iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Also picked up this interesting monograph on antebellum (white) middle class American culture for a few bucks at a local Charlotte used bookstore #BlankGeneration recently. yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...

The front cover of Karen Halttunen’s “Confidence Men and Painted Women: A study of middle-class culture in America, 1830-1870.” The title is at the top in a mix of “Western” fonts on an orange background. Beneath is a linotype(?) of a collection of what the moralists would view as unsavory men AND women sharing pints in some bar or hall in a burgeoning 19th century American city.

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Despite having a pile of books I ought to finish, here is 5 new additions to the ‘Print is a #RentStrike’ collection as the new academic year begins. 🫣🫠 What books have y’all picked up recently, libraries included of course?

A short pile of 5 paperback books on an IKEA office desk:
“Capitalism is Dead: Is This Something Worse?” By McKenzie Wark
“The Public Scholar” by David Perry
“The Unaccountability Machine” by Dan Davies
“What Tech Calls Governing” by Adrian Daub
“The Psychology of Software Teams” by Cat Hicks

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

I finally got around to reading this, via my uni library access, and 😵 is this man high on his own supply. He scoffs at business consultants & their playbooks & two paragraphs latter floats his own rule-of-3 McKinsey-esque vaporware solution. 🙄 What a vapid farce.

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

And then we get this alongside it from a UPenn business school professor. Puts pep in my step this morning that IT sysadmins across the country are giving “AI” pushers the #BigSad.

Phone screenshot of the start of an Economist article by Wharton Business school professor Ethan Millicent titled “The IT department, where AI goes to die.” Which if the folks who best understand the impact of software on your business want this shit to DIE a quiet and ignominious death, maybe that should be telling you something important.

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

Seeing anti-AI sticker on the phone has nothing at ALL to do with this particular section being sponsored by one of the foremost slop peddlers. 🤔 Nope, just a coincidence.

Screenshot from a phone showing the Economists header for the section entitled “The new socialists, how dangerous are they?”. Right below said title is “Insider is supported by Anthropic”, one of the major players in the generative LLM chatbot bubble. One of the stickers on the back of the iPhone is a the letters AI with a red line through it. Which feels a little on the nose.

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

From the Claude Consumer Terms of Service <https://www.anthropic.com/legal/consumer-terms> It's a Stochastic Text Extruding "Machine" (ht @emilymbender.bsky.social for the fantastic term). It has no concept of truth or validity. The companies admit as much in their ToS.

Reliance on Outputs and Actions. Artificial intelligence and large language models are frontier technologies that are still improving in accuracy, reliability and safety. When you use our Services, you acknowledge and agree:

1. Outputs may not always be accurate and may contain material inaccuracies even if they appear accurate because of their level of detail or specificity.
2. Actions may not be error free or operate as you intended.
3. You should not rely on any Outputs or Actions without independently confirming their accuracy.
4. The Services and any Outputs may not reflect correct, current, or complete information.
5. Outputs may contain content that is inconsistent with Anthropic’s views.

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

Baked Potato skins are the Tuber Offal and ‘90s White Folks were very much “YES PLEASE!” 🎩 tip to my wife for the ☝🏻

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

So why the massive listed deficit Matt? Let's look at page 34 & 46 of the most recent years annual fiscal statement: www.nottingham.ac.uk/fabs/finance...

1. Please ignore the "movement of USS pension liability". It's an standard practice accounting thing. It's annoying AF when upper management uses Total Annual Surplus/Deficit as either a "YAY go us!" or "OH NO we must fire staff".
2. Excluding the pension liability, Nottingham would have run a £22m (2.6%) deficit in 2023/24. This years deficit is 9.9% of income, which is a seriously big number.
3. The BULK of that £85.3m deficit comes from "Impairment and write of tangible fixed assets" to the tune of £74.8m.
4. If it wasn't for the write off, Nottingham would still be running a deficit but at 1.2% of total income. Not great but definitely not catastrophic.

Page 46 of the 2024/25 financial statement is on the cost, depreciate, & whatnot of tangible fixed assets like buildings though other things too. And there are the impairments...

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

Let's talk about student fees... Student fee income did grow by 3% between 2023/24 and 2024/25 at Nottingham but a few years of stagnant growth given the brutal inflation in the years prior won't make up the difference.

