when he completed the Ph.D. degree.
My teaching career began in 1962 as a teaching graduate assistant and ended when I retired in 2011. I have seen a lot of changes in higher education over that time period. I was on top of my career when I retired. I saw too many of my colleagues burned out when they retired, so I decided to quit while I was ahead. I loved working with students whether they were freshmen or doctoral students.
@MikeInNH. Thank you for posting the link to the article about adjunct faculty. It’s a deplorable situation. A lot of my teaching was outside the classroom. I spent a considerable amount of time with students in my office. I have always believed that education is a process, not a product. The point the article made about students who had classes taught by adjunct faculty having lower graduation rates as opposed to full time tenure line faculty is easy to understand. The students don’t become as engaged in their education. The class becomes one more hurdle toward receiving the degree. When I would have a student come into my office excited about finding a different way of solving a problem that we had done in class, I knew I had done my job.
1 Like
Not at all. Jeep still has some very durable and capable rigs. The Rubicon line comes to mind. The Renegade is simply a 4WD street vehicle. Of course, they all have Fiat inside.
The Jeep Wrangler is as much a Jeep as it’s always been. Likewise the Grand Cherokee. The others are heavily based on Fiats.
1 Like
For Wranger I think you’ll find the 2L turbo etorque engine originated with Alfa Romeo. With an electric boost it has the low end torque needed until the turbo kicks in. It’s a $1000 upgrade that is commonly bundled in with most higher packaged models.
You are correct, you can still get the old 3.6L V6, if you don’t need the small MPG and HP boost. I think that’s the same engine used to shove Caravans down the road for most of this decade.
FCA is trying to standardize parts. Jeep is slowly incorporating more Fiat parts.