Some photos of birds and alligators.

This past weekend, a friend and I put our bikes on a rack and drove to the Everglades, planning to cycle round a particular path. When we got there, it was absurdly busy, possibly because this was the first genuinely nice weekend day for a while here. We decided we didn't fancy riding as part of a peloton, especially since most of the wildlife would already be scared away, so we drove further West and then took the rough loop road through Big Cypress Preserve.

Big Cypress is an area contiguous with the Everglades, and in many ways continuous, but it's a quite different ecosystem. The Everglades, for much of their expanse, are a 'river of grass' -- a body of shallow-ish water moving incredibly slowly South through a dense mass of sawgrass, with the occasional tree. Things get more swampy nearer the coast, as the salt water mixes with the fresh and mangroves replace grass. Big Cypress is all swamp, freshwater swamp populated primarily by cypresses. It breeds insects and minnows, and things that feed on them, in droves. So you get lots of wading birds, lots of small fly-catching birds, and things that feed on them; alligators, hawks, vultures.

We saw so many lovely, amazing things on the trip. I took lots of photos, and you can see them here. There's a preview below. Mostly, the photos are of big birds, which tend to stand still for longer. We also saw plenty small birds that we had no hope of identifying, and innumerable dragonflies.

It's funny how some things quickly become quotidian. There are so many ibis on the University campus, for example, that I barely glance at them, and by the end of this trip, we had stopped being impressed by anhingas. But I don't think I'll ever stop being excited by hawks, or by alligators. And last night, I saw a raccoon in my back garden. They might be pests, but even pests are exciting when they're novel.

Educational economics

It would be nice to think that, once I've finished with this doctorate, I'll be able to return to the UK and find an academic post. But the job market in philosophy is a small pond with many fish chasing not much food, and the situation doesn't look much like it'll have improved by the time I'm a fully-qualified fish. Two months of hints culminated in the recent announcement by the Higher Education Funding Council for England that the budget for universities would be cut by 5% next year, in addition to large 'efficiency' savings already demanded, with no guarantee that subsequent years won't see further cuts.

Risibly, the business secretary "expect[s] universities to make these [cuts] in a way that minimises the impact on teaching and students". Pace Peter, many universities are already planning redundancies among academic staff and alterations in the ratio of permanent professors to short-term teachers. Indeed, some are already implementing these plans. KCL's decision to lay off two members of their philosophy faculty and forcibly retire a third, as part of a "restructuring" of their humanities division, has provoked great outcry. I imagine that such moves will soon be so commonplace that nobody will muster the energy to complain. That comfortable Chair, which was already something of a pipe dream, is disappearing over the horizon of possibilities as fast as an abstract object can.

(Two digressive comments. First, I've no idea about the situation in Scotland or Wales. Perhaps the SCRs there will still be fully furnished. Second, that the business secretary is in charge of universities speaks volumes about the Government's attitude to higher education.)

Some of the moves mooted will make the model of higher education provision in England more similar to that of the US; for example, relying on adjuncts and postgraduates to do a large proportion of undergraduate teaching, greater specialisation of institutions, and Mandelson's proposal of two-year degrees. Given the continued pressure from the Russell Group of "top" institutions for more leeway to charge higher fees, and the increasingly assertive attempts by the University of Bristol to persuade me into giving them lots of money, it seems that many in university governance see the economic model prevalent in the US as the future for the UK as well. So it's worth looking in more detail at what that model is, and how it works.

Before I moved here, I thought that all American universities were private institutions. It turns out that this is not the case. About half of the 3000 or so accredited universities are public, and their finances work much the same as in the UK. That is, a large proportion of their income (about 40%) comes directly from their home-state governments, and much of the rest is made up by tuition fees. Fees vary widely, and it costs far more to go to a public institution outside your home state than it does to stay (relatively) local. But as a rough generalisation, private universities charge around twice as much on average as public ones. The public universities accept some constraints on their freedom to set fees, and on other aspects of economic and institutional governance, in exchange for the regular supply of state money.

Now, the mess in the UK has been caused by, or at least is being blamed on, the pervasive economic malaise that's settled upon the Western world. The US being as much part of that world as the UK, it's not surprising that public universities here are facing much the same grim financial prospects. Florida State University, one of the better public ones, has had about 20% of its budget cut, on top of large reductions in previous years. The best state institution in the country, the University of California at Berkeley, is facing similar cuts, which have prompted massive protests among the students and faculty (if you like the look of that article, let me know and I'll send you the full thing).

