Ian Punnett

[Sardondi]

There are tenured professorships in broadcasting.  I don't believe there are in the other two.

Heh. Well, if he's getting his ticket punched. He's perfect for the academic setting, but I just can't believe that his lack of an advanced broadcasting degree would prevent his being hired at least as a lecturer in a respectable or even premier institution. I understand the essential labor-union and looking-after-their-own-rice-bowls attitudes which are all too often what is at the heart of academe's discounting of mastery in favor of the artificial hurdles of credentialing, but higher education has about priced itself out of the market.

Almost all colleges are permeated with meaningless courses of study which do little or nothing to prepare the student for a chosen career. The internet has probably already sounded the death knell of the administration-larded bricks-and-mortar universities. Students and their families are simply throwing money at schools that are already awash in funds, regardless of the lies the schools tell the DoE, the state or their alumni and angels. And all they're getting in return is an overgrown kid who is totally unprepared for a specific vocation, regardless of what the degree says. It's startling to remember that the grandparents and great-grandparents of today's college grads had already fought wars before they graduated, and had a job and often a spouse soon after they got a degree. Now it's just a credential that says, "I'm reasonably good at following instructions; I can usually meet a deadline; and I can work on my own as well as with a group; plus I can drink." You know, like 3d grade with beer.

[Agent : Orange]

I was under the impression Ian was going for his Ph.D in divinity studies, not broadcasting?

[Sardondi]

I was under the impression Ian was going for his Ph.D in divinity studies, not broadcasting?

That would make more sense. But Arizona? It sounds like a game of "Telephone". I'm starting to suspect a blend of a little fact and more fiction.

[GeorgieForPresident2216]

Heh. Well, if he's getting his ticket punched. He's perfect for the academic setting, but I just can't believe that his lack of an advanced broadcasting degree would prevent his being hired at least as a lecturer in a respectable or even premier institution. I understand the essential labor-union and looking-after-their-own-rice-bowls attitudes which are all too often what is at the heart of academe's discounting of mastery in favor of the artificial hurdles of credentialing, but higher education has about priced itself out of the market.

Almost all colleges are permeated with meaningless courses of study which do little or nothing to prepare the student for a chosen career. The internet has probably already sounded the death knell of the administration-larded bricks-and-mortar universities. Students and their families are simply throwing money at schools that are already awash in funds, regardless of the lies the schools tell the DoE, the state or their alumni and angels. And all they're getting in return is an overgrown kid who is totally unprepared for a specific vocation, regardless of what the degree says. It's startling to remember that the grandparents and great-grandparents of today's college grads had already fought wars before they graduated, and had a job and often a spouse soon after they got a degree. Now it's just a credential that says, "I'm reasonably good at following instructions; I can usually meet a deadline; and I can work on my own as well as with a group; plus I can drink." You know, like 3d grade with beer.

I'll agree and disagree.  Certainly having attended a Canadian university I was always given the impression that in general the U.S. educational system was quite poor, with typical American colleges having very low standards and not being much more than places to party and get a piece of paper.  I don't have any personal experience to back this up, and I don't think the above statement applies to graduate degrees.  Of course America also has some of the most highly reputed institutions in the world.  But in general, a college program is not designed to prepare for a specific job like technical or vocational schools.  It's designed to provide the student with broad and in-depth background knowledge as well as research skills. 

As an example my engineering education certainly didn't prepare me for the practical applications I was later faced with such as drafting, working with machining processes, or having any sort of feel for the steel or fasteners I needed to incorporate into my projects.  The learning curve was steep and it caused a lot of tension with my boss who had a more practical background and intuition for building mechanical devices.  But it gave me the theoretical basis I could apply to an extremely wide range of applications so I could at least start with setting up criteria for forces and material strength.

As for Ian, I don't remember him saying anything about lecturing.. I think it was something different.  But if he is able to lecture at the University level, I don't know of any place where you can attain a professorship without a doctorate degree.  You probably know more about graduate degrees than I do, but perhaps naively I think of a Ph.D. as being the bar of admittance into the academic community, proving your value by putting a published, peer reviewed paper to your name.

I think Agent Orange is right about his degree being for divinity studies.

