August 17th, 2010
Education News
Roundup
Articles posted by five reliably interesting sources of
news about higher education.
LEAP NLC Member Martha
Nussbaum Featured in
Washington Post Blog
Source: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/political-bookworm/2010/08/
poor_education_poor_democracy.html
August 17th, 2010
Worried about our cultural – and economic – decline? Take
a look at the thrust of our educational system, says Martha
C. Nussbaum, a professor of law and ethics at the University
of Chicago. In “Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the
Humanities,” recently released by Princeton University Press,
Nussbaum argues that our nation suffers because the goal
of our educational programs is to teach students how make
money rather than how to think critically as knowledgeable
and empathetic citizens. Focusing on profitable skills rather
than the humanities has weakened literacy, factual knowledge,
artistic sensibility and the regard for humanity itself,
Nussbaum contends. Here, she explains how educational
myopia weakens our democracy.
By Martha C. Nussbaum
Where is education headed in our country? This is no trivial
question. Democracy stands or falls with its people and their
habits of mind, and education produces those habits of mind.
Nonetheless, we are seeing radical changes in both pedagogy
and curricular content, and these changes have not been well
thought through. Eager for economic growth, our nation, like
many others, has begun to think of education in narrowly
instrumental terms, as a set of useful skills that can generate
short-term profit for industry. What is getting lost in the
competitive flurry is the future of democracy.
As Socrates knew long ago, any democracy is a “noble but
sluggish horse.” It needs lively watchful thought to keep it
awake. This means that citizens need to cultivate the skill for
which Socrates lost his life: the ability to criticize tradition
and authority, to keep examining self and other, to accept
no speech or proposal until one has tested it with one’s
very own reasoning. By now psychological research confirms
Socrates’ diagnosis: people have an alarming capacity to defer
to authority and to peer pressure. Democracy can’t survive if
we don’t limit these baneful tendencies, cultivating habits of
inquisitive and critical thought.
Published by: philosophyandrew
Citizens also need historical knowledge, the basics of the
major world religions, and how the global economy works.
This historical teaching needs to include a Socratic element:
students need to learn to evaluate evidence, to think for
themselves about the different ways in which it can be put
together, and brought to bear on current reality. (Imagine a
jury system in which people have not learned such skills.)
Finally, they need to be able to imagine how the world looks to
someone in a position very different from their own. That may
sounds very “squishy,” but it too lies at the heart of our system
of justice, which asks jurors to imagine what a “reasonable
person” would think and feel in a wide range of situations.
It also lies at the heart of good relations among citizens who
differ by race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation: instead
of seeing different people as “other,” and, all too often, as mere
“things,” democracy requires us to learn to see those others
as fully equal human beings, with aims and purposes of their
own.
How do people learn that? We all come into the world with a
rudimentary capacity for “positional thinking,” thinking from
another’s viewpoint, but it typically operates narrowly, in the
sphere of the familiar, and it needs deliberate cultivation --
through literature and the arts, taught along with a historical
dialogue that is critical in the Socratic fashion.
And yet, all over the world, the humanities, the arts, and even
history are being cut away to make room for profit-making
skills. When such changes are made, business itself suffers,
because healthy business cultures need creativity and critical
thinking, as leading business educators have long stressed.
Even were this not true, however, the liberal arts are essential
for the type of government we have chosen and for the type of
America we have long aspired to be.
Scenes From A Conference
Source: http://acrlog.org/2010/08/16/scenes-from-a-conference/
By StevenB on August 17th, 2010
Scenes from a Conference – Part 1
Speaker: I hate PowerPoint. That’s why I’m using Prezi for my
presentation today. Who (asks audience) uses Prezi? (a few
hands go up).
Speaker: Yeah! (fist pump) Prezi is so cool.
Speaker’s first slide: Two bullet points. Speaker proceeds to
talk over first slide for five minutes with no additional Prezi
action.
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August 17th, 2010
Speaker’s second slide: Four bullet points. Speaker reads them
off the slide. Wait. There was a really cool transition between
slides one and two. Looks like a circle rotating. Impressive.
Speaker’s third slide: A screenshot that is impossible to read
from anywhere in the room. But the transition from slide two
to slide three was amazing – looks like slide three came out of
nowhere.
Speaker’s fourth slide: Another impossible to see/interpret
visual. Oh wait. It’s a graph. Speaker proceeds to explain it in
detail while talking to the slide.
Speaker’s remaining slides: You get the idea.
Yes sir Mr. Cool Speaker. Using Prezi instead of PowerPoint
certainly did make for a rockin’ presentation.
Point: It really doesn’t matter if you use PowerPoint or Prezi
or no visuals at all. If you fail to put preparation, passion
and practice into your presentation it’s going to be a bad
experience for the audience. Remember that your presentation
is about the audience and giving them a great experience, not
showing them cool presentation technology. If you do want
to try new presentation technology – go for it – but only if it
serves the goal of enhancing the experience for the audience
and the technology plays only a supporting role. Done well,
the audience should hardly even notice it. They should be too
engaged with your message and delivery.
Scenes from a Conference – Part 2
Speaker One: Thanks for attending my session. However, I’m
sorry that I don’t have a PowerPoint (one person claps). I hope
that won’t be a problem for you. I’ll do the best I can without
them.
Speaker Two: Thanks for attending my session. The first thing
I want to tell you is that I don’t have any PowerPoint slides.
Then again, I don’t use it. PowerPoint is bad.
There’s no rule dictating that as a conference presenter you
must use visuals, whether it’s PowerPoint, Prezi or anything
else. So if you opt to just talk to the audience without visuals,
that’s fine. What’s not so great is when presenters without
visuals do one of the following:
(a) Apologize for not having visuals
(b) Proudly assert that there are no visuals
In the case of (a) the speaker feels that he or she is somehow
disappointing the audience by failing to offer visuals. The
speaker may not realize that the audience really isn’t all that
concerned about the lack of visuals – unless the speaker’s topic
could be better understood with some visual evidence.
In the case of (b) the speaker appears to be reveling in their
choice to not use slides. He or she seems intent on letting the
audience know he or she is a rebel who is bucking the trend by
just talking without visuals. He or she wants everyone to know
how different they are.
Point: No matter what the situation is, visuals or none,
just don’t mention it at all. It’s not a good way to start a
presentation. The audience really doesn’t care if you have
visuals or not, nor do they need to hear you apologize or boast
– whatever the case may be. The audience came to your session
to hear what you have to say about the topic – to hear your
Published by: philosophyandrew
message – not to hear you make pronouncements unrelated to
the topic. So just get right to your talk. The audience will figure
out pretty quickly that you don’t have visuals, and as long as
the presentation succeeds at communicating the message, the
audience will leave having had a good learning experience.
Bonus Tip: Avoid the impulse to start your presentation by
giving an overview of your institution (e.g. student profile,
number of books in the library, etc) and accompanying photos.
I still encounter far too much of this at library conferences.
The urge to do so is understandable because it’s something all
speakers are comfortable with, and having something you’ll
easily remember, and which is easy to present, is a way to
get over the “start of the presentation jitters”. Again, the
presentation is not about you and your comfort level – it’s
about the audience and what they came to hear.
For your next presentation consider challenging yourself by
starting with the most important piece of information the
audience should hear (e.g., the results of your study, what you
learned from your new student orientation program, etc), and
if possible present it as a personal story – which is just as
easy for a presenter to remember. If you want to talk about
your library or institution you should be able to find multiple
points throughout the presentation to slip those things in.
For example: “So I was telling you about our new student
orientation program. Big State U enrolls 10,000 freshmen
each year – and that brings our total enrollment up to 50,000
FTEs.”
If you need to hear this from another source take a look at this
blog post over at The Eloquent Woman – which is actually a
pretty good blog for presentation tips and ideas.
What Your Frosh Don't Know
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/17/beloit
August 17th, 2010
One ritual of the start of the academic year is the release
of Beloit College's annual "mindset list," which aims to help
professors understand what their new freshmen experienced
(and didn't) growing up. While some items on the list are,
of course, related to technology, many reflect the cultural
and political world views of today's 18-year-olds. The list
was created by Tom McBride, the Keefer Professor of the
Humanities at Beloit, and Ron Nief, the former public affairs
director. This year's list reflects a world in which students need
not wear watches, China has always been an economic threat
and Sam Walton, Burt Parks and Tony Perkins have always
been dead.
Here is the list:
1. Few in the class know how to write in cursive.
2. E-mail is just too slow, and they seldom if ever use snail mail.
3. “Go West, Young College Grad” has always implied “and
don’t stop until you get to Asia… and learn Chinese along the
way.”
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August 17th, 2010
4. Al Gore has always been animated.
5. Los Angelinos have always been trying to get along.
6. Buffy has always been meeting her obligations to hunt down
Lothos and the other blood-suckers at Hemery High.
7. “Caramel macchiato” and “venti half-caf vanilla latte” have
always been street corner lingo.
8. With increasing numbers of ramps, Braille signs, and
handicapped parking spaces, the world has always been trying
harder to accommodate people with disabilities.
9. Had it remained operational, the villainous computer HAL
could be their college classmate this fall, but they have a
better chance of running into Miley Cyrus’s folks on Parents’
Weekend.
10. A quarter of the class has at least one immigrant parent,
and the immigration debate is not a big priority … unless it
involves “real” aliens from another planet.
11. John McEnroe has never played professional tennis.
12. Clint Eastwood is better known as a sensitive director than
as Dirty Harry.
13. Parents and teachers feared that Beavis and Butt-head
might be the voice of a lost generation.
14. Dr. Kevorkian has never been licensed to practice
medicine.
15. Colorful lapel ribbons have always been worn to indicate
support for a cause.
16. Korean cars have always been a staple on American
highways.
17. Trading Chocolate the Moose for Patti the Platypus helped
build their Beanie Baby collection.
18. Fergie is a pop singer, not a princess.
Published by: philosophyandrew
19. They never twisted the coiled handset wire aimlessly
around their wrists while chatting on the phone.
20. DNA fingerprinting and maps of the human genome have
always existed.
21. Woody Allen, whose heart has wanted what it wanted, has
always been with Soon-Yi Previn.
22. Cross-burning has always been deemed protected speech.
23. Leasing has always allowed the folks to upgrade their tastes
in cars.
24. “Cop Killer” by rapper Ice-T has never been available on a
recording.
25. Leno and Letterman have always been trading insults on
opposing networks.
26. Unless they found one in their grandparents’ closet, they
have never seen a carousel of Kodachrome slides.
27. Computers have never lacked a CD-ROM disk drive.
28. They’ve never recognized that pointing to their wrists was
a request for the time of day.
29. Reggie Jackson has always been enshrined in
Cooperstown.
30. “Viewer Discretion” has always been an available warning
on TV shows.
31. The first computer they probably touched was an Apple II;
it is now in a museum.
32. Czechoslovakia has never existed.
33. Secondhand smoke has always been an official carcinogen.
34. “Assisted Living” has always been replacing nursing
homes, while hospice has always been an alternative to
hospitals.
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August 17th, 2010
35. Once they got through security, going to the airport has
always resembled going to the mall.
36. Adhesive strips have always been available in varying skin
tones.
37. Whatever their parents may have thought about the
year they were born, Queen Elizabeth declared it an “Annus
Horribilis.”
38. Bud Selig has always been the commissioner of Major
League Baseball.
39. Pizza jockeys from Domino’s have never killed themselves
to get your pizza there in under 30 minutes.
40. There have always been HIV positive athletes in the
Olympics.
41. American companies have always done business in
Vietnam.