A scatter plot using the 2023/24 data comparing how much of a Uni's income comes from student fees to how much of the student fee income comes from Home Students. Nottingham is in the middle of the pack on both metrics. Half their income comes from student fees and like 55% of fee income is from home students. This means that any decline in students, particular internationals due to Labour continuing the Tory immigration policies will hurt universities. Allowing tuition fees to rise for home students does help but does not offset the dramatic decline in international students in all but the most prestigious institutions.

This has a horrid effect that as the international pool shrinks, those that do come will more and more be concentrated at prestigious and already wealthy institutions. And those lower down the ladder need to make up that loss with home students, pulling them from other regional universities who rely more on those domestic undergraduates. Rob Peter to pay Paul. Piss flows down hill and all that I guess.

Another scatter plot this time comparing Net Cash flow from Ops to the percentage of income from student fees. Basically, if you rely more on students for your income, are you worse off? And in the bulk, not really. There are institutions financially struggling up and down the "student fee percentage of income" scale.

All that indicates is that the factors causing financial hardship across the sector are multifaceted. Anyone giving you simple answers is either intentionally ignorant or lying to you.

Nottingham saw since 2016/17 average growth of tuition income through to 2021/22 DESPITE a fixed (not inflation adjusted) fee level. This means letting in more students, particularly internationals to make up for the Gove cuts that started in 2012. But they had no growth in tuition income for 22/23 & 23/24 at the peak of the Ukraine / "post-pandemic" inflation spike. This is going to put any institution in a hole. They took in more money, in part due to Labour letting the home student tuition level rise in their first year in government, but that again, that won't make up the difference already lost. Also that flatline is right at the heel turn of the Tory government away from UKHE as a market export to actively trying to destroy it with government immigration policy. Partly to leave the shitpile of problems for the next Labour goverment to deal with.

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

The thing management often likes to trot out is that salary costs are TOO HIGH! You can find the pay-scales for the different job levels for Nottingham here: www.nottingham.ac.uk/hr/guidesand... Your average lecturer is NOT making £100k+.

Focusing on Nottingham, one has seen the average salary rise faster than the sector average in the last few years, and with the bullet point from the THE article about the jump in over 100k positions from 2024 to 2025, definitely something to this. BUT its not immediately obvious why? We would need to break down that block between
- teaching staff at the medical school
- senior tenured faculty
- upper level management
and then ask whether either pay rises or additional hiring in those high pay cohorts is sensible given the long standing budgetary issues.

Focusing again on Nottingham, it makes sense that with the increase in the average salary of the past few years, you would see an increase in the total proportion of annual income going to staff costs (salary + benefits) particularly as all institutions have been struggling with keeping income rising. But that's the thing, that line goes up if either income falls (non-exclusive) or costs rise.

Checking out staff costs as a percentage of annual expenditures, which is a bit more under the control of the university and takes out the ups and down of income, the Nottingham staff costs is a little flatter. Still above average for the sector but there are places that are FAR worse. Basically hovering between 54% and 57% which is a main UCEA cartel cost target.

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

Let's check how much borrowing & capital expenditure the University has been doing, as these have been the culprits at other institutions like Brighton or Sussex. AND... it's not profligate spending, at least from comparing across financial statements in the sector.

A swarm plot over the same timeframe as the other figures 2016/17 to 2023/24, this time showing what percentage of the Total Annual Expenditures goes to capital costs. NOTE: capital costs cover a LOT of things, not just new buildings to fluff the ego of your Vice Chancellor. Prior to 2020 Nottingham had a greater than average bit of expenditure, but for most of the past decade it has been below 10%, which itself as around or below the average for the sector. At a certain level, not spending enough on Capital Costs means you aren't repairing buildings or doing essential upgrades, which itself degrades the services & education an institution can provide. But looking at this, at least in recently there isn't any OMG so much unnecessary spending.

A swarm plot for UK higher ed from 2016/17 to 2023/24 for the amount of external borrowing relative to total income. Both the overall sector distributions AND university of Nottingham remain quite consistent over the 8 years. Nottingham's debt load is between 10% & 20%, far lower than most of the sector, which given its issues with cash flow makes sense. They aren't trying to serve an enormous debt load like other institutions relative to their income.

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

All the figures that follow use the latest year in the #HESA set (23/24) but I figure the 24/25 statement is similar. Nottingham is in a real hole. It kinda climbed out over Covid years but definitely has fallen back in.