[onan]

From the little I have looked at UofA in Tuscon, has a master's program in broadcasting... Perhaps there is a new program. Or perhaps with Ian's experience he is being granted some individual form of study. Never having been in a doctorate program I have no idea.


Either way hey ho.

[Mind Flayer Monk]

Its Arizona State http://cronkite.asu.edu/


I think its a pretty good decision. I see more media companies coming into existence over the next 10 years.
Public radio is due for a shakeout too.

[onan]

Yeah ASU has a doctorate in mass communication. I thought UofA was specified.

[Nebraska888]

I will miss Ian.   

[Sardondi]

I will miss Ian too...well, I miss the idea of Ian, as I quit listening a couple of years ago. But Ian was a necessary corrective to the show, a leavening agent to Noory and even Wells. That's gone now though. Noory's cunning plan continues. 

[coaster]

How can anyone not like Ian? He was a great host. I think he has a great sense of humor, and it really showed when he hosted the show.

[El Kragen]

I have to go back and listen to what I missed but overall Ian last show was really well done.  Ian, as usual, had his shit together. He knows his guests and topics and can formulate intelligent questions getting to the details that make the stuff interesting.

I laughed to myself thinking how Snoory's final show would play out. Having his favorite guests on asking the same three questions over and over and responding with the same three one word responses.

[Agent : Orange]

Uh... I also thought I heard a mention of University of Phoenix. Or did I hear wrong?

[Nebraska888]

I have to go back and listen to what I missed but overall Ian last show was really well done.  Ian, as usual, had his shit together. He knows his guests and topics and can formulate intelligent questions getting to the details that make the stuff interesting.

I laughed to myself thinking how Snoory's final show would play out. Having his favorite guests on asking the same three questions over and over and responding with the same three one word responses.

Agreed!  Ian's questions are always one or some of the following: reflective, enthralling, provocative, engrossing, intelligent, and most importantly, revealed to the listener that he had done his research concerning the topic and the guest.

Noory is back to his old standbys which he had, because of forums such as this, given up for a short period of time.  However, listen tonight.  You will hear his simplistic:

*  True
*   Absolutely
*  Absolutely true
*  Truly
*  That could be true
*  What do you think?
*  Well, that's true too

GOD HELP US.   

[VtaGeezer]

Uh... I also thought I heard a mention of University of Phoenix. Or did I hear wrong?

The Walter Cronkite School is part of ASU in Phoenix.

[VtaGeezer]

Heh. Well, if he's getting his ticket punched. He's perfect for the academic setting, but I just can't believe that his lack of an advanced broadcasting degree would prevent his being hired at least as a lecturer in a respectable or even premier institution. I understand the essential labor-union and looking-after-their-own-rice-bowls attitudes which are all too often what is at the heart of academe's discounting of mastery in favor of the artificial hurdles of credentialing, but higher education has about priced itself out of the market.

Almost all colleges are permeated with meaningless courses of study which do little or nothing to prepare the student for a chosen career. The internet has probably already sounded the death knell of the administration-larded bricks-and-mortar universities. Students and their families are simply throwing money at schools that are already awash in funds, regardless of the lies the schools tell the DoE, the state or their alumni and angels. And all they're getting in return is an overgrown kid who is totally unprepared for a specific vocation, regardless of what the degree says. It's startling to remember that the grandparents and great-grandparents of today's college grads had already fought wars before they graduated, and had a job and often a spouse soon after they got a degree. Now it's just a credential that says, "I'm reasonably good at following instructions; I can usually meet a deadline; and I can work on my own as well as with a group; plus I can drink." You know, like 3d grade with beer.

I agree...somewhat.  Our public higher education model is based on a 1920s model and is very badly broken.  The state of AZ has other serious ed priorities and has no business pissing one penny away on subsidies for such frivolous programs.  They should be left to the wealthy privately-endowed schools that can afford them. I also think tons of money are wasted in the redundancy of programs at virtually every state university branch, and it just fosters mediocrity (and lots of fat and early pensions).