42. Potato has always ended in an “e” in New Jersey per vice
presidential edict.
43. Russians and Americans have always been living together
in space.
44. The dominance of television news by the three networks
passed while they were still in their cribs.
45. They have always had a chance to do community service
with local and federal programs to earn money for college.
46. Nirvana is on the classic oldies station.
47. Children have always been trying to divorce their parents.
48. Someone has always gotten married in space.
49. While they were babbling in strollers, there was already a
female poet laureate of the United States.
50. Toothpaste tubes have always stood up on their caps.
51. Food has always been irradiated.
Published by: philosophyandrew
52. There have always been women priests in the Anglican
Church.
53. J.R. Ewing has always been dead and gone. Hasn’t he?
54. The historic bridge at Mostar in Bosnia has always been a
copy.
55. Rock bands have always played at presidential inaugural
parties.
56. They may have assumed that parents’ complaints about
Black Monday had to do with punk rockers from L.A., not Wall
Street.
57. A purple dinosaur has always supplanted Barney Google
and Barney Fife.
58. Beethoven has always been a dog.
59. By the time their folks might have noticed Coca Cola’s new
Tab Clear, it was gone.
60. Walmart has never sold handguns over the counter in the
lower 48.
61. Presidential appointees have always been required to be
more precise about paying their nannies’ withholding tax, or
else.
62. Having hundreds of cable channels but nothing to watch
has always been routine.
63. Their parents’ favorite TV sitcoms have always been
showing up as movies.
64. The U.S, Canada, and Mexico have always agreed to trade
freely.
65. They first met Michelangelo when he was just a computer
virus.
66. Galileo is forgiven and welcome back into the Roman
Catholic Church.
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August 17th, 2010
67. Ruth Bader Ginsburg has always sat on the Supreme Court.
68. They have never worried about a Russian missile strike on
the U.S.
69. The Post Office has always been going broke.
70. The artist formerly known as Snoop Doggy Dogg has
always been rapping.
71. The nation has never approved of the job Congress is doing.
72. One way or another, “It’s the economy, stupid” and always
has been.
73. Silicone-gel breast implants have always been regulated.
74. They’ve always been able to blast off with the Sci-Fi
Channel.
75. Honda has always been a major competitor on Memorial
Day at Indianapolis.
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A Challenge to Admissions
Groups
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2010/08/17/kimberling
August 17th, 2010
Groucho Marx once defined politics as “the art of looking for
trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it, and then applying the
wrong remedies.” This month’s hearing of the Senate Health,
Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, especially the
evidence of blatant fraud brought out in the testimony of the
Government Accountability Office’s Gregory D. Kutz, certainly
Published by: philosophyandrew
seemed to demonstrate that trouble has been found in the
admissions processes of some for-profit sector postsecondary
institutions.
How it will be diagnosed and treated remains to be seen,
though it is a reasonable bet that the U.S. Department of
Education’s proposed repeal of the 14 “safe harbor” provisions
related to the legislative prohibition of sales commissions will
see its way to final rules in the near future. Re-regulation is not
likely to stop there, however. The committee’s chairman, Sen.
Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), made it clear during the August hearing
that regulations can be changed by different administrations,
suggesting that he will push for statutory amendments beyond
whatever this Education Department chooses to do.
Suggesting that he will not stop short of measures that ensure
“the highest level of integrity” in admissions, Harkin ended
the six-hour hearing with a lengthy soliloquy in which he
opined that the regulatory structure of the Title IV student
aid programs makes the mistake of “privatizing the profit
and socializing the risk.” This sounds like the beginning
of a diagnosis statement, though I will leave it up to the
good readers of this estimable publication to decide if the
senator’s explanatory framework for the motives underlying
for-profit sector admissions practices is within the parameters
of Groucho’s dictum.
Instead, I would like to suggest that it is time for action
by the two leading professional organizations that deal
with collegiate admissions -- the National Association for
College Admissions Counseling (NACAC) and the American
Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers
(AACRAO).
Both of these organizations have been on the sidelines
of the current debate, occasionally calling in a play to
various quarterbacks. NACAC’s director of public policy
and research, David Hawkins, testified before the HELP
Committee, endorsing the abolition of safe harbors and
promoting the virtues of NACAC’s “Statement of Principles
of Good Practice.” He noted, accurately I might add, that his
organization was founded in the 1930s to ensure that the
interests of prospective students were always paramount. He
stated that any form of commission based upon achieving
enrollment numbers winds up “boiling the student out of the
equation.”
What Hawkins failed to disclose is that NACAC prohibits for-
profit institutions from becoming members of its organization.
On the “Institutional Membership” page of NACAC’s website,
there is a boldfaced warning that “Institutions that award a
degree or a diploma and are operated for profit (proprietary)
are not eligible for membership.” Thus, NACAC does not
even present the opportunity to for-profit institutions to
subscribe to its Statement of Principles of Good Practice and
demonstrate by their deeds that they are capable of conducting
their affairs with “the highest level of integrity.”
NACAC continues to maintain “separate but unequal”
admissions cultures by this exclusionary policy at a time when
regional and programmatic accreditors, the American Council
on Education, and even AACRAO have opened their doors
to for-profits. Why? What is there to lose if NACAC were to
decide to integrate the ranks of admissions officers from all
5
August 17th, 2010
sectors of higher education and, perhaps by doing so, spread
some enlightenment about the thinking behind its culture of
student-oriented caring and counseling?
Is NACAC afraid it will find a few for-profits actually doing
the right thing? Does it fear its membership will be tainted by
the outsiders? Is NACAC engaged in monopolistic collusion to
eliminate for-profit competition? Or has NACAC simply not
re-thought this matter? I ask these questions honestly and
guilelessly. I am simply puzzled that NACAC appears to be
rejecting an opportunity to provide positive leadership in the
voluntary, non-governmental arena.
AACRAO has a similar opportunity. As already noted,
membership in AACRAO has been open for many years
to degree-granting for-profit institutions accredited by an
accrediting agency recognized by the Council for Higher
Education Accreditation. These same qualifications apply
equally to public and nonprofit institutions.
A statistical report prepared recently for AACRAO’s Board
of Directors and published on the association’s website
notes that 9 percent of AACRAO’s institutional members are
from the for-profit sector. AACRAO itself has a “Statement
of Professional Ethics and Practice,” adherence to which
is expected from all members, including the 9 percent of
institutional members that are for-profit. AACRAO is to be
commended for its inclusive policies.
Yet more could be done by AACRAO. For example, there
are no for-profit institutions represented on AACRAO’s
Board of Directors or, for 2010-11, on its key committees
on “Admissions Policies and Practices,” “Recruitment and
Marketing,” “Enrollment Management and Retention,” and
“Financial Aid and Enrollment Services.” While this failure
to engage 9 percent of its membership in such important
association affairs may be unintentional, it nevertheless
should be examined, with an eye toward reaping the benefits
of fostering constructive dialog and collaboration.
While the public statements of AACRAO’s associate executive
director, Barmak Nassirian, have roundly criticized the for-
profit sector, a careful reading of his lengthier statements
reveals that he does not appear to tar all for-profits with the
same brush. Were that to be the case, Nassarian would be in a
conflict-of-interest position as an employee of an organization
taking membership dues from institutions he does not believe
should exist. I believe Nassarian would be on firmer ground as
a representative of his association if AACRAO were to be more
open to including for-profit sector administrators in its senior
leadership structure, rather than relegating them for whatever
reason to the lesser committees.
We have yet to see what remedies are constructed within
the political arena. Hopefully they will not reflect a pattern
of misdiagnosis, in the Groucho Marxist scheme of things.
An objective historian of higher education over the past
century would likely note that more changes in the governance
structures and practices of American colleges and universities
have come about as a result of sincere hard work by various
accreditors and associations on behalf of this most important
social institution than by the shifting tides of legislative and
regulatory actions.
Published by: philosophyandrew
It is thus time for NACAC and AACRAO to move from the
sidelines onto the playing field.
C. Ronald Kimberling was the assistant secretary for
postsecondary education during the Reagan Administration.
He has held teaching, administrative, and governance
positions in public, independent nonprofit, and for-profit
institutions in his 38-year career.
Responsibilities Under the supervision of the Associate
Director of Admission - Recruitment and Admissions, and the
direct guidance of the Director of ...
Who's on First?
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/17/doubleheaders
August 17th, 2010
A sports conference that always scheduled weekday basketball
doubleheaders in which women’s teams played the first game
-- letting the men play in the later time slot -- has altered
the practice, after an anonymous sex discrimination complaint
charged that this made the women’s games appear to be a
“warm-up” act for the men’s games.
Now, hoping to avoid possible gender equity suits, other
athletic conferences are considering similar scheduling
changes.
Last month, the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletics
Conference announced that it would alternate from season to
season the order in which men’s and women’s teams would
play in doubleheaders. The men will play first this season, and
the women will play first next season.
Dell Robinson, the conference commissioner, said the decision
was made after the league received an inquiry in March from
the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.
An anonymous complaint filed with the agency argued that
the negative connotation conveyed by always having women’s
teams play first in these doubleheaders was detrimental to
women’s athletics.
Robinson did not identify the group that filed the complaint,
but news briefs from the National Collegiate Athletic Associate
noted that it was filed by a “special interest group” in Grand
Rapids, Mich., that “helped influence a similar decision the
Michigan High School Athletic Association made a few years
ago.”
Robinson said that he was not convinced that the civil rights
office had jurisdiction over a conference as opposed to over
each of its member institutions individually. But he said he
had concluded that such qualms were “not worth the fight” and
that he was doing what was best for his member colleges by
getting rid of any potential gender equity issue.
Robinson noted that, in the past, women’s teams had always
played first in such doubleheaders and that, in his opinion,
this did not always mean one game was more important than
another. Still, he said that his conference was taking a prudent
stance.
“We were told by our consultants about this that it doesn’t
matter if your women’s coaches and players like this or not,
that there could still be an issue with the law,” Robinson said.
“The offices out there in the federal government are getting
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August 17th, 2010
more aggressive, so we just wanted to be more visionary and
ahead of the curve.”
Robinson said that the conference would evaluate the process
of alternating start times in a few seasons to see how, if at all, it
affected fan interest in women’s sports. If the change ends up
having an unintended effect -- such as decreasing attendance
at women’s games -- he said the conference would consider
altering it in the future.
Because the league voluntarily altered its approach to
doubleheaders upon receiving the complaint, OCR never
issued a ruling on its views on doubleheaders, starting times
and gender equity. Robinson said he now considers the matter
moot.
The Fallout
Still, the government inquiry into the matter has created
a ripple around the world of college athletics, and some
conferences are so concerned they could face scrutiny in the
future that they are eyeing changes for their doubleheaders as
well.
Donna M. Ledwin, commissioner of the Allegheny Mountain
Collegiate Conference, said her members will carefully
consider how to handle the scheduling of doubleheaders
at their annual meeting next month. Faculty athletics
representatives within her conference have already brought
the matter to her attention.
“Their concern is that, as the women always play first in the
mid-afternoon, the women are consistently more likely to miss
class than the men, whether they are at home or on the road,”
Ledwin said. “Why do women play first? Well, that’s just
traditionally been the way. No one has internally advocated for
change.”
If the conference's faculty representatives can prove that
there are academic inequities in women's always playing first,
Ledwin said she would seriously consider making a change.
Still, if the women’s games have all of the “bells and whistles”
of the men’s games -- equal promotion, access to concessions
and use of facilities -- it is hard to make a case that their games
are “warm-up acts,” she said.