One proposal to sort out Berkeley's problems -- also mooted for other stricken public institutions -- is privatisation. Take the school out of the state's hands, raise fees, compete more aggressively for private grant money. There's a precedent and procedure for this process in the US. Obviously, there's not in the UK, but lack of precedent doesn't preclude possibility. I wouldn't be surprised to see it at least suggested soon. So the question is, how would privatisation help struggling public institutions, if it would at all?

Most obviously, since private institutions don't depend on state funding, they've not been as badly hit by the general financial chaos and concomitant cuts in public spending. That's not to say they've escaped. A lot of the income of some private institutions is from the return on invested capital, that capital being made up of the endowments that they're so keen to wring out of alumni. As much of the recent trouble was caused by (or caused) bad investments, some of the American universities have suffered according to the wisdom of their investing. Harvard lost over $10 billion in a year (reducing its endowment to a mere $27 billion). Yale recorded a 30% shrinkage from 2008 to 2009. So the income from the investment of those endowments has of course been reduced.

Not all private universities have been quite so embarrassed, however. More cautious investing has preserved some endowments, and some places were not so reliant on endowment income anyway. The remarkably chatty president of the University of Miami has delivered a stream of emails to all staff and students over the last few years, assuring us that (despite various cost-cutting measures) we are on a reasonable financial footing, having never been dependent on investments for revenue.

It was one of these emails that prompted me to investigate where the money does in fact come from. The University of Miami is a private university whose environs exude an air of monied comfort (if not opulence) that's quite different from the shabbier surroundings typical in the UK. When you compare income relative to student numbers, this air isn't surprising. My last British ivory tower, the University of Sheffield, had 19 000 or so full-time students (UG and PG) in 2008/9, and its income for that year worked out at about $33 500 for each of those. The University of Miami has just over 14 000 full-time students, and its income in 2009 worked out at $128 000 for each. Yes, really. Nearly four times as much.

So, again, where does the money come from -- especially given that about 32% of Sheffield's income was from the state, and none of Miami's was? Before I looked, I thought that the answer was: tuition fees. Students here pays around $35 000 a year for their education. But, it turns out, this isn't the answer at all. It's true that Miami's income from tuition fees approaches Sheffield's income from the state and from fees combined ($369.5m against $386m). But tuition accounts for just 18% of Miami's income; it's 27% of Sheffield's. The big earner for Miami, generating 48% of the university's income, is money paid by or on behalf of patients being treated at the three hospitals it runs. The university made $996m last year from "patient care".

However, much of this goes straight back into the operating costs of those hospitals; "patient care" accounted for $982m of expenditure.That's still a healthy $14m profit; easily enough to run a couple of Arts or Humanities departments. Sheffield spent about that much last year paying off people who took up their voluntary severance scheme. But even if you eliminate the hospital income stream, the average Miami student would still have nearly twice as much money behind them as their counterpart in Sheffield. As I said, the difference is not down to tuition fees; the difference in income of that sort just covers what Miami doesn't get from the state. Nor is the real difference the endowment income; though Miami's is much larger, it's only 6% of income (1% of Sheffield's). Leaving out the hospitals, the big difference is the amount the two institutions attract in (mostly private) grants and contracts. Miami attracts about three times as much investment of this sort.

How come? I can only speculate, but I've had enough of numbers and stuff, so here I go. Two possible reasons are firstly, that Miami can take whatever contracts it likes, and secondly, the university has a more diverse base of expertise and facilities than Sheffield. I would guess that much of the contract income is to do with the hospitals, the school of marine science, the atmospheric research centre, that kind of thing. Sheffield doesn't have the same sort of rare specialities. Every university has engineering departments, physics departments, and so on; what's needed is some particular, potentially lucrative research strength that's not available easily elsewhere.

This seems to suggest that the prospects for places like Sheffield competing with the likes of Miami for such contracts are quite grim, in the short term. Again, I'm speculating, but I'd guess that a lot of the contracts and grants and so on are awarded to pre-existing research departments. That is, one needs to spend the money to build the facilities and recruit the faculty before one can attract more money from outside. But, in the longer term, it's not impossible. It would, however, require concentration on one or two likely candidates among research projects, and brutal axing of other departments that are less likely to generate money.