[Tinfoil Hat]

I liked Ian and I thought he was one of the best left on C2C. However, I'll never forget that "Secrets of World War 2" show where the guest went on with all these obvious bold-faced lies about the war in the Pacific and Deacon Punnet didn't refute any of it. I have no doubt a man as well educated as Ian recognized it was all balderdash.

[Surmo]

Wasn't that World War II liar that Deitrich character?  Wells had him on later, and when I got on-air to try and refute him they shut me up and got me off the air immediately. He steamed me!

[SR-71]

July 14 2013 was the last C2Cam show. Ian i will miss you alot.

[Liam the runner]

If Knapp goes, then I am done with C2CAM!
He's the only host that I look forward to!

[PB the Deplorable]

...  And still trying to solve mysteries until the end.  I was surprised by his glowing words for Lisa Lyon.  I had always thought she was a Noory goon...

I think she's the one that does most of the show bookings.  If so, she IS a Noory goon.   

But Ian definitely got better guests than George Noory - I liked most of the offbeat topics and listened until he just became insufferable - so it makes sense he'd thank her. 

[Flaxen Hegemony]

I'll agree and disagree.  Certainly having attended a Canadian university I was always given the impression that in general the U.S. educational system was quite poor, with typical American colleges having very low standards and not being much more than places to party and get a piece of paper.  I don't have any personal experience to back this up, and I don't think the above statement applies to graduate degrees.  Of course America also has some of the most highly reputed institutions in the world.  But in general, a college program is not designed to prepare for a specific job like technical or vocational schools.  It's designed to provide the student with broad and in-depth background knowledge as well as research skills. 

As an example my engineering education certainly didn't prepare me for the practical applications I was later faced with such as drafting, working with machining processes, or having any sort of feel for the steel or fasteners I needed to incorporate into my projects.  The learning curve was steep and it caused a lot of tension with my boss who had a more practical background and intuition for building mechanical devices.  But it gave me the theoretical basis I could apply to an extremely wide range of applications so I could at least start with setting up criteria for forces and material strength.

As for Ian, I don't remember him saying anything about lecturing.. I think it was something different.  But if he is able to lecture at the University level, I don't know of any place where you can attain a professorship without a doctorate degree.  You probably know more about graduate degrees than I do, but perhaps naively I think of a Ph.D. as being the bar of admittance into the academic community, proving your value by putting a published, peer reviewed paper to your name.

I think Agent Orange is right about his degree being for divinity studies.

He could probably get a lecturer's or adjunct position with a Masters degree, and depending on the field of work, years of practical experience are often looked upon quite positively. I had the grave misfortune to chair an academic department on an interim basis (read: everyone else took a step back in the volunteer line), and finding adjuncts to cover classes was often difficult.  And once you found a good one, you called upon them a lot. The tenure and publishing system certainly isn't a fair one, resulting in a lot of full rank professors you'd want nowhere near the classroom, as well as high quality people who just didn't know the right people at the right time, and fell through the cracks.


Sardondi makes some good points about the types of classes offered and the quality of modern education, and much of it is due to the fact that nearly every decision within a university is essentially a turf war between departments and or colleges. And much like government, structures and programs are very easy to create, but nearly impossible to eliminate, because of tenure track faculty hiring done to lock in the programs existence. This is why you find laughably titled majors that are useless in the real world, and don't even educate students. They are placeholders for tenure lines, which bring research grants, which brings money for more tenure lines.  In the rare cases a program is eliminated, it saves little money, as the tenured lines aren't lost, but absorbed into other departments. This is why you can sometimes look down a list of profs in a dept and find one with a degree in a wildly different area. They are essentially an unwanted adoptee.


I managed the purse strings fairly well when I chaired a dept, hiring three of our top picks, furnishing labs for two of them with money to spare. But I think it was less to do with any skill on my part, and more to do with the leverage incurred by my interim status. I didn't have to make any back room deals, as I'd be returning to the regular faculty before my side of the deal came due.


Sorry for the off topic rant.

[VtaGeezer]

I think she's the one that does most of the show bookings.  If so, she IS a Noory goon.   

But Ian definitely got better guests than George Noory - I liked most of the offbeat topics and listened until he just became insufferable - so it makes sense he'd thank her.