The obvious solution to the problem, if there is one, would
be for men and women to not play doubleheaders. But is not
always an option for Division II and III institutions, which
often have their men’s and women’s teams travel together to
save money, Ledwin said. If forced to make a decision, she said
she would rather alternate starting times. For now, she said
her conference was taking time to investigate whether this was
really a gender equity issue for them.
“I think you can sleep at night if you provide the same
resources for both games,” Ledwin said. “Still, I think there’s
some validity for an academic claim. I just know I don’t want
to go to the mat with OCR on this. I don’t know we have the
resources to fight it and arguments to refute what they say.”
Others are not waiting to investigate the pros and cons of
doubleheader scheduling and are instead making changes to
avoid gender equity complaints.
Christa Parulis-Kaye, spokeswoman for the New England
Collegiate Conference, said her league’s member institutions
Published by: philosophyandrew
have been instructed that they are to alternate the opening
games for their doubleheaders this season. She insists,
however, that the change is being instituted not because of
outside complaints but because of internal debates about
what is best for “student-athlete welfare,” echoing Ledwin's
concerns that women may be missing more class time on
weekdays because they play games earlier than the men do.
Rob Douthit, spokesman for the University of West Georgia,
noted that his institution had decided to have the women
play in the later time slot for all of its non-conference
doubleheaders in all sports this season. Its decision was
spurred by a separate OCR complaint.
“We had a complaint from a parent of one of our women’s
soccer players about changes that had been made in
accommodations for athletes in hotels or something,” Douthit
said. “The parent was disgruntled by this and, I guess, filed
some sort of complaint. The thing that [OCR] dinged us on was
the doubleheader scheduling.”
The Experts’ View
Gender equity experts had a range of thoughts about the issue
of scheduling and compliance, but generally agreed the inquiry
could have an impact on how other conferences schedule
men's and women's games.
Erin Buzuvis, associate professor at Western New England
College School of Law and co-founder of The Title IX Blog,
said this is “not a scheduling controversy of the usual variety.”
More often, she noted, “there is more attention to scheduling
inequities in the season of the year and the day of the week
than there is over the time of day.” Still, she could note at least
one similar case at the high school level from 2007.
“There certainly seems like such an easy fix to this,” Buzuvis
said. “I don’t see the issue if you just alternate who goes first.
If the earlier or the later time has benefits, then why shouldn’t
you let both of those be shared?”
Regardless of whether or not there are “hard factors” that
make one start time more valuable than another -- such as the
ability of parents to come watch, or the likelihood of missing
class time -- Buzuvis argued that the general sense that the
first slot is somehow less important could form the basis of a
gender equity case.
“The question is, ‘Would the alternative time slot also be
acceptable to the men?’ ” Buzuvis said. “If they said they
wouldn’t want to trade places with the girls, but didn’t say why,
then there’s an issue there.”
Nancy Hogshead-Makar, legal adviser to the Women’s Sports
Foundation and professor at Florida Coastal School of Law,
acknowledged that she has not heard many complaints
regarding starting times. Still, she said she understood some of
the feeling associated with playing first in such doubleheaders.
“In most NCAA doubleheaders, almost always, the major
game is the last game,” Hogshead-Makar said. “If that’s the
impression that gets left with students, you know, that they’re
not in the real game, then that’s not a good thing.”
Valerie M. Bonnette, an independent consultant on gender
equity issues who worked at OCR for 15 years, said conflict over
scheduling is “an old, old issue that may well be resurfacing
7
August 17th, 2010
again.” Whether having women play first in a doubleheader is
a gender equity issue, she said, depends on the facts of each
individual case. She said she is not surprised that the federal
office has not ruled directly on the issue.
“OCR is not going to make an issue out of this,” Bonnette said.
“All they can do is give general advice. Such as, ‘If this is the
reason why you’re doing it, then it’s not okay.’ You have to look
at this on a case-by-case basis. This is an issue that OCR dealt
with all the time in the 1980s.”
Still, Bonnette said she did not appreciate those outside of
college sports filing complaints and making an issue out of
scheduling in circumstances where female coaches, players
and fans did not perceive there to be a problem.
“If they are happy with the scheduling the way it is, then I think
it’s not appropriate for someone to say you should be unhappy
with your scheduling,” Bonnette said.
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Dutch University Aims for
Rejected British Applicants
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/17/qt/
dutch_university_aims_for_rejected_british_applicants
August 17th, 2010
In the United States, public and private universities are trying
to recruit in California, thinking that budget cuts and resulting
enrollment limits there may create more interest in enrolling
elsewhere. With British universities facing budget cuts that
will limit spaces, a Dutch institution, Maastricht University,
is recruiting those who will be rejected there, Times Higher
Education reported.
The Satisfaction Gap
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/17/asa
August 17th, 2010
ATLANTA -- Sociologists love their surveys, and they apply
them to their discipline as well, even when the results might
be a little unsettling. Consider the statistic that set off some
soul-searching here at the annual meeting of the American
Sociological Association: of those who graduated with a major
in sociology in 2005, 70 percent were satisfied with their major
when they were seniors. By 2009, asked whether they were
satisfied with their major after having been in the world of
work or graduate school for a few years, only 40 percent were
satisfied.
That's quite a drop -- and not the kind of statistic that
sociologists would necessarily like freshmen (or their parents)
Published by: philosophyandrew
to hear when they are thinking about subjects in which to
major. As sociologists here were quick to note, some of the
drop could be attributable to the seriously inopportune timing
of those who graduated in 2005. Hitting the great economic
downturn just a few years out of college could easily lead many
(whatever their major) to wonder if they were on the right path
and had been well prepared.
But the data presented here suggested a problem that goes
beyond the current downturn. Generally, sociology graduates
give their programs very high marks with regard to what they
learned and to the quality of teaching. Generally, they give very
low marks to their programs for career (or graduate school)
preparation. And graduating seniors tend to say that they
learned the least about the skills they perceive may help them
the most when it comes to getting jobs.
The issue is important, speakers here said, in part because
they want graduates to be well launched into their careers. But
the scholars were also frank that they wanted to be sure the
major continued to be popular (the number of new bachelor's
degrees in the field increased 139 percent from 1985 to 2007)
and that they didn't want to be seen as letting students down
on the job market. And at the same time, scholars said that
they were proud of their intellectual traditions and didn't want
to sacrifice them.
“Our whole idea here is that you are not going to change your
job to being the career counselor. You aren’t going to change
the sociology major -- students love the sociology major," said
Roberta Spalter-Roth, head of the ASA's research division.
"But we want to think about things that you can do to launch
students without changing our primary mission and purpose
as sociologists."
The data on satisfaction at graduation show the nature of the
problem. On a range of key questions -- overall satisfaction,
access to faculty, and quality of teaching -- the majors give
programs high marks. (Generally, undergraduate colleges
did the best, but the programs across sectors were finding
percentages from the high 60s to low 80s saying that they were
pleased). On career advising and graduate school advising, not
even 20 percent of students were satisfied -- in any sector.
There was also something of a mismatch between the skills
students picked up and the skills they saw helping them find
jobs. For instance, using statistical software only just made
the list of the top eight skills sociology majors said that they
learned (and not even half said they learned that skill). But
that was at the top of the list when the association asked about
sociology skills graduates listed on their résumés.
So what to do?
The association has just released a resource guide for
departments on helping their students get ready for jobs. The
guide and the discussion about it here dealt with a mix of
packaging vs. curricular change -- and speakers stressed that
these changes did not involve watering down the curriculum.
For instance, Mary Senter of Central Michigan -- who, along
with Spalter-Roth and Nicole Van Vooren of the ASA, prepared
the guide for departments -- noted that these days, many
businesses and nonprofit groups highly value graduates who
are skilled at working with diverse populations. Sociology
8
August 17th, 2010
departments all teach courses about racial, ethnic, class,
gender and other differences, she noted, but they don't
necessarily coach graduates in the language with which the
business world tends to describe those topics, with phrases
such as "cultural competence."
Similarly, several sociologists during the discussion here
talked about assigning students to write résumés and to
discuss how the various skills they were learning could be
translated. Senter suggested that departments should have
discussions in which they look at the materials produced by
their recent graduates and think of the "collective résumé" of
their program. "What do you want your graduating students
to look like? Do they look like that?" she asked.
Departments can boost both skills and C.V. material by
organizing research conferences at which undergraduates can
present their work, and awards can be given out, she said.
At the same time, she said that departments could consider
curricular changes. Many sociologists say that they want their
undergraduates to have internships in local communities, but
many of these faculty members' departments don't require
that. "If you think your students should have internships, you
can require them," Senter said.
Further, she noted that many students report that their
statistical and research skills serve them well. But many
departments let them postpone methods courses in which
they actually learn statistics until senior year, minimizing the
chances that they'll do advanced work. Senter suggested that
departments might want to persuade students earlier to take
the courses that -- upon graduation -- they seem to think are
among the most helpful.
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Roping in the Tenured
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/17/cocal
August 17th, 2010
QUEBEC CITY – The clouds of the financial downturn may
have a silver lining for activist adjuncts hoping to make
progress toward better wages and working conditions.
Though adjuncts certainly haven’t been spared by the
economic storm – plenty have lost jobs or had their salaries
reduced – tenured faculty, typically insulated from their
institutions’ financial hardships, have suffered too. So when
the Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor, an informal
group of activists for non-tenure track faculty interests from
across North America, met here this weekend, it wasn’t that
Published by: philosophyandrew
life for the typical adjunct had gotten any better, it was just that
the lives of tenured faculty had gotten worse.
The budget cuts, wage reductions, furloughs, layoffs and hiring
freezes that have dominated since COCAL last met in the
summer of 2008 have brought the dire picture of higher
education that has long dominated adjuncts’ discussions to a
broader population and, with that, greater will to bring about
change.
As always at adjunct gatherings, there was some talk of
agitating for job security, academic freedom and better
compensation on their own, without the support of the major
faculty unions or tenured faculty at their own institutions,
but sessions here were largely dominated by notion that
“solidarity” among the tenured and the nontenured (and, if
possible, students and parents, too) had begun to emerge.
“We’re presuming we’re all in a ship and it’s sinking,” said
Susan Michalczyk, an adjunct associate professor at Boston
College who is president of the college’s fledgling chapter of
the American Association of University Professors. She’s been
able to attract tenured faculty to the group in part because the
college has no official faculty governance structure to have a
say in where administrators make cuts.
Cary Nelson, AAUP’s national president, said “it was not long
ago that I would have said very little evidence exists to show
that tenured faculty give a damn about anyone else.” But that,
he said, is beginning to change as administrators take red ink
to more than just their adjunct budgets. “The challenge of
solidarity has become more acute.”
The AAUP at the University of Northern Iowa, for example,
Nelson said, agreed to furloughs in exchange for pay raises
for non-tenure track faculty. AAUP also distributed a report
calling for institutions to offer adjuncts conversion to tenure
to restabilize the academic workforce.
Not everyone was quite as optimistic. “Full-timers still hate
us,” an adjunct from California said on Sunday at a closing
plenary session that was, as the conference program billed it,
about “developing solidarity on all levels.” He added: “Until
we change the full-time paradigm we’re still going to be
struggling.” Some in the crowd nodded in agreement.
Maria Peluso, president of the Concordia University Part-
time Faculty Union in Montreal, said she didn’t see much
support from tenured faculty, either. “I sit at negotiating table
meetings with full-time faculty fighting me,” she said. “During
negotiations nobody supports us.”