So bad news for philosophy? Well, not at all. Under the American private system, arts and humanities departments are very much secure, provided that they can keep their recruitment numbers up. This is because they're very cheap to run; you need faculty, a few extra teaching staff, a pot for conferences and so on, and some office space and classrooms. That's it. No expensive particle accelerators, weather balloons, boats, supercomputers, and so on. So the bulk of the fees that their students pay can go towards subsiding other, more costly departments. Here's an example: the vast majority of first-year undergraduate teaching in the philosophy department is done by teaching assistants (TAs) like me. The fees paid by one student in my class fall just short of covering the annual stipend of two teaching assistants. So the fees paid by my class of 25 students can cover the cost of paying all the 25 or so TAs in the philosophy department, and also most of the cost of paying the TAs in another similar-sized department. Thus, arts and humanities departments -- at least, popular ones -- are quite likely to survive radical moves to a nakedly commercial economic model, because if tuition fees can be set at any level by the university, it's easy to make such departments profitable.

None of this is meant to suggest that I think it would be a good idea for British universities to become more like American ones. Privatisation of any sort raises my ideological hackles. What I do mean to suggest, though, is that it's quite possible that it'll happen, and that the possibility shouldn't necessarily lead philosophy departments (and people who might want jobs in philosophy departments sometime soon-ish) to fear for their future. Unless philosophy stops seeming sexy to seventeen-year-olds, and what are the chances of that?

As frosty as it gets.

When I got back to Miami, a week and a bit ago, it was cold. And not cold in a typical South Florida oh-low-teens-break-out-the-woollens way; cold in a near-freezing, good-grief-why-did-I-come-back-here way. It was the coldest cold snap here in 30-odd years, and a big enough event to still be the talking point a week later in my regular focus group of retired white women (it turns out that botanical gardens tend to draw their volunteers from a quite well-defined social group).

The funniest thing about genuine cold here is how utterly unprepared for it everything is. The mercury heading towards 0 (or 32, as it is here) triggers crisis and panic in the same way that an inch of snow brings the South of England to a grinding halt. Many buildings have absolutely no heating. Air con, of course, but no heating. The philosophy department was as cold as the air outside; people were wearing three jumpers and a coat at their desks. Since nobody has the right clothes, Michelin-man outfits become briefly the hot style -- layer upon layer of whatever can be fitted on top of what's underneath.

People get by, anyway, but the plants and animals don't so well. The nursery at Fairchild has lost a lot of plants. My back garden was littered with lizards that had frozen to death. And there are many stories involving iguanas hibernating in trees and falling out on to people's heads, or trying to take refuge in heated pools and getting sick from chlorine.

A week later, and things are back to normal. Today, it got up to 27 degrees C. The lizards still left are basking and scurrying, and the iguanas are as active as they ever are. Two days ago, I saw a group of manatees in the river on the way back from school. I was so excited I nearly fell off my bike and into the river myself. They look far more graceful and natural in the flabby flesh than they ever do in photos; movement suits them.

So far as my work goes, things change this semester. No more coursework and essays. Instead, I'm reading for a qualifying exam that will determine whether I get to go on and write a thesis. The exam is in early May, and I have a reading list that works out at two books a week till then. Big, dense works of philosophy. I'm not panicking yet, but give me time.

Finally, apologies for the long hiatus between posts. I had somehow got the idea that nobody much was reading this any more, but over Christmas, several people -- some of whom aren't even related to me -- asked me what had happened to the thing. So, back once again, and hopefully more assiduous about it this semester. If I don't drown in reading.

In gardens where we feel secure

You'd think that growing stuff in Florida would be easy. We're blessed with year-round sunshine and warmth; no need to worry about chills, frost, and the rest. Even on the Winter Solstice, we get over 10 hours of daylight. There's far fewer pests than you might expect, including a glorious absence of slugs. All you should need to do is plant your seeds, and watch them shoot up.