Plot of the UK Higher Education institutions for 2023/24 comparing the Net cash flow from operating activities (X) vs the Total annual surplus (Y). The collection of dots has a blobby positive correlation. The University of Nottingham sadly finds itself in the bottom left quadrant with a total annual deficit of 3.5% or so and a barely above zero % net cash flow from Ops. There are institutions worse off, but its not where one wants to be in either measure. So we can be comfortable saying this financial problem is REAL.

A time series dot scatter plot (one dot per institution per year) of the "Net liquidity days" for each UKHE institution from 2016/17 to 2023/24. There is a wide range of scatter amongst institutions both among just the Russell Group and the rest. University of Nottingham has for those seven years been near the bottom in the fiscal measure ratio of (cash + investments) to (operating expenditure - depreciation). The green line that is Nottingham in this figure show it near zero for the first few years, rising just about the "sensible lower bound" of 60 days between 2020 and 2022 and then falling again. I don't have the "liquidity days" derived but given listed liquidity dropped to £59.2m in the last fiscal year, I expect it has gotten worse.

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 26/02/2026

Over at #TheBadPlace it’s pretty easy to just go and ask him, not that the little shit is trustworthy or seemingly has any self-reflective capabilities.

Thread on twitter between myself and Advait Palawan:

Me: Why did you take down the “Einstein” chatbot?

AP: Cease and Desist

Me: Really? Presumably from Canvas/Instructure, right?

AP: Due to the name Einstein

Me: Wow 😮 Like the Family Foundation or something? Damn dude.

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 26/02/2026

Seems like an accurate summary of his columns, at least to me.

Fake Allister Heath Sunday Telegraph column title heading: “the chilling reality of the continued existence of the Tory party proves the Tories were right all along.”

And then a sad little circle of his face below the headline with his name at “The Telegraph” as if we had forgotten what we were reading.

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

Yes, I am petty. @ucu.org.uk members, please do not give any #SWP member elected power in the union. They do not have the best interests of the broad membership at the heart of their mission. Their tenure controlling #NEC has been a string of public failures. NO to ANY #UCULeft candidates.

Sean Wallis, UCL faculty, answering the question of whether he is a member of the cultish (my words) Socialist Workers Party for nearly 40 years.

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 18/02/2026

Please let it be written in the same font as this. 🙏🏻 Though text in some anarchistic inspired scribble font would be an acceptable alternative.

Socialist Worker, the official publication of the Socialist Workers Party (Crackpot cultish Trotskyites). White sans-serif block lettering on a red background. The first i in Socialist has a red start with a white border instead of the dot.

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 17/02/2026

I use *rhetoric* as a descriptor intentionally, both as it feels like an accurate description and also that I expect any grey-beard engineering prof would bristle at such an accusation. Maybe a more appropriate identifier would be *marketing*, as the subsequent paragraph makes clear.

The first paragraph of the second section of the blogspot/paper, proports to lay out the unvarnished apolitical & uncontrovertible economic & technical reality that makes they policy proscription not only inarguable but necessary.

"Each high-performance computing transition has been driven by a combination of market forces and semiconductor economics, requiring the scientific computing community to develop and embrace new algorithms and software to use the systems effectively. Each time, there were those who initially resisted inevitability, only to suffer the consequences of delayed adoption, whether clinging to vector supercomputers or refusing to embrace scalable message passing. Today is no different. The scientific computing community must again adapt and embrace the new realities of our AI-dominated technology world."

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 17/02/2026

I honestly could not get past the literal use of the term *maxim*, because it is such an odd choice from (emerita) EECS professors. Why use a word that conjures in readers folk aphorisms and the pronouncements of 19th century political philosophers?

The final paragraph in the introduction section of the blogpost/paper:

"In this paper, we outline seven new maxims that define the present and the future of advanced scientific computing. From these new maxims, we conclude with a proposal for a “moon shot” to build a new foundation for future computer systems for research, one that would benefit both scientific computing and AI.."

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

The “I need to test how well the cukes are absorbing the brine, they might need more salt or vinegar, just one more to make sure” restorative #pickle. That’s in the recipe! 😇 I don’t make the rules.

A large glass jar of freshly made Dill & Garlic Half-Sour-ish pickles. Beyond the bright green cucumbers, slices of red online, garlic and parsley can be seen in the salt & vinegar brine. The jar has a metal wire hinge and a glass top with a thin white rubber seal. It is sitting on a somewhat messy white countertop. I wish I had pickles…

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 31/01/2026

With probably close to a foot of snow in the Charlotte metro (I think), it is NOW proper winter. This means that highs must never be above freezing until at least March. All further precip must be snow. ❄️ These are the rules!