But tenured faculty are becoming a smaller proportion of those
who teach, at least at U.S. colleges and universities. A 2007
AAUP survey found that nearly 70 percent of teaching faculty
were working off the tenure track. As tenured faculty lose their
dominance in numbers – even while retaining their overall
power – some may see adjuncts as a threat, others as allies,
and still others may remain completely unaware of just how
big a role adjuncts play in teaching American undergraduates.
Nelson said he doesn’t “encounter much hate” from tenured
faculty about adjunct issues, just “a hell of a lot of indifference
and … some contentment.” More solidarity between groups
within higher ed, he said, “will come as a result of pressure
from below.”
9
August 17th, 2010
Bob Samuels, president of the University Council-AFT, a
group that links lectures and librarians at several University of
California Campuses, said it was the responsibility of adjunct
activists to convince tenured faculty that non-tenure track
issues were also in their self-interest. “Basically force the
tenured” to support the non-tenured in their advocacy work,
he said.
Some strategies that emerged over the course of the weekend:
Stop by a tenured faculty friend’s office with a cup of coffee
and share some of the concerns that adjuncts on campus
have. Share those concerns with students. Orchestrate media
campaigns that get the support of parents and the general
public. Support other unions – on campus or off – in their
negotiations, protests and strikes; if and when the time comes,
they’ll likely reciprocate.
Ask a group of adjunct activists what they hope their work
would one day achieve and their answers would be varied,
at least rhetorically. Some would say tenure, others would
say tenure in all but name, others would say a tenure-like
structure with evaluation based primarily on teaching, others
just greater job security and higher wages.
But their interests boil down to a few core objectives:
Higher pay, preferably equal to that of similarly-situated
tenure-track faculty. Job security, preferably a job for
life. Academic freedom. Equitable representation in unions,
committees, faculty senates and associations. Better access
to unemployment insurance. Conversion of current adjunct
positions to permanent positions.
On Saturday, New Faculty Majority released a draft of its
20-year plan toward the “normalization” of the academic
workforce and the eventual elimination of the two-tiered
system of the tenure-tracked and everyone else. Whether that
leads to tenure or something else is up to interpretation and
further revisions.
For all the goals articulated by NFM and by COCAL attendees
more broadly -- some acknowledge that they may take decades
to come to fruition -- many current activists are unwilling to
write off themselves and their generation.
At a session on access to tenure, Holly Clarke, an adjunct
at the City University of New York, said she thought current
adjuncts should only “embrace versions of conversion that are
conversion without competition” with other, likely younger job
candidates. “Those of us who have taught for a long time …
should not at the end of it have to compete.… We will lose out
in most competitions.”
Plenty of people at COCAL, especially those with decades of
experience as adjunct labor advocates, are unsure of whether
NFM, an 18-month-old group that aims to bring together
adjuncts regardless of union affiliation, will be any more
successful than other short-lived groups that were founded
with a determination to make waves in higher education.
Nelson said he thinks the adjunct movement can get closest to
achieving its goals by working with unions and other groups
that represent faculty members on and off the tenure track.
At its most essential, the argument was to make the concerns
of adjuncts fit into a broader story line about the crises facing
higher education. They railed against the “neoliberal” and
Published by: philosophyandrew
corporate university – an institution where new classrooms
are built without funding for academic programs to fill them,
where a few top administrators get paid more than the entire
contingent labor force, where tuition hikes don’t amount to
greater instructional spending.
In Canada, where higher education is almost exclusively
public, “financial privatization is setting us up for a model that
is not sustainable,” said David Robinson, associate director
of the Canadian Association of University Teachers. He cited
the introduction of public-private partnerships – especially
language pathway programs – and the emphasis on lower costs
for “consumers, who we used to call students,” as examples of
the privatization and corporatization of public universities.
Lawrence N. Gold, the AFT’s director of higher education,
voiced concerns about the rise of for-profit higher education
in the United States and the sector’s so-far successful attempts
to block the unionization of their faculties, which are, by and
large, composed of adjuncts. “We talk about the for-profit
sector a lot in terms of organizing,” he said. “It is without a
doubt the toughest nut to crack … because increasingly they’re
conglomerates.”
Faculty at the Art Institutes in Seattle, owned by the
publicly traded Education Management Corporation, tried
unsuccessfully to form an AFT chapter this spring, and though
the national union thought the vote to unionize would be
successful, “afterward we found they were all called in one by
one by their supervisors and told, ‘You don’t want this.’ ”
For now, most of the union’s efforts on for-profits are focused
in “the political realm,” Gold said. “The whole point is their
bad behavior isn’t a matter of bad apples. It’s endemic to the
whole enterprise.”
Betsy Smith, of Cape Cod Community College, said she
has observed the emergence of “anti-intellectualism” that
does little to differentiate education from training and,
disappointingly to her, “Obama has come down on the
side of training.” (Even if, in the view of the for-profit
higher education sector, Obama’s Department of Education is
decidedly opposed to career education.)
Vinnie Tirelli, an adjunct at Brooklyn College and one of
COCAL’s founders, described higher education in the United
States as “a kind of neoliberalism with a liberal face” that
threatens the country.
“I don’t want to be overdramatic,” he said, “but this really is a
fight for the fate of civilization.”
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10
August 17th, 2010
Upcoming Events in Higher
Ed: Admissions, College
Access, Cross-Disciplinary
Research, Hispanic Education,
Mathematics, Social Work
Education, Web Professionals
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/17/qt/
upcoming_events_in_higher_ed_admissions_college_access_cross_disciplinary_research_hispanic_education_mathematics_social_work_education_web_profes
August 17th, 2010
• HACU 24th Annual Conference, Hispanic Association of
Colleges & Universities, Sept. 18-20, San Diego.
• NACAC 66th National Conference, National Association
for College Admission Counseling, Sept. 30-Oct. 2, St.
Louis.
• Enhancing Communication in Cross-Disciplinary
Research, National Science Foundation and University
of Idaho, Sept. 30-Oct. 2, Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.
• HighEdWeb 2010: The National Conference for Higher
Education Web Professionals, Higher Education Web
Professionals Association, Oct. 10-13, Cincinnati.
• NCAN 15th Anniversary Conference, National College
Access Network, Oct. 11-13, Washington.
• 56th Annual Program Meeting, Council on Social Work
Education, Oct. 14-17, Portland, Ore.
• Regional Conference & Exposition, National Council of
Teachers of Mathematics, Oct. 27-29, New Orleans.
These meetings, conferences, seminars and other events will
be held in the coming weeks in and around higher education.
They are among the many such that appear in our calendar
on The Lists
Tweaking the Methodology
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/17/usnews
August 17th, 2010
U.S. News & World Report will release its annual college
rankings today -- and there are no real surprises at the
top, where the same colleges and universities that have
occupied the upper spots will go right on doing so. But the
magazine has tweaked its methodology -- slightly lessening
the emphasis on and broadening the inputs for the much-
criticized “reputational” calculation.
That portion of the methodology now counts for 22.5 percent
of institutional scores for “national” colleges and universities,
down from 25 percent. (There isn’t a change for the rest
of colleges.) Further, the ratings of college presidents (or
whomever they ask to fill out the form) will count for only
15 percent. The other 7.5 percent of the reputational total
will come from a national survey of high school guidance
counselors (selected because they are at high schools that
U.S. News considers to be the best public high schools in the
country).
Published by: philosophyandrew
The magazine is giving the extra 2.5 percentage points to
another category -- graduation rate performance -- that judges
colleges on whether they exceed the graduation rates that
might be expected of their students. This portion of the
methodology -- now worth 7.5 percent of the total -- is less
controversial than some other parts of the formula because
it focuses on what colleges do with the students they enroll.
Many educators say that other parts of the formula reward
colleges for having a lot of money and/or serving the best-
prepared students.
While many educators question the value of rankings
altogether, the reputational portion of U.S. News (still the
most significant factor in the methodology, even after the
change) has been subject to criticism even from those who like
rankings.
For years, critics have noted that such rankings tend to
reward institutions that used to be strong (even if they aren’t
as strong now) and that many presidents end up ranking
institutions about which they know relatively little. Many
colleges spend large sums of money sending materials to
other presidents to try to influence them, and last year, Inside
Higher Eddocumented that some presidents appear to give
unreasonably low rankings to their competitors and in some
cases to all colleges but their own.
For several years, some critics have tried to encourage colleges
to skip the reputational surveys as a way of drawing attention
to their questionable value. This year, 48 percent of all colleges
submitted the forms, the same percentage as last year. Among
liberal arts colleges, 47 percent of institutions completed the
survey, up one percentage point from last year. The figures
have been relatively stable for the last two years – suggesting
an apparent end to an earlier decline. The rate was as high as
67 percent before criticism stepped up.
While the rate among college presidents has stabilized, the
rate among guidance counselors is quite low: only 21 percent.
Robert Morse, who leads the rankings project at U.S. News,
said that the guidance counselors were added because they
have said for years that "they have something to add" to the
rankings. Asked whether 21 percent was too low to be valid,
especially when many counselors would most likely rank only
some colleges and universities, he said that wasn't the case
and that all colleges were ranked by enough counselors for the
survey to be valid.
While the magazine stressed the goal of involving more
sources of information in the reputational survey, Morse
acknowledged that "some college presidents and others have
been and continue to have strong feelings about the peer
survey and the way U.S. News conducts it."
Lloyd Thacker, founder of the Education Conservancy and
a leading critic of rankings, said he wasn't impressed by
the changes in the methodology. "What's the definition of
alchemy?" he asked, after the changes were described to him.
He said that the fundamental problems with rankings remain,
in that they give a false sense of some colleges being better
than others and ignore the need to focus on student needs
as opposed to prestige. "The rankings are not rooted in
education," he said. "They are trying to sell magazines. Is this
going to be any more educationally credible? I don't see that."
11
August 17th, 2010
Responsibilities Under the supervision of the Associate
Director of Admission - Recruitment and Admissions, and the
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A Response to The New
Faculty Majority
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/
confessions_of_a_community_college_dean/
a_response_to_the_new_faculty_majority
August 17th, 2010
By Dean Dad August 16, 2010 9:11 pm
The New Faculty Majority has drafted a proposal calling
for adjuncts to get tenure (or its functional equivalent) and
proportional pay and benefits for their teaching.
A few thoughts:
First, I understand the impulse, and there’s some validity
to it. Folks on my side of the desk often claim, correctly,
that part of the appeal of adjuncts is flexibility. In return,
union activists typically brush aside concerns from flexibility
as euphemisms for cheapness. Controlling for cost actually
isolates flexibility as a variable. Given parity, would we still
have adjuncts? I say yes, because enrollments aren’t perfectly
predictable, departures aren’t perfectly predictable, and some
subject areas will never have high enrollments. (Will we ever
have enough students to justify a full-time professor for every
instrument the music department teaches? No.) When you
have enrollment peaks and valleys following economic cycles,
you simply can’t have perfectly steady-state staffing. It cannot
be done. Flexibility is not just a euphemism.
It’s also true that the expectations for professionalism in the
classroom are the same. I don’t expect adjuncts to attend
meetings for which they aren’t paid, but when teaching a class,
I fully expect them to do a good job. And most do. In my
adjuncting days, I did. If the expectations are the same, there’s
an argument for the pay to be the same.
I’ll even grant that it’s true that many newer adjuncts are as
qualified, if not more so, than some of the folks who get tenure
decades ago. To my mind, that says as much about tenure as it
does about adjuncts, but you can read it the other way, too.
And I get the basic awfulness of trying to cobble together a
living one course at a time. Been there, done that. No argument
there.
I’ll stipulate that the NFM basically means well, and is
motivated by sincere concern for some folks who’ve been
struggling for a long time.
All of that granted, though, I’m not convinced. In fact, I’m not
even convinced they’re asking the right questions.