In reality, though, the conditions in Florida can be baffling for anyone used to gardening in more temperate climates. The heavy rains and heat of the summer batter seedlings senseless and scorch better-developed plants. The winter's main problem is that daylight figure. Though, of course, 10 hours is a lot for December, it's not enough. The sorts of plants that are suitable for the winter weather are generally those which also need long, summer-like days before they're persuaded to fruit or flower. One ends up with plants that grow quite steadily, but refuse to produce, and eventually settle at some stage of development, awaiting a longer day that never comes (the Summer Solstice enjoys about 12.5 hours of daylight; there's not much variation in day length this close to the Equator).

To get round that last problem, you need careful selection of short-day varieties. The problem, it seems, is that there are very few edible plants native to Florida. The whole state's ecosystem, in fact, is curious, in that the enormous biodiversity of plant and animal one would expect is simply absent. The few native plants that there are do very well; the thick creeping vines in my garden have put on at least eight feet of growth in the past month. But most things grown by people are transplants, imports, exotics, which may or may not be well-adapted to the climate. In large part, it's a guessing game and a gamble.

All of the above might have been enough to stymie my efforts at growing vegetables last year. The main factor, however, was the gang of feral-ish cats who, with my housemates' imprimatur, hang around our back garden. I was growing in containers (why are landlords always so prissy about having lawns replaced with potatoes?) and the cats took great pleasure in sitting and sleeping in them, smothering all the poor seedlings. The net results of my efforts were a few wildflowers, a broccoli plant in one of those states of arrested development, and enough lettuce leaves for a supermodel's salad.

I am not yet discouraged, and have just bought some new seeds to plant, along with some cat deterrent stuff. Wish me luck. In the meantime, the garden comes with enough cat-proof produce to keep me mildly happy. The mango tree is, so I hear, hugely productive. Unfortunately, fruiting season is June and July, so when I left for the summer in May, it was heaving with unripe fruit, and when I returned in August, the tree was bare. My housemate who stayed over the break attests to a month in which he ate two mangoes a day and gave plenty away too. More happily, the avocado tree has in the last month given us several fruit. This might not sound like much, but these are Florida avocados. They're distinguished from more common cultiavars by their smooth, light green skin, their slightly less oily flesh, and most of all, their outrageous size (see picture -- that's my hand). One of these, suitably prepared and accompanied, is a meal for two.

The other thing that grows in the garden is a minor cause for consternation. Growing above the decking outside the back door are two 25-30 ft coconut palms. In the winter, when the coconuts are ready, the landlord sends round a guy skilled in climbing palms to harvest them. That's some months off; at the moment, there's just nascent fruit. The young coconuts are green, hard, and woody, about the size of a squash ball. And they have an alarming tendency to decide that they can't be bothered with this growing business, and instead hurl themselves off the tree to crash loudly on the decking far below. It surely can't be long before one of us is hit hard. Or maybe until one of the cats is hit. Now that wouldn't be so bad at all.

The last time England regained the Ashes, four years ago, I watched the final day's play in the living room of the house in Sheffield I'd moved into the day before. New to the city, I knew nobody with whom I could share the occasion, jubilant texts to friends elsewhere substituting for in-person celebration. This time, I listened to the last two sessions in the house in Miami I've inhabited for the last year (less three months of summer), again devoid of company, again with digital communication compensating. Four years ago, the particular was new, but the general familiar; a new house and an unfamiliar city, but a city whose character was of the same stock as every other English town, pace that mythical South Yorkshire exceptionalism. This year, it's somehow the opposite. The particular - the house, the city - are familiar, but the general seems as strange as ever.

It takes me perhaps a day of being back in the UK to feel comfortable. Here, I reckon on a fortnight, particularly after the long summer holiday, before I feel settled. Just like when I return to Durham, I can note the changes in my immediate environment: the creepers that have grown 10 feet over the summer to swaddle the hammock, the avocado tree now laden heavy with coconut-sized fruit, the spiny-backed orb weavers (below) whose summer webs crisscross the garden. But the sense of secure belonging in the wider context that I enjoy back home is unsurprisingly absent here.


Having been here before, though, some things are easier than they used to be. A couple of emails, and I was set up for a game of football three days after I arrived. A typical Miami experience, this. I cycled for 10 miles through a heavy thunderstorm, eschewing the road for the pavement owing to the four inches of standing water flooding the inside lane. The storm cleared as I got to the pitches, leaving a clear and sunny day, but somehow not assuaging the humidity. The moisture that beads on your palm if you clench your fist might have been wrung from the air rather than formed from your sweat, so thick is the air. 90 minutes later, and another 1o miles cycling home, my teammates expressing bewilderment at my readiness to go such a distance under my own steam. Night fell fast as I went; no drawn-out dusks this close to the equator, and no let-up in the heat either, the nights barely four degrees cooler and still cloying.