Looking down an unplowed parking lot of a Charlotte apartment complex. 6” of fresh snow on the ground and more coming down.

Time to clean off the car before it piles up too much. Ground level shot of the apartment parking lot with snow.

Looking out my 3rd floor apartment window at a collection of snow covered cars.

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 23/01/2026

Is anyone else having issues seeing videos in posts (on here) that lack explicit URLs? It's occurring on the desktop version of @firefox.com 147.0.1 via Flatpak. Not seeing the issue on iphone mobile version. @support.bsky.team

A snapshot of a load error for a video in a bluesky post, black text on a white background that reads "An error occured while loading the video. Please try again." And then a black Retry button underneath that text.

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 12/01/2026

What was your most recent enjoyable purchase at a stationary shop? My desire was to draw straight lines at various angles to each other accurately without having to do mental trigonometry.

A package of clear plastic rulers, right angle triangles and a compass from the drafting tool company Staeder. It’s still in its packaging, so as to keep everything together til I get a proper pencil case.

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 13/11/2025

This shit is coming to Charlotte, NC starting this weekend it seems.

First page of a letter from Mecklenburg Counth Sheriff’s office regarding the arrival of CBP personnel in the city starting as early as Saturday, Nov 15th 2025. The Chief states that MCSO has not had any requests that they participate in any action and promises to pass along further information when it’s available.

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 19/07/2025

On flight from #CLT to #CMH at the start of my #PEARC25 journey. Doing some light pre-meeting reading while in route. 😇✊🏻

Red Book cover with Black & Yellow lettering of
"Cyberlibertarianism: The Right-Wing Politics of Digital Technology" by the late David Golumbia.

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 19/06/2025

Literally THE NEXT COMIC October 9th, two-thousand and ONE. 20 years of that shit and we knew from the jump. www.mnftiu.cc/2001/10/09/w...

First Panel (Guy 1 looking right on a corded phone):
Oh my God, this War On Terrorism is gonna rule! I can't wait until the war is over and there's no more terrorism!

Second Panel (Guy 2 looking left on a corded phone):
I know! Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War on Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore? It'll be just like that!

Third Panel (Guy 1 looking right on a corded phone):
Right! God, if only that War On Drugs hadn't been so effective! I could really use some fucking marijuana right now!

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 15/06/2025

Also still grinding my way through this beast of a PhD thesis project turned monograph. And always keeping our current era of #Gleichschaltung in mind as I go.

The title page of a late 60s era academic monograph

Fritz K. Ringer
The Decline of the German Mandarins
The German Academic Community, 1890-1933
Harvard University Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1969

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 03/05/2025

Inspired by the @inbedwiththeright.bsky.social month by month slog through #Project1933, I have Fritz Ringer's PhD thesis on "German (academic) Mandarins". But is there anything more recently published on this topic? 🤔 Gotta be *some* new incites in the last 55 years.

Title page of a 50+ year old monograph

- Fritz Ringer
- The Decline of the German Mandarins: the German Academic Community, 1890-1933
- Harvard University Press, Boston, Massachusetts
- 1969

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 19/04/2025

My pasty sunburnt self is enjoying fried chicken, rice & beans, and cabbage for lunch in far North Charlotte. For all the folks being food foolish, particularly @ southern US cooking, just NO. Also, 1960s/70s white folk food fads existed. There are so many more deserving targets.

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

The true protectors of American universities have arrived.

A Canada goose roosting at the corner of a brick and concrete building looking out across campus. Tolerating the humans below.

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 22/01/2025

Second day of work after an unexpected dusting of snow here in Charlotte.

A photo of a laptop somewhat precariously perched on a pine wood end table in my apartment bedroom. The bright winter afternoon sun shines through as an adjacent apartment building is visible through the blinds.

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 21/01/2025

First day at the new job! ✊🏻 Not felt cold like this since leaving Helsinki in 2021.

Looking down a brick & masonry stone building lined walkway on the UNC Charlotte campus. It's a cold day (21F / -6C) and everyone is bundled up. The sky is a bright grey befitting January. We may get some snow flakes today.

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 16/12/2024

Appropriate music on the flight to the USA.

phone screen shot of Pandora station which is playing Simon & Garfunkel's "Homeward Bound"

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 15/12/2024

Last full day in the UK, probably for a while. Been a US émigré for 6 years. Now we wait for a taxi to the train station.