I’ll start with a really basic fact. Over 80 percent of my college’s
budget is labor, and instruction is the single largest part of that.
The college’s operating income -- that is, the money that we
can use to pay for salaries and ongoing expenses -- comes from
exactly two sources: tuition and the state. If you push through
a drastic increase in labor costs, how, exactly, do you propose
to pay for it?
Published by: philosophyandrew
Do you propose doubling tuition? Are you seriously trying
to argue that the major issue with the economics of
higher education is that tuition hasn’t been going up fast
enough? That students are graduating (or dropping out) with
insufficient loan debt? To my mind, and to most of the public’s
mind, this argument is dead on arrival. If anything, we need to
reduce the rate of tuition increase, not accelerate it. A drastic
hike in tuition costs is simply off the table.
Do you propose squeezing more out of the state? I’d love to see
that happen, too. What’s the missing tactic? What can we try
that hasn’t been tried? And how do we ensure that the increase
survives administrations of both parties, and both good times
and bad? How do you help the state meet its obligations to
K-12, corrections, health care, and pensions, and still have
enough left over to meet the newly-raised needs of higher ed?
If you have an idea, I’m all ears. If not, your proposal is not to
be taken seriously.
You could always demagogue it and go with administration
and/or athletics. Go ahead. Do the math. I make less than the
average tenured English professor at the state university; if
you want to talk bloat, let’s really talk bloat. In the community
college world, administration and athletics are not, by and
large, big ticket items. My college has fewer deans now than
it had two years ago, and it has cut several teams already. I
have no issue with those who say that, for example, Rutgers
University’s decision to double down on football was tragically
stupid; it was. But we don’t have a football team. You can’t cut
below zero.
In terms of administration, what would you cut? Should we
stop trying to comply with the ADA? Should we stop evaluating
faculty altogether, and just trust that everybody is perfect?
Perhaps we should stop giving financial aid, since it requires so
many staff. Who cares about accreditation? Who cares about
IT? Who cares about payroll? (Whoops.)
In my experience, carping about “administrative bloat” is
similar to Republicans carping about “wasteful government.”
It feels good, it gives a common enemy, and it lets you dodge
some difficult questions. But until you actually specify what
you’re talking about, it’s bluffing. You want to reduce the
salaries of a few Big 10 Presidents? Knock yourself out, but
don’t pretend for one minute that that’ll help me balance my
books. It won’t.
Can you guarantee that enrollments will never go down?
How? Because if you can’t, then asking me to commit to the
current staffing level -- which is what tenure for adjuncts
would amount to -- would guarantee insolvency at the first
enrollment dip. If you can, I’d love to hear how...
Can you guarantee that the distribution of students among
programs will never change? If not, then building in tenure
for everybody will guarantee underused staff the first time the
enrollments shift. And it will guarantee seat shortages in the
newly popular areas, since I’ll be so swamped trying to pay for
the tenured that I won’t be able to hire new people.
Or, are you proposing that we add up all the tenured and
adjunct salaries, and simply divide? That would be revenue-
neutral, and would result in some serious raises for the
adjuncts. The tenured folk would probably get a little crabby,
though. (For that matter, I’d love to see the faculty meeting
12
August 17th, 2010
in which you guys float your proposal to ban overloads. Hoo
boy, good luck with that...) Hell, while we’re at it, ‘parity’
with whom, exactly? Different tenure-track professors make
different salaries, based on all kinds of variables. And would
freeway fliers get tenure at three or four different places
simultaneously? Would I be obligated to work with those
schools for years to come to cobble together schedules? If so,
we’ll need a lot more administrators to coordinate it...
This proposal is so far removed from the reality of running
a college that it’s genuinely difficult to take seriously. It’s the
result of asking the wrong questions.
The right question is not how to squeeze more people into an
unsustainable structure. The right question is how to make
the structure sustainable. That requires serious discussions of
flexibility, productivity, accountability, and funding streams.
It requires acknowledging the reality of the tuition cost spiral,
state budget deficits, and Republicans. Wish lists won’t cut it.
If the NFM wanted to engage the right questions, I would be
more than happy to welcome it to the discussion. But if the
best it can muster is “the same, but more,” I have work to do.
We all do.
Wifi at Student Affairs
Conferences
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/
student_affairs_and_technology/wifi_at_student_affairs_conferences
August 17th, 2010
By Eric Stoller August 16, 2010 3:45 pm
My parents have relied on phone-based modem access to the
internet for years. In rural Iowa, reliable access to the web can
be quite challenging. Knowing that my ability to connect to the
web would be limited during a recent visit, I had planned on
using my Droid X as a wifi hotspot for my connectivity needs.
However, according to my dad, "the Verizon tower is really
far away." I guess it literally is "one tower to rule them all"
out here on an acreage surrounded by corn fields. And then
my dad said something to me that was quite shocking: "We
had to get 'the broadband' because your mother wanted faster
internet." Broadband...at my parents house. It was like finding
out that I had been trying to make fire with two sticks while my
dad was nearby with a Zippo. A truly monumental occurrence.
It reminded me of my experiences trying to access the web
at the various Student Affairs (SA) conferences that I attend
annually.
I am always pleasantly pleased when free wifi is available
at SA conferences. While wifi is not necessarily "free," I
do enjoy knowing that the conference planners included
wifi access in their negotiations with the conference site.
Most SA conference committees negotiate with hotels and/
or convention centers years in advance of the actual event.
Sometimes wireless access is not seen as a priority. I can
empathize with SA conference planners as they try to balance
registration costs with the costs associated with running a
conference. All too often, hotels try to charge exorbitant
amounts for wifi.
I recently asked a hotel for an internet connection in a session
room. I did not want to bother the SA conference team with my
Published by: philosophyandrew
request so I approached the hotel directly. I was told that the
cost for an hour and a half of internet was going to be $450.
I immediately asked the hotel representative if the internet
was going to be gold-plated. I understand that hotels have
a lot of operating costs associated with providing wifi, but
they are also holding the internet hostage for a hefty ransom.
Ideally, SA conference planners could negotiate a reasonable
rate for "free" wifi for those of us who wish to go online.
Registration fees could be slightly increased to cover the costs
of wifi. Otherwise, I am going to have run a lottery to see
who can access the wifi hotspot from my Droid X during SA
conferences. I predict that as wifi at conferences becomes more
ubiquitous that more and more SA conferences will be able
to add wifi to their conference "rider." Besides, if my parents
can get broadband access on a gravel road, then anything is
possible!
Here are some reasons why I think that "free" conference wifi
is important:
• Innovative presentations - session presenters should
be able to demo web-based technologies, showcase
interesting websites, and bring in (via tools like
Skype) virtual co-presenters. Static presentations can
be greatly enhanced with the addition of wireless
internet connectivity. I really like using two screens while
presenting. One screen shows my Keynote slides while
the other screen displays any back channel conversations
that are taking place.
• Back Channels - participants can use Twitter to actively
engage with one another via a back channel. While
a lot of attendees will use their smartphones to
participate, having wifi would greatly enhance back
channel participation.
• Sustainability - being able to view a conference schedule
via a laptop or smartphone would greatly reduce the
need for printed conference guides. It would be great
if registrants could select whether or not they wanted a
printed schedule.
Are you a member of a SA conference planning committee?
Are you planning on negotiating for "free" wifi at your SA
conference? Would long term partnerships with hotels make
this easier? Do you think that wifi access is a necessary SA
conference amenity?
Do you tweet? Follow me on Twitter.
Car-mic relief
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/getting_to_green/
car_mic_relief
August 17th, 2010
By G. Rendell August 16, 2010 3:00 pm
OK, if superheroes aren't your idea of "comic", here's
something that might be. A VW Beetle that's powered by the
same stuff Frau R. keeps telling me I'm full of.
Not that I'm endorsing it as ecologically sustainable, even if it
does repurpose a major waste stream. To many unknowns in
the technology involved.
13
August 17th, 2010
Just that it tickles my sense of karma. Or Karmann. Or some
such.
Remembering Brian Flowers
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/the_world_view/
remembering_brian_flowers
August 17th, 2010
By Paul Temple August 16, 2010 12:00 pm
I've just said by last farewell to a former boss while welcoming
a new one.
Brian Flowers -- The Lord Flowers FRS -- died at the end
of June. I worked for him as an administrator when he was
Vice-Chancellor of the University of London from 1985 to
1990. Before that, he had played in central role in British
scientific policy, starting with his work in the immediate post-
war period at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment
where he led research in nuclear structure physics, before
going on to chair the newly-created Science Research Council,
and then becoming Rector of Imperial College London. His
scientific and academic administrative work, which would
have been a lifetime achievement for most people, was in
fact the icing on the cake after centrally-important theoretical
work in the 1950s, which led to the award of Fellowship of
the Royal Society in 1961, at the remarkably early age of 37.
I had known that, as a new Cambridge physics graduate in
1944, Flowers had gone to America to work on the atomic
bomb: I had assumed that this had been part of the Manhattan
Project, but in fact it was a separate Anglo-Canadian project,
based in Ontario. Dismayed at the direction world politics
had taken, he later worked through the Pugwash conferences
for the peaceful use of nuclear power. As his obituary in the
London Guardian (29 June) remarked, he was "a true giant of
his time".
Flowers became an undergraduate at a time when British
higher education was a tiny, elite enterprise: fewer than 5%
of school leavers went into higher education, and in 1939,
on the outbreak of World War Two, the total number of
full-time academics was just over 5,000 – about the size of
two or three large British universities today. As a university
leader, Flowers went on to help manage a rapidly-expanding
system in the 1980s and played a particularly important role
in making aspects of the old system fit for modern needs.
London University had a large number of small, hospital-
based medical schools – mostly older than the University itself
– which were unable to provide the basic scientific resources
needed for modern medical training. Flowers saw that they
had to be amalgamated with larger colleges which already had
Published by: philosophyandrew
strengths in the life sciences, and the structure he designed
remains the basis of medical education in London today.
At the time Brian Flowers was being made a FRS, our
new Director at the Institute of Education was being born.
Professor Chris Husbands takes over as my boss at the
Institute on 1 January, when our present Director, Professor
Geoff Whitty, retires. Chris, with experience at Warwick and
East Anglia Universities, has spent his academic career in
the mass higher education system that Britain now takes
for granted, and which administrators such as Brian Flowers
helped to shape. He takes over at a turbulent moment in UK
higher education, with big cuts in public funding expected
from the financial year beginning in 2011: but there is no
sign that Ministers are likely to propose a smaller higher
education system. Higher education expansion is a ratchet
mechanism – it goes up easily enough, but it is very hard
for elected politicians to tell voters that their kids will not be
going to university after all. Even so, reduced public spending
is likely to affect particularly institutions such as ours, highly
dependent on a range of publicly-funded research projects. We
wish Chris well in his new leadership role.
Too Liberal to Be a Fellow at
St. John's
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/16/qt/
too_liberal_to_be_a_fellow_at_st_john_s
August 17th, 2010
St. John's University, in Minnesota, has declined to renew
Nick Coleman as a fellow of the institution's Eugene J.
McCarthy Center for Public Policy and Civic Engagement, and
politics played a role, City Pages reported. Coleman is a
liberal columnist for The Star-Tribune , and he was told by the
university that his association with the university brought the
university "into the political sphere" according to a letter he
received on his non-renewal. A university spokesman said that
budget cuts were responsible, but confirmed the accuracy of
the letter. City Pages also reported on influential donors who
said they were offended by Coleman's link to the university.
One donor vowed not to give as long he was a fellow.