Term starts again on Wednesday, my final semester of coursework. The days before it does have been and will be filled with administration and preparation. Renewing my ID card, servicing my bike, writing my syllabus, catching up with friends, readjusting to a life both mine and not mine. The summer, fun as it was, has gone, and isn't a fair comparison to life here anyway; I can only enjoy those three months as I do because I come back here to do this. Give me a week or so, and I'll be enjoying this too again. For now, though, it's mostly feeling like duty.

WMC

I know that I said that the next post was going to be about economics, and that one's still in the works, but I'm sure you'd rather hear about some fun things instead. Last year, I entirely ignored the Winter Music Conference. Three good reasons. Firstly, the music at the huge majority of the events is boring house and its cousins. Secondly, this being Miami, and this conference drawing a crowd of people either a) on expenses or b) too rich to afford common sense, the huge majority of events take place at the kind of venue that charge you $30 to get in, $100 if you want to get in fast and not queue, and $10 for anything liquid.

Now, both these obstacles to having WMC fun are surmountable. With some careful scanning of the official event list (check how long it is!), and some blog trawling for off-list events, you can string together a whole week's worth of free fun. The third obstacle was the killer last year: nobody to go with. My friends here are a lovely bunch, but unfortunately, absolutely uninterested in any (modern) music that doesn't involve guitars. And going clubbing on your own is not just lonely, but very awkward in a city where the events take place miles apart, and the public transport system mostly turns into pumpkins past midnight.

This year, though, things were looking up. I'd recruited a dancing-buddy, best described as rave-curious rather than fully out of the clubbing closet, and made some judicious selections from the various events. Quality, not quantity. I could have been out every night of the week, but Spring Break was the week before (shame), and the demands of school preclude seven nights of parties. This was also slated as my last weekend of two-day guilt-free enjoyment before the end of the semester as the deadlines pile up. What a way to do it.

First up, Thursday night, a Bersa Discos/Tormenta Tropicale showcase. It was in the bar of a super-posh SoBe hotel spa, and it was really, really badly attended. There were perhaps four people there specifically for the thing, and a few others drifting through. Plenty of reasons for why, but gutting for the guys putting it on all the same. Still, great tunes, nice warm-up for the weekend. I had a good chat with one of the Bersa boys (Disco Shawn), and in the end, we (I say we, I made the offer but I was just another passenger) gave him and his GF a ride back to their hotel. Saved them a load of cab fare, secured a guest list at TT if I ever make it to SF/LA at the right time. Seriously nice, straightforward guy, and they were doing a proper WMC-style party the next night, so hopefully they got the crowd and the pay they deserved. (By the way, if you don't know much about the cumbia stuff that Bersa do, this mix is as good a place to start as any).

Saturday night: the big one. Three top-notch labels/crews — Mad Decent, Turntablelab, Iheartcomix/Trouble and Bass — come together to put on a party in a downtown gallery. The event's off the main list, strictly for the cognoscenti, and the flyer (see below) promises free entry and drinks all night. The RSVP thing turned out to be a kinda joke: I'm guessing it was a legal dodge. "But officer, this is a private party, all these guests have RSVPed, and we're not selling any booze, so kindly go and arrest some criminals or something". The venue was a gallery, all right, but a gallery with a massive warehouse-like space attached, and a large outdoor patch of concrete as a chill-out area. The free drinks were for real, and there was a constant long queue for them, meaning the grinning guy across the road in the convenience store made a killing by staying open all night and selling beer and water to the impatient.

And yeah, it was a proper good party. Wild, bouncing, unpretentious crowd, killer tunes, sweat dripping off the walls (party in Spring in Miami in non-AC'd building = outrageous perspiration). Slightly dodgy soundsystem, occasional power outages, all a bit reminiscent of good old Matilda. We got there a bit before 12 and I don't know who was on, but it didn't sound too promising; the first thing I heard them drop was, err, Faithless' 'Insomnia' — straight up, no remix. Gulp. But anyway, whoever got off, and then Trouble and Bass came on. Oh me. If you don't know their stuff, check out some of the mixes on their blog. Big bassy tunes and drops and constant ear-banging breaks. Naturally, like every other hetero-bass-boy, I now have a medium-size crush on Star Eyes.