A collection of luggage in an otherwise empty living room of a British flat. grey/white Samsonite suitcase stands upright on the left. smaller olive colored bags sit on the floor, leaning against a bright blue bicycle box. Atop said box, staring whistfully out the window is a small black lab beanie baby.

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 13/12/2024

Last work day in #Exeter Research IT. Many thanks to the colleagues here and across the UK that have made this sojourn entertaining. ✊🏻 Onwards to Charlotte, NC.

My goofy scraggly face wearing a sweatshirt, headphones around my neck and wearing a olive green backpack. Posing for a selfie outside the door to the IT office, which is undergoing needed renovations for the first time in decades as I am walking out the door. Above the fire door is a narrow blue placard that says "IT Services" in white, somewhat hard to read (no fill) stencil letters.

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 10/12/2024

Here are the five criteria that make up a *fully* distributed data processing system, an analysis that I think still holds up pretty well 55 years on.

Therefore what is presented might be considered the "research and development" definition of distributed data processing systems. This definition has five components:

* A multiplicity of general-purpose resource components, including both physical and logical resources, that can be assigned to specific tasks
on a dynamic basis. Homogeneity of physical resources is not essential.
* A physical distribution of these physical and logical components of the system interacting through a communication network. (A network uses a two-party cooperative protocol to control the transfers of information.)
* A high-level operating system that unifies and integrates the control of the distributed components. Individual processors each have their own local operating system, and these may be unique.
* System transparency, permitting services to be requested by name only. The server does not have to be identified.
* Cooperative autonomy, characterizing the operation and interaction of both' physical and logical resources.

These properties and operating characteristics are present in a number of systems to varying degrees, providing some of the benefits listed in the table. However, only the combination of all of the criteria uniquely defines distributed data processing systems.

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 10/12/2024

While the late author, understandably given his background and the time period, argues that this is "not anarchy", I know at least one scholar of #anarchist #constitutionalizing that may disagree.

A small black labrador beanie baby is positioned to make it look like it is reading a small book entitled "Anarchic Agreements: a Field Guide to Collective Organizing". It is very cute. If I remember correctly the photo was taken in a hotel bar as I was waiting for dinner at a trade union annual meeting.

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 10/12/2024

This segment of the 1978 paper by Prof. Philip J Enslow on #distributed computing system remains thoroughly lodge in my mind. Particularly when contemplating the *intrinsic* politics of a particular technology. ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/doc...

Cooperative autonomy

This is the final, and perhaps most important, essential ingredient. A distributed data processing system must be designated so that the operations of all components or resources, both physical and logical, are very highly autonomous. At the physical level, this may be accomplished by the use of network transmission protocol in which the transmission of a message requires cooperative actions by both the sender and the receiver. At the logical level, between processes, the same degree of cooperation must exist. Further, any resource must be able to refuse a request for service, even after it has accepted the physical message. This is a result of the fact that there is no hierarchy of control within
the system.

This is not anarchy. All components follow a "master plan," which is reflected in the philosophy of the high-level operating system. This mode of operation should be described as cooperative autonomy rather than simply autonomy. A high degree of autonomy between all components is essential to attaining many of the benefits listed in the table, and this characteristic of system operation and component interaction will result only from meeting all of the five criteria of the definition.

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

If I may be a bit presumptive, here is Hull change in tuition income. 😇🫣

A time series line plot for each UK university showing the cumulative growth or lack there of income from student tuition fees from 2016/17 to 2022/23. The University of Hull's values are called out with bigger green circles on the figure and basically has remained static at 0% for that whole 7 year span. The values do not take into account inflation.

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

Should have made this figure before replying, but yes, it's tuition income is down 10% on 2016/17 numbers NOT including inflation! 🫣 Inflation cumulatively across this time band is around 25%.

Time series of cumulative change in tuition fee income for each individual UKHE institution. While there is a massive scatter, the important point for this post is that the University of Brighton has seen its income slightly decline between the 2016/17 and 2022/23.

From the Office of National Statistics, the CPIH inflation index has seen a nearly 25% rise in that same period. So while management in Brighton has not helped matters, declining revenue is deadly, especially with the inflation we have seen over the past few years.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/timeseries/l522/mm23

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

But what about capital spending, you may shout? Eh... its a mixed bag from the broader numbers. Given stagnant income, heavy capital spending is ill-advised but also it didn't break operating cash flow. External borrowing wasn't excessive.