A New Nursing School's
Precarious Finances
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/16/qt/
a_new_nursing_school_s_precarious_finances
August 17th, 2010
Charles R. Drew University is opening a new nursing school
this month, but the finances for the building for the school are
challenging the entire university, which already was fiscally
challenged, the Los Angeles Times reported. The university
will need to use reserve funds to make loan payments on
the $43 million building, and could run out of them within
six months, officials said. And if the university can't make
payments, the university's remaining assets are the collateral
on the loan.
14
August 17th, 2010
Syllabus Review Unsettles Tel
Aviv U.
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/16/qt/
syllabus_review_unsettles_tel_aviv_u
August 17th, 2010
The president of Tel Aviv University, Joseph Klafter, has asked
to see the syllabi of several sociology courses, raising concerns
among some professors, Haaretz reported. The request
followed a report from a right-wing group that said that some
sociology courses at the university have adopted a "post-
Zionist" philosophy instead of a Zionist one. Some say that the
president is just trying to get a read on the situation to better
respond to criticism. Others say that requesting the syllabi is
inappropriate. "Right-wingers are trying to divide and label
people in academia in a process designed mainly to sow fear.
The university president shouldn't have cooperated with such
an attempt," one told Haaretz.
Parenthood Gaps and
Premiums
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/16/gender
August 17th, 2010
ATLANTA -- Why are some disciplines more successful than
others at attracting female faculty members and having them
rise through the ranks? After decades of discussion of gender
equity in the professoriate, increasing attention is going to
the phenomenon that disciplinary patterns differ -- both in
attracting a critical mass of women and in their satisfaction
levels.
Research presented this weekend at the annual meeting of
the American Sociological Association explores some of those
differences, including patterns in becoming (or not becoming)
parents, and the impact that different combinations of
parenthood and marital status have on academic careers. In
many of the comparisons in two research papers presented
here, men (or certain kinds of men) have clear advantages, but
they are not uniform and many men say they are also facing
significant issues related to work-family balance.
One study examined physicists and biologists. The study -- by
Anne E. Lincoln of Southern Methodist University and Elaine
Howard Ecklund of Rice University -- was based on a survey
of faculty members at the 20 top-ranked graduate programs
in both physics and biology. While men are in the majority
for both fields, women make up 43 percent of biologists in the
departments and only 20 percent of the physicists. The men
and women in the study differed in key family characteristics.
Men were more likely to be married (83 percent vs. 72 percent)
while women were more likely to be divorced (22 percent vs. 16
percent). Men had only slightly more children than did women
in the two fields, with men having an average of just over two
children, and women just under two.
While the gap in numbers of children was small, attitudes
about children and careers were notably different. Of the
women in the survey, 45 percent said they had fewer children
than they would have liked because of their scientific careers.
Only 24 percent of men felt that way. While the numbers show
Published by: philosophyandrew
that these regrets are much more prevalent among women, the
authors of the paper wrote that they found the male regrets to
be "striking." In fact, the title they gave to their presentation
was "Male Scientists Want to Be Fathers."
In another finding that they noted reflected both the increased
pressure on women as well as the pressure on many men,
they said that 48 percent of women and 32 percent of men
believed that aiming for work/family balance had hindered
their scientific careers. The authors of the paper stressed the
importance of these disciplines and others recognizing that
work-family balance isn't just a women's issue.
In fact, they noted that while there wasn't a strong correlation
between women's concerns about not having as many children
as they would like and their life happiness, there was a strong
negative correlation for the male scientists who wished they
had more children.
At the same time, Susan J. Ferguson of Grinnell College, the
discussant for the paper, raised a question of whether the
figures might understate the impact of the issue on women.
The women surveyed, she said, went ahead with scientific
careers despite, in many cases, having been told that doing so
might make it difficult for them to have the number of children
they might like. Might there be another cohort, she asked,
of women who -- because of that knowledge -- abandoned
academic science altogether?
Consistent with a recent study by the Collaborative on
Academic Careers in Higher Education, the paper found that
there wasn't a clear correlation between the gender split in
the fields and the satisfaction of women within them. While
women make up a much larger share of the biology faculty
than of the physics faculty, the women in the two disciplines
were equally likely to be married, had roughly the same
number of children on average and had similar perspectives
on impediments in their careers. (There were actually more
differences among men in the two fields, with male biologists
more likely than male physicists to be married, have children
and work longer hours -- and slightly less likely to be happy in
their careers.)
Premiums and Penalties for Parents
Another paper presented at the same session explored whether
there are parenthood premiums and penalties in academic
salaries. The researchers -- using national data from faculty at
four-year institutions, and excluding some specialized fields
such as medicine and theology -- found that the patterns in
academe don't follow the national trends, in which women
with children generally earn less, and many men with children
generally earn more, than other comparable employees in
their organizations.
Linda Grant of the University of Georgia, who presented the
paper she co-wrote with Kimberly Kelly of Mississippi State
University, noted that many experts would expect science
fields to be particularly likely to impose a penalty in average
salaries on mothers with children. After all, she noted that
academic science has many of the characteristics of what
sociologists call "greedy institutions" -- those that demand
absolute loyalty of time and commitment.
15
August 17th, 2010
But Grant and Kelly found no premium or penalty based on
parenthood alone among faculty members in mathematics and
science fields. To the extent that there are unexplained salary
differentials in these fields, they punish single women -- with
the greatest damage to single women who are parents.
Among faculty members outside of math and science fields,
they found different patterns. Married men, controlling for
other factors, appear to have a salary advantage, with the
greatest advantage going to men with children. The greatest
disadvantage goes to single women without children.
Before scientists start boasting that they are more equitable
than their counterparts elsewhere in academe, they may want
to consider one theory Grant and Kelly offer to explain their
findings -- which is consistent with Ferguson's response to the
other paper. "STEM disciplines may indeed be such 'greedy'
institutions that anyone who enters them, to be successful,
must manage personal life in such a way or subordinate
personal concerns so that work always will be central in their
lives," they write.
Both pairs of authors -- and audience members -- suggested
that the findings suggested a need for more drilling down
into the data, with a focus on differing patterns by discipline
and family status, given all of the variables involved. But the
general consensus was that, while the research suggests the
flaws of across-the-board statements about the way academe
treats women or parents or scientists, significant differences
in the treatment and experience of various subgroups require
attention.
Position Summary: A part-time one-year associate
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New NSF Social Science
Agenda
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/16/nsf
August 17th, 2010
ATLANTA -- Seeking to move "beyond near-term funding
cycles," leaders of the National Science Foundation briefed
sociologists here Sunday about plans to create a strategy to
support the social sciences over the next decade.
Myron Gutmann, assistant director for the social, behavioral
and economic sciences at the NSF, told those gathered for the
annual meeting of the American Sociological Association that
this is an "unparalleled time" in terms of interest across the
sciences in working with social scientists on some of the top
issues of the day.
And as a result, he said, it is an appropriate time to think
long term for the agency and the social sciences. Gutmann
said that the NSF would like to see for the social sciences
Published by: philosophyandrew
something similar to a project conducted by the National
Research Council every decade: a plan for astronomy and
astrophysics research for the next 10 years. (The most recent
plan was released on Friday.)
While the NSF is best known for its support of work in
the physical and computational sciences, it has long been
a significant player in the social sciences, with close ties to
academe. The agency funds tens of millions of dollars of
research a year and supports everything from basic research
by senior scholars to dissertation fellowships. Gutmann was
named to his position last year, having been a demographic
historian previously at the University of Michigan.
The NSF is seeking advice on shaping the agenda, but on
a relatively tight time frame -- with a request for ideas
having gone out late last week, with a deadline of the end of
September. Gutmann said he hoped the review would be done
by the time officials start shaping the 2013 budget proposal,
which is a process that starts next spring.
Gutmann said that the agency wants to rethink three main
areas:
• Identifying the "big, underlying questions" that deserve
more study and support. He acknowledged the difficulty
inherent in thinking too far into the future on such
matters, since new questions will emerge. But he said
that he thought many of these questions "are not so far in
outer space that we aren't aware of them now." He cited
the demography of aging and of immigration as two such
examples of social science topics likely to only get more
important and to gain greater relevance in the future.
• Defining "capacity" issues. Given that the NSF supports
everything from undergraduate education to scholarly
research, he said it is time to think about which areas are
most in need of which kinds of support that the agency
could offer.
• Refining "infrastructure" support. For the NSF, social
sciences infrastructure consists of numerous large,
longitudinal surveys and the databases that result from
those studies -- of which most of the prominent ones have
received considerable agency support over the years.
Gutmann said that he is "very proud" of the NSF's role
in building these surveys, and that he wasn't looking to
stop support for any of them. But he said that the largest
of these projects were now started decades ago, and that
he wondered if there were new topics that deserved such
support.
He stressed, in his remarks and in answers to questions, that
the NSF is strongly committed, in its current grant programs
and in the new agenda, to seeking out and supporting
interdisciplinary projects -- both among the social sciences
and in projects linking the social sciences to other sciences. In
some respects, this is going on even before the 10-year plan is
developed. He said that major new funds would be available
next year for environmental research -- including studies that
would probably involve social scientists working on the human
impact of certain environmental practices.
At the same time, he noted that there are obstacles to this
approach. At the NSF, he said, there are limited funds. "If you
16
August 17th, 2010
triple the number of senior investigators, you can triple the
budget," he said, and that's only rarely possible to do.
Gutmann also said he believes that universities remain slow --
despite many statements they make to the contrary -- to truly
supporting interdisciplinary work. He said that many graduate
programs are not teaching interdisciplinary approaches in
graduate programs, and that many universities "are less than
perfect" when it comes to rewarding interdisciplinary work in
the tenure and promotion process.
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Newly Tenured ... at Fresno
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Thomas
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/16/tenured
August 17th, 2010
Hostos Community College of the City University of
New York
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at the University of Pennsylvania seeks to appoint a standing
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University of Massachusetts Lowell
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U. of Scranton Press Is
Closing
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/16/qt/
u_of_scranton_press_is_closing
Published by: philosophyandrew
August 17th, 2010
The University of Scranton Press is being closed due to
the tight budgets of its university, The Times-Tribune
reported. The press is relatively small and relatively young,
and published about 200 books during the 22 years in which
it operated. "Basically, it was a budgetary decision. We are
a tuition-driven institution, and these are tough economic
times," said Harold Baillie, provost and vice president for
academic affairs. "Our main priority is the education of our
students, and that takes precedence in the distribution of our
resources." Among the areas of focus for the press have been
Roman Catholicism and Pennsylvania. Books currently under
contract will be released.
Visions of Adjunct Tenure
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/16/cocal
August 17th, 2010
QUEBEC CITY – Two groups released their visions for
job security, academic freedom and better pay for adjuncts
and contingent faculty here this weekend at a gathering of
academic labor activists from across North America.
The biennial meeting of the Coalition of Contingent Academic
Labor attracted adjuncts from the United States, Canada and
Mexico who, despite coming from widely varied institutions
and labor structures, were all pushing for tenure-like rights (if
not tenure itself) for non-tenure-track faculty.
“The only goal worth fighting for is full justice for all
who teach,” said Cary Nelson, president of the American
Association of University Professors and a professor at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, during a plenary
session on Sunday at Université Laval. “The first fundamental
step is to give people lifetime job security and then build from
that.”
Nelson distributed “Tenure and Teaching Intensive
Appointments,” a revised version of a draft released last fall by
AAUP’s Committee on Contingency and the Profession, which
is to be published in September, and outlines the association's
objective of seeing adjunct positions converted to the tenure
track. New Faculty Majority, an 18-month-old adjunct group,
released its first public draft of “Program for Change,” a 20-
year plan of action aimed at “normalizing” the entire academic
workforce.