Be kind...that poor woman has an impossible job; recruiting guests that won't make her boss look like a fool.

[GeorgieForPresident2216]

He could probably get a lecturer's or adjunct position with a Masters degree, and depending on the field of work, years of practical experience are often looked upon quite positively. I had the grave misfortune to chair an academic department on an interim basis....

Thank you.  It sounds like you are the perfect person to chime in on this subject and I appreciated having it to read.  It was certainly more enlightening than my Nooriish analysis.

[onan]

Sorry for the off topic rant.

Listen, Bub. We don't do anything off topic here.

[Nebraska888]

Listen, Bub. We don't do anything off topic here.

LOVE YOUR COMMENT!  TOO WONDERFUL!   

[SR-71]

Ian if you read this, please live long and prosper.

[PABellFan]

So, have I stumbled into the right place? Is this the post-Ian support group meeting? Hello, my name is PABellFan, and I'm an Ian Punnett groupie.


"Welcome PABellFan, keep working the program!"


Yeah, like someone mentioned above, as much as I loved Ian as a host, I too took him for granted and figured he'd be the last man standing to turn off the C2C lights someday. Didn't see this coming.


I don't care what his detractors say, Ian always brought his A-game, was always super-prepared, well-read on his guest's material, and capable of intelligent, thought-provoking questions. Basically, I should have just said everything that the other hosts are NOT (Knapp gets a pass here). Was he less than tolerant of some of the loonier callers? Sure.


The biggest loser here is probably Amazon - I can't tell you how many books I've ordered from them after Ian interviewed the author. Dozens. And never once did I buy someone's book after Snoory interviewed them. I'm sure I'm not alone in that.


I'm glad that they finally cleared up his bio. I'm probably the world's foremost Ian Punnett archivist and I've been trying over the years to compile the ultimate Ian Punnett box set. His C2C bio always said he started hosting in 1998, but I couldn't find any evidence of that whatsoever. Now they finally corrected it to March of 2000, and they listed his number of shows at about 550. I'm only missing about 100, all from the early years 2000 and 2001. I'd kill for those.


Thanks for listening. I regularly scour the Art Bell repositories on the interwebs for early Ian audio, so if anyone out there has some or is aware of a source for old shows, please let me know.

[Eddie Coyle]

Seriously, he's getting a graduate degree in broadcasting? Why not eating spaghetti? Or breathing?

Basket weaving an option? Sounds like the classes Tom Osborne or Bobby Bowden selected for his "student"/athletes.

[Nebraska888]

So, have I stumbled into the right place? Is this the post-Ian support group meeting? Hello, my name is PABellFan, and I'm an Ian Punnett groupie.


"Welcome PABellFan, keep working the program!"


Yeah, like someone mentioned above, as much as I loved Ian as a host, I too took him for granted and figured he'd be the last man standing to turn off the C2C lights someday. Didn't see this coming.


I don't care what his detractors say, Ian always brought his A-game, was always super-prepared, well-read on his guest's material, and capable of intelligent, thought-provoking questions. Basically, I should have just said everything that the other hosts are NOT (Knapp gets a pass here). Was he less than tolerant of some of the loonier callers? Sure.


The biggest loser here is probably Amazon - I can't tell you how many books I've ordered from them after Ian interviewed the author. Dozens. And never once did I buy someone's book after Snoory interviewed them. I'm sure I'm not alone in that.


I'm glad that they finally cleared up his bio. I'm probably the world's foremost Ian Punnett archivist and I've been trying over the years to compile the ultimate Ian Punnett box set. His C2C bio always said he started hosting in 1998, but I couldn't find any evidence of that whatsoever. Now they finally corrected it to March of 2000, and they listed his number of shows at about 550. I'm only missing about 100, all from the early years 2000 and 2001. I'd kill for those.


Thanks for listening. I regularly scour the Art Bell repositories on the interwebs for early Ian audio, so if anyone out there has some or is aware of a source for old shows, please let me know.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading your post.  Welcome!

[Siamesemama1]

Ian if you read this, please live long and prosper.

My sentiments exactly.  And may he find the cure for the tinnitus! Thank you for the show on the Wrecking Crew, my all time Ian fav