This is an annual swarm plot (https://seaborn.pydata.org/examples/scatterplot_categorical.html) showing the amount of external long term borrowing as a percentage of annual income. A general rule of thumb is around 50% or lower is a reasonable range.

Only in 2019/2020 was the borrowing above that level. CCCU's rate hovered around 30% between 2016 & 2022, which is notable given its financial constraints in the first few years of that timespan.

While I have no doubt there are cash flow stipulations on the university from its lenders, what it owes doesn't seem to be a massive burden on its finances. But this is only what I can see from public data.

Another annual swarm plot, this time showing the capital expenditure costs as a function of total annual expenditures. The sector average is around 10% and the two years of 2019 & 2020 saw CCCU run at nearly 25%. I am not sure if this is taking advantage of pandemic support or long planned out projects. It's not a great look given the university's income had been stagnant for several years.

I will defer to the locals to tease out what these capital expenditures were going towards and what ROI they might have come now. Given the burst during low interest rates, it's not surprising that expenditures are down in the last few years of our data set.

Another another swarm plot.
This time showing the net cash flow from Operations Activities (like tuition fees minus staff salaries) as a proportion of total income. This is often a better metric than annual surplus/deficit which also lumps in financial costs (depreciation, fees to lenders, investment income) unrelated to actually being a university.

Honestly, for such constrained tuition fees situation, the university has had decent cash flow over this entire span. This done continuously on the backs of real world staff pay cuts, amongst other things, but still. There are MANY institutions in much more dire financial situations than CCCU through this period, as the figure shows.

The university has stayed above the "lowerbound" of 5% positive cash flow, which dozens of institutions, particular non-Russell group ones are below it or in the red.

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

And with tuition fees fixed by previous governments since 2016, the only way to up income is MORE students. CCCU seems to have struggled with this until 21/22, but remember, all of this tuition growth is NOT due to international students.

A line plot for every university showing the cumulative growth in tuition fee income since 2016/17 each year til 2022/23. Again using the Russell Group vs Not color differentiation.

Canterbury Christ Church had its tuition income flat lining until 2021/22 fiscal year. It is now at a 120% increase over the 2016 value. I can only guess the change was the university decided to let in more students.

We wont know the 2023/24 numbers until end of December.

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

Not to preempt @davehitchcock.bsky.social's righteous fury but here is some background on CCCU's fiscal situation. Admittedly the latest data i have is from 2022/23 fiscal statement, but again ... context. The Uni is almost solely reliant on home student tuition fees.

A scatterplot showing each UK university's percentage of income from student fees vs how much of those student fees come from home students. The two colors are Russell Group (and not) in orange & blue respectively. The Russell Group members are far less reliant both on tuition overall and on home students for their tuition fees.

Canterbury Christchurch sits in the far upper right corner of the figure, showing that it is incredibly reliant on home student fees for its annual income. So any change in that will drastically affect their operations cash flow.

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 06/11/2024

Had an enjoyable time at the book signing put on by Mr. B's and hosted by Bath Elim Church.

The inside of a round (Georgian?) church with large yellow sandstone common across Bath. The old stone is visible at the upper levels but the ground floor is carpeted and all the modern electronic accoutrement. Little white Christmasy lights any from the ceiling.

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 05/11/2024

Without downloading any new pics, where are you mentally?

a card stock invite from the "Friends of Silvina" to join Unitopia, "the future is sustainable". It was part of a promotion for Jeff Vandermeer's book, "Hummingbird Salamanders."

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 05/11/2024

Refreshing my memory of #AreaX and the #SouthernReach on my train ride up to Bath this afternoon before the #Absolution event at Mr B's. @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social

An IPad on a train table displaying the title page of Jeff Vandermeer's book "Annihilation". Above it propped up again a bag is a card stock encouraging us to "Enter Silvina's Dream" and join Unitopia with three hummingbird salamanders on it.

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Generic white guy SysAdmin @westbynoreaster.bsky.social · 02/11/2024

Also 2016 broke me. What I saw outside the local cop bar in the early morning after the election.

A piece of 4 by 8 foot sheet rock leaning up against a "windy road" in the light of car headlights. On the front in spray paint reads: "Put Hillary where she belongs, in jail." On the reverse (not visible) is "I love Wilileaks Go Trump"

It's in the depths of the late night after the 2016 election.

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