After that: Sega: OK, but not really feeling the whole metal mashup thing. I sort of see it, but you know, don't. Next up: Rusko: dubstep. Great for a bit, went on too long. It's 3am and I want to jump, not skank. But good all the same. Boy looks like a pikey.

Then the main event: Diplo. Oh, the man knows how to rock a party. Tunes and mashups and Baltimore and bass and baile, new stuff, old stuff, that horn riff recurring... and guess who he brought along as his MC and hype man? Lil' John. Yeah, I guess, why not? They're apparently working on tunes in the studio, so it makes sense. And whatever you think of the man's own records, he complemented the sound perfectly, hitting you with all those lines that only make sense in a club with a crowd who want them to make sense.

We left towards the end of Diplo's set -- it was 4:30am, getting to be more about endurance than enjoyment, and a half-hour walk across town was between us and transport to our beds. And apparently the guy on after him got his set cut short because things were shut down early by some of those law enforcement officials who think their job description includes the strict regulation of fun. So a well-timed exit. But all in all, ahhhh, so much fun. The kind of party where, if you happen to see someone you saw there somewhere else a while later — the supermarket, the street — and they clock you too, you exchange a sly smile and go on your way, because nothing more need be said.

Worst Form Ever

This post is something between a rant and a whine, and as self-indulgent as that sounds. Do excuse me, but I've been driven to this by the Student Loans Company. Reproduced below is the most confusing, ambiguous, ill-thought-out form I have ever had the misfortune to be asked to fill in. Don't worry if you can't make out the details (if you wanted to); I'm going to reproduce the salient points in the text.

There are bad signs from the start. The request in the first block of text to enter any "amends" of name and address on the next page doesn't speak well of the English of whoever wrote this. Nor does it say much for the SLC's efficiency that it requires three separate unique identifying codes to know who I am.

But let's pass over these minor quibbles and get to the real problems. The form, as it says at the top, is one that I should fill in if I'm overseas. The second block of text says that the purpose of the form is to establish my "employment status and potential earnings over the next 12 months". With these two things in mind, consider these requests for information:

"Please give the date you left (or will leave) the UK".
"Please give the date you will resume (or resumed) UK residency".

These are very odd questions. Firstly, If I'm filling out this form, I'm overseas. So the date I will leave the UK and the date I resumed UK residency aren't relevant bits of information. If either of those are dates I can give, I'm not overseas. Secondly, if the purpose is to determine my potential earnings over the next twelve months, the date I left (and the date I returned) is surely irrelevant. Thirdly, unless I'm going to resume UK residency within the next 12 months, the date I resume it is again irrelevant. So all the information requested is irrelevant to the stated purpose of the form.

Next, I'm asked to "tick the relevant box in section A or B" to indicate my current employment status. Section A contains various sorts of employment; Section B lists things you might be doing other than working. The obvious problem is that I am both employed (A) and pursuing further study (B). So to be accurate, I need to tick a box in both sections. Not a huge issue, maybe, but it suggests that the SLC just doesn't know its clientele. Almost every UK graduate studying in the US will be in a similar position to me.

Finally, and the last straw, is section C. Here, I'm asked to give my "Total Income". Just that. What the hell do they want to know? There are (at least) four plausible options:

i) Annual income over previous year;
ii) Predicted annual income over next year;
iii) Total earnings over stay abroad so far;
iv) Predicted total income over whole stay abroad.

Additionally, for each of those options, there are two sub-options. Is the figure meant to be gross or net of local taxes? So we have eight alternatives. Absolutely no indication is given as to which I'm supposed to provide, and I can hardly work it out from the rest of the form, given how confused that is.

I'm so tempted to send the form back uncompleted, with a letter outlining all these points as an explanation for my failure to fill it in. But, since the SLC is doing its best to get militant with me, I suppose I'll make a guess at what they're after and see what happens. Really, though. What a sorry piece of bureaucratic rubbish.

Rant over. Don't get too excited, though, the next post I have planned is about economics...