A 2007 AAUP study found that nearly 70 percent of faculty
were neither tenured nor tenure-track. “The tenure track
has not vanished, but it has ceased to be the norm,” the
report says. “This means that the majority of faculty work in
subprofessional conditions, often without basic protections for
academic freedom.”
Moving ahead, AAUP’s report says, “the best practice for
institutions of all types is to convert the status of faculty
serving contingently to eligibility for tenure with only
minor changes in job description.” The report calls for a
transitional process for current adjuncts and for future tenure
consideration to be available for those whose duties are
primarily teaching based on teaching ability, not research.
17
August 17th, 2010
This would represent a major shift in tenure practice at
many institutions. At research institutions and many other
institutions, research is a dominant factor in tenure decisions.
And that has been a major roadblock to the conversion of
adjunct slots to tenure-track jobs, even when adjuncts teach at
the same institutions year after year, as those instructors are
typically working on course loads that make it impossible for
them to achieve research accomplishments of the sort that win
tenure at those institutions.
For adjuncts who want to teach on a part-time basis,
AAUP’s best practice recommendation is to create “fractional
positions, including fully proportional pay, that are eligible for
tenure and benefits, with proportional expectations for service
and professional development.”
In all, these measures would amount to the elimination of the
two-tiered tenure-track/non-tenure-track system, a position
that Nelson and the AAUP have advocated in recent years.
AAUP’s document does not outline specific means for
achieving its ultimate goals.
A preliminary plan
While AAUP’s vision is a statement of principle – that all
faculty be assured tenure (meaning job security and academic
freedom) -- New Faculty Majority’s “Program for Change”
is intended to detail how adjuncts can go about getting the
various rights and privileges that come along with tenure, and
perhaps the title “tenure” itself.
In the long run, the introduction to the plan says, NFM aims
at “the normalization of the academic profession and the
abolition of the multi-tiered labor system.” Tenure might be
the ultimate goal they're fighting for, but there are lots of
incremental steps the NFM plan suggests along the way.
At a Saturday discussion of the plan, Matt Williams, NFM’s
vice president, cautioned that it is “a draft very much
in process” but nonetheless important to share at COCAL
because it outlines “a series of very concrete goals and
benchmarks” to be achieved in 5-year increments over the next
20 years.
(Williams also noted that though the plan was created by two
NFM board members and will likely be adopted by the group
following revisions, NFM “honestly cannot formally endorse
any strategic plan until we’ve had the opportunity to hear from
our membership whether they want us to do so.”)
The plan spans two decades because, the introduction says,
“it is not realistic to suppose that the two-tier employment
system, and the funding patterns which have evolved over
decades to support it, can be fully transformed in a shorter
time span than 20 years.” Full achievement of all the NFM
goals would amount to equal pay, benefits, job security and
academic freedom for the people who are today considered
adjuncts, but whether a system as conservative as higher
education can be so dramatically transformed in 20 years is
difficult to say.
The plan lists 32 areas where NFM seeks change. Achieving
some goals, like equal pay and benefits for contingent
faculty, would come with significant institutional costs. Other
measures – including academic freedom, the right to tenure
Published by: philosophyandrew
and the option of status conversion – would have little to no
direct cost associated with them, according to NFM.
Jack Longmate, an adjunct English instructor at Olympic
College in Washington and member of the NFM board of
directors -- and one of the plan’s two authors -- said that
reaching goals in some of the areas would be “a way to maybe
work ourselves out of this quagmire that is contingency.”
Under the plan, in the next 5 to 10 years, before contingent
faculty are able to achieve some sort of stabilization or the
entire academic work force is normalized, members would
fight for equal participation in unions and associations for
adjuncts, as well as a small percentage of group funding to
advocate for adjunct interests. The plan also envisions pushing
for state or federal legislation ensuring unemployment
insurance and access to pensions for adjuncts – both in the
next decade or so.
The plan does not propose to abolish tenure, which “can and
should continue as the extraordinary level of job security
and academic freedom that it is. However, we propose that
eventually tenure be delinked from salary and time-status.
This does not imply a reduction in compensation for currently
tenured faculty or those on tenure track. In the future,
however, tenure would be granted without significant cost
impact.”
The idea, organizers said, is to remove the fear of
administrators that awarding tenure to adjuncts would mean
raising their pay levels to those of the currently tenured.
Higher salaries would, though, be an eventual goal.
The plan's goal is for compensation in the next five years to
reach at least 50 percent of the lowest tenure-track salary; in
10 years, at least 60 percent; in 15 years, at least 80 percent,
and in 20 years, to equal tenured faculty. Adjuncts would be
compensated for office hours, research and service.
Holly Clarke, a member of the City University of New York’s
Professional Staff Congress, said that “eliminating the two-tier
system from the bottom up is key” and that “true conversion
rather than expansion of tenure-track positions” is preferable
because it keeps contingents in their jobs, rather than opening
positions to nationwide searches and new applicants.
But not all reactions were quite as positive. Suzanne Hudson,
of the University of Colorado at Boulder, said the plan “seems
to be the long way around” toward improving conditions for
adjuncts. “Why not go for tenure? This doesn’t really eliminate
the two-tiered system.”
A partial answer from Williams, suggesting that the plan
amounted to tenure in all but name: “tenure is the new dirty
word" in higher education and beyond.
Position Description: The Department of South Asia Studies
at the University of Pennsylvania seeks to appoint a standing
faculty member who is a ...
This is a time of unprecedented growth and opportunity
at UMass Lowell. Student enrollment and retention have
improved annually; research funding and ...
18
August 17th, 2010
Saving Money by Cutting Vice
Presidents
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/16/qt/
saving_money_by_cutting_vice_presidents
August 17th, 2010
Court Orders Raises for
Nebraska State College
Faculty
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/16/qt/
court_orders_raises_for_nebraska_state_college_faculty
August 17th, 2010
The Nebraska Supreme Court on Friday ordered raises of 7
percent for the past academic year (awarded retroactively) and
4 percent for the new academic year for faculty members at
Chadron State, Peru State and Wayne State Colleges, The
Omaha World-Herald reported. The court ruled because
of an impasse between the faculty union, affiliated with the
National Education Association, which has been pushing for
the raises, and the state college system, which said that
they couldn't be afforded. The Supreme Court ruling upheld
findings of the state's Commission on Industrial Relations,
which had called for the raises to be awarded. State college
officials said that paying for the raises could lead to serious
budget cuts, potentially including layoffs.
Lender Settles Lawsuit Over
Use of Federal Loophole
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/16/qt/
lender_settles_lawsuit_over_use_of_federal_loophole
August 17th, 2010
Nelnet announced on Friday that it had agreed to settle a
federal False Claims Act lawsuit that accused the company (
along with other student loan providers ) of taking advantage
of a loophole in federal law to derive hundreds of millions
of dollars in excess federal subsidies. The company, without
admitting liability, tentatively agreed to pay $55 million to
settle claims by a former federal worker that Nelnet, Sallie
Mae, and others had illegally profited from a provision in
federal law that allowed them to continue to make loans for
which they were guaranteed an interest rate return of 9.5
percent. It was not clear as of Sunday if other lenders in the
case had reached similar settlements, but the Journal-Star
of Lincoln, Neb., reported that the judge in the case had
Published by: philosophyandrew
issued an order Friday canceling a trial that was set to begin
tomorrow.
Hopkins Moves Toward Need-
Blind Admissions
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/16/qt/
hopkins_moves_toward_need_blind_admissions
August 17th, 2010
Johns Hopkins University, which has been among the more
prestigious and wealthy private universities not to operate
with need-blind admissions (under which undergraduate
applicants are admitted without regard to financial need) is
moving in that direction. In a profile of Ronald Daniels, the
new president of Hopkins, The Baltimore Sun noted that
he asked the university's admissions and financial aid offices
to operate on a need-blind fashion in admissions this year,
and that the institution was able to do so. The university is
hoping to announce a shift to operating under such a system
as a matter of official policy.
Damaging Data on Loan
Repayment
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/16/eddata
August 17th, 2010
WASHINGTON -- That sound you heard Friday at 5:15 p.m.?
That was the collective thud of the heads of for-profit college
executives hitting their desks in dismay when they got a first
look at the sort of loan repayment data the U.S. Education
Department expects to use in its proposed new regulatory
scheme, aimed at ensuring that vocational programs prepare
their graduates for "gainful employment."
The numbers were lower than many observers (supporters
and critics of the for-profit college sector alike) expected,
and while officials of the companies immediately disputed
the legitimacy of the department's data and again challenged
the government's underlying regulatory approach, they also
seemed to recognize that the statistics presented yet another
threat. One company, Strayer Education, went so far as to
schedule a news conference for 7:30 a.m. today -- before the
stock markets open -- to explain, and presumably contest, the
department's numbers for its campuses.
Department officials couched the mountain of information
they released Friday -- the equivalent of a doctoral dissertation
in statistics, it seemed to this under-educated reporter -- in
a slew of caveats, noting the many ways in which it is either
incomplete or preliminary or otherwise inappropriate for
reaching too-sharply-drawn conclusions, particularly about
the eligibility of individual institutions or their programs.
That was especially true for the information related to
two of the three measures the department proposes, which
are designed to reveal whether the median debt loads of
students who completed a given program in the three
previous fiscal years are at or below what the department
considers a reasonable percentage of their annual earnings or
discretionary income.
19
August 17th, 2010
While the department released several tables and reports
to explain how its officials calculated those debt-to-income
ratios, the complexity of those calculations, and the fact that
they will be dependent on income and earnings data about
students that most colleges do not have, mean that the income
ratios largely remain an enigma.
The data released by the department do not provide 100
percent clarity about the other major "gainful employment"
measure: the extent to which recent students repay their
loans. Most notably, the information provided Friday looks at
the performance of entire institutions, rather than of specific
academic programs, which is how the department ultimately
plans to make its assessment.
But despite those caveats, the numbers released by the
department were almost certainly lower and, therefore, more
troubling than had been predicted (and not just for for-profit
colleges, but more on that later).
The mechanism for measuring programs' loan repayment
success -- which ensures that a program will remain fully
eligible for federal student aid if at least 45 percent of its
recent enrollees are repaying the principal on their student
loan debt -- was generally seen, by opponents and defenders
of the department's regulatory proposals alike, as the easiest
of the various tests for a program to meet. (Programs with
loan repayment rates under 35 percent would be ineligible to
participate in the federal aid programs, unless they have one
of the acceptable debt-to-income ratios; programs with rates
between 35 and 45 percent would face some restrictions.)
If the loan repayment test is the "easy" one, and if the
institution-wide numbers released Friday are at least a
reasonable indication of how a for-profit college's individual
programs would ultimately fare in the government's proposed
system, a whole lot of commercial colleges could find
themselves in serious trouble -- including many that were
generally expected to do well because they've historically had
comparatively low cohort default rates for their students.
But as they dug into the numbers that the department released
Friday, officials at many for-profit colleges said it became
increasingly clear to them that the way the department is
calculating loan repayment rates is destined -- if not designed
-- to make them look worse than they really are.
That is primarily, they said, because the department's chosen
calculation counts as non-repayers many borrowers who
participate in several programs aimed at protecting financially
distressed borrowers. Department officials had already made
clear in the original Notice of Proposed Rule Making that
borrowers who had sought forbearances or deferments on
repaying their loans would be counted as not repaying their
loans. (Note: This paragraph has been updated to correct an
error.)
But what disturbed officials at several for-profit colleges
was that the department's proposed method of calculating
repayment rates also seemed to penalize institutions if their
borrowers had taken advantage of two other programs that
the Education Department has aggressively promoted as
legitimate alternatives: income-based repayment and loan
consolidation.
Published by: philosophyandrew
The apparent treatment of borrowers in all those categories
as non-payers meant that numerous colleges that considered
themselves to be in relatively good shape under the loan
repayment part of the proposed gainful employment system
may very much not be, if the department's current approach
stands.
Strayer University had a comparatively low 6 percent cohort
default rate in the federal government's last report on the
proportion of borrowers who were unable to repay their loans
within two years of entering repayment, and its officials,
in conducting their own analysis of available Education
Department data in recent weeks, said the information
suggested that between 55 and 60 percent of borrowers with
original (as opposed to consolidated) loans were repaying the
principal on them.
Company officials said as much in a conference call with
investors two weeks ago, with Robert Silberman, the CEO
and chairman, saying that "our preliminary internal analysis
using the extensive data we have collected on our students
and alumni over the last 10 years, indicates that under this
purposed [sic] regulation all our programs would comfortably
pass both the 45% loan repayment test and the debt to income
ratio test, placing all our programs in the department’s highest
category or full title for eligibility with no required debt
warning disclosures."
But the data released by the department on Friday evening
showed Strayer's repayment rates hovering in the low 20s,
and set off an intense search by company leaders for an
explanation. A team of Strayer analysts, "literally working
through the night," Silberman said in an interview Sunday
afternoon, determined that the department had counted as
being not in repayment "virtually every single one of the
nearly two-thirds of our total student loans" that had been
consolidated. In other words, the consolidated loan holders
were counted in the denominator but not in the numerator,
driving the rate down.
Strayer officials, via an e-mail from Silberman to Education
Secretary Arne Duncan, requested an urgent meeting with
department officials, and in a telephone conversation
Saturday, Silberman said, the agency's administrators
confirmed that the complex computer program they had
run to calculate the loan repayment rate had excluded all
consolidated loans on which borrowers were not repaying
principal -- even if those borrowers' loan agreements did not
require them to repay principal, and if the borrowers were in
good standing on their loans.
"We have a hard time understanding how people can
be current on a product that the department itself has
itself approved, and then hold that against the university,"
Silberman said. "How can that make sense?"
Clearly worried about the impact the data might have on
the company's stock price, which like many shares of for-
profit colleges has taken a pounding in recent months, Strayer
scheduled a call for investors at 7:30 this morning, before the
markets open.
Officials at Kaplan Inc. expressed a similar, if broader, concern
about the department's approach, noting that colleges were
being punished for borrowers who were taking advantage
20
August 17th, 2010
of options (loan consolidation, income-based repayment,
deferments and forbearances) specifically designed to help
them.
"There are four programs that the government has developed,
sponsors and promotes to assist economically disadvantaged
and challenged students with loan repayment, but student
borrowers that employ those programs are punitively assessed
in the government's definition of repayment," said Matt
Seelye, chief financial officer at Kaplan. "Schools are penalized
for having students in those programs," even though they're
perfectly legal and even, in many cases, encouraged.
Late Sunday, Education Department officials responded via e-
mail to the concerns raised by Strayer and others. Borrowers
with consolidation loans and those in income-contingent
repayment are "considered successful if their loan balances
are smaller at the end of the year than the beginning," Justin
Hamilton, a spokesman, said via e-mail. "The idea here is that
the traditional default rate does not capture borrowers who
may be meeting their legal obligations but are economically
unable to pay off their loans. Students can avoid default by
staying in touch with their lender but that does not mean their
loan burden isn't causing economic hardship."
Hamilton added: "Over the past two decades, schools have
learned to manipulate their default rate calculations. One
strategy some schools use is encouraging likely defaulters to
consolidate. As a result including consolidation loans may
have a big impact on some schools."
Supporters of the department's approach said it is logical
for the government to include only those borrowers who are
making significant progress toward repaying their loans, as
measured by the fact that they are eating into the actual loans
by paying down the principal.
If colleges have been maintaining low default rates because
significant numbers of their students are in one way or
another deferring repayment -- advocates for consumers have
often accused some for-profit colleges of manipulating their
default rates by not-so-gently encouraging their students into
forbearances or deferments, to keep them out of the two-
year window in which default rates have been measured --
that "is going to catch up with them" given the Education
Department's proposed approach on loan repayment rates,"
said Debbie Frankle Cochrane, a program director at the
Institute for College Access and Success.
Cochrane notes that the department's gainful employment
measure, if ultimately put in place, would exclude borrowers
who have military or in-school deferments and loans awarded
through the government's public service loan forgiveness
program. The loan repayment data that the department
released on Friday did not account for borrowers with public
service forgiveness, which could bring down the rates for
institutions with significant numbers of students in teaching,
nursing or other professions that would qualify for such
treatment.
Beyond the For-Profit Colleges
The department's proposed gainful employment regulations
would apply only to the most programs at for-profit
colleges and to non-degree vocational programs at nonprofit
Published by: philosophyandrew
colleges, and various analyses of the loan repayment data
the department released on Friday show that for-profit
institutions, as a group, have by far the lowest loan repayment
rates. As is often the case, though, what's not entirely clear is
why.
Cochrane, of the Institute for College Access and Success,
noted in a blog post late Friday that the department's data
showed only 36 percent of students at for-profit institutions
to be paying off the principal on their loans, compared to
54 percent of students at public institutions and 56 percent
at independent nonprofit colleges. (Community colleges, she
noted in an interview, had a 40 percent rate.)
Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of Finaid.org and a serious
number cruncher, cuts those numbers another way, to ask a
sort of (probably unanswerable) chicken and egg question: Do
those institutions have lower loan repayment rates because
of the quality and value of the programs they offer (as the
government seems to suggest), or because of the types of
students they enroll?
Institutions that enroll few low-income students have
generally very high rates: those with fewer than 10 percent Pell
Grant recipients have an average loan repayment rate of 66.3
percent, Kantrowitz said, compared to a 38.3 percent rate at
colleges with between 40 and 50 percent Pell Grant recipients.
"The concern is that the institutions that do a better job of
serving or attracting Pell Grant recipients are going to be
the ones that are negatively impacted" by the government's
proposed approach, Kantrowitz said, while acknowledging the
flipside argument that those institutions might be exploiting
students if few of them can repay their educational loans.
While the data published by the Education Department might
pose risk at this point only for for-profit colleges, given how
the agency plans to carry out its gainful employment rules,
the statistics are unlikely to have been well-received at all
nonprofit colleges. For the 89 historically black colleges in the
department's Excel spreadsheet, according to one estimate,
the mean loan repayment rate was 20 percent, and a full 93
percent fell below the 35 percent threshold that would make
for-profit colleges ineligible for aid under the department's
scheme.
And while the department reports a lowly 16 percent loan
repayment rate for for-profit Devry Inc.'s Ross University
School of Medicine, it is in some pretty good company.
Harvard Medical School and Tulane University's medical
school both show a rate of 24 percent, and the University of
Chicago's Pritzker School of Medicine clocks in at 22 percent.
As a Republican Congressional aide put it Sunday in discussing
the department's approach: "If this analysis makes sense for
the for-profits -- if we've decided loan repayment rates are a
good way of assessing institutions -- I think you'll increasingly
see Congress asking why it doesn't make sense for all types of
institutions."
All applicants must apply online at: www.ccacjobs.com. The
College's online application system will allow you to complete
a college application, apply ...
21
August 17th, 2010
A New Tool for Students Who
Want to Skip Class
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/16/qt/
a_new_tool_for_students_who_want_to_skip_class
August 17th, 2010
With websites to rank faculty members or to gamble on
grades, it was only a matter of time. A new website -- The
Should I Skip Class Today? Calculator -- offers students
a way to determine the relative risks of sleeping in. While
the calculator claims to offer a vetted formula, many of the
questions would seem to be those even a C student might
consider. For instance, some of the information students
provide to get their risk level include queries on whether there
is a daily quiz or an attendance policy. The site comes complete
with testimonials from students (with only their first names).
Caitlyn from the University of Georgia is quoted as saying, "I
love this thing! It is so cool! I'm totally going to use it daily!" In
the FAQ, the site addresses the ethical issue that might occur to
some faculty members. In response to the statement "Skipping
class is wrong. This should be taken down," the website says
"Censorship is wrong. You should be taken down."
Assess and Adjust
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/advice/summer/summer10
August 17th, 2010
It's hard for me to believe that this is the final installment of
my 10-week series on summer writing. It seems like yesterday
that we were drafting our summer plans and trying to decide
what type of support systems to put in place. But here we are,
at the end of ten weeks of daily writing and having survived
a multitude of resistance to writing including perfectionism,
disempowerment, hyperactive inner critics, unclear goals, and
our own fear of success. Whew! Compared to all that, the last
step of the process is a simple one: assess and adjust.
Assess Your Summer Progress
At the end of the semester, it's incredibly important to pause
and assess your progress. This is not an invitation for you
to beat yourself up over what didn’t get done. Instead it's an
opportunity for you to honestly evaluate the effectiveness of
your new writing habits, the scope of work that can realistically
be accomplished during a summer term, and the patterns of
your resistance to writing. I typically begin my assessment by
pulling up my summer plan and then answering the following
five questions:
1. What goals did (and did not) get accomplished this
summer?
2. How consistent have I been in my daily writing routine?
3. When, where and how did my resistance flare up?
4. Was my support system effective and if not, why?
5. How do I feel about my answers to the previous
questions?
If you have been consistent throughout the summer in
updating your progress each week, you will very likely feel
Published by: philosophyandrew
that an enormous amount of work DID get done, even
if it wasn’t everything that you imagined back in May.
While I may not have accomplished all of my goals, I
did produce 60 pages of new writing, completed a book
proposal, took a 10-week course, started a new organization
(www.FacultyDiversity.org), ran a successful twelve-week
Faculty Success Program, gave 5 workshops, cooked 10 new
recipes, ran 30 times, and had 10 amazing date nights with my
husband. I did not learn how to use new accounting software
or improve my salsa dancing, but all in all, I'm declaring it a
successful, productive and fun summer.
In addition to appreciating all the work that you did
accomplish, reflecting on the moments that your resistance
flared up (and what it looked like when it did) will help you to
identify some important patterns. For example, this summer I
realized that my resistance is strongest when I am just about to
send something out. I get scared of what my readers, reviewers
and/or co-authors might think of my writing, so the final stage
of completion is when things got ugly around my house. That’s
great! Every piece of insight we gain about our resistance
patterns makes it easier for us to manage our bodyguard in
the upcoming semester. And finally, if your support system fell
apart, that’s also perfectly fine -- it’s all data for your future
decision-making.
What Worked and What Didn’t Work?
Now that you have data about your summer productivity, you
can begin to analyze it and use it to make decisions about
your fall semester. It’s important to start off by identifying
what DID work well for you. That list will help you to
clarify what practices to build into your fall schedule. For
example, if morning writing worked better than evening (or
vice versa), then build your schedule in the fall around your
optimal writing time. Next, identify what is NOT working.
For example, if your voluntary support system fell apart, then
consider experimenting with a different type of support system
(and it may be time to experiment with paying for the support,
services, and accountability you need).
Make Necessary Adjustments
You’ve assessed and analyzed, and now it’s time for a new
semester plan! When you’re ready, just follow the same steps
you took for creating a summer plan: 1) list your writing
goals, 2) outline the tasks necessary to achieve each of your
goals, 3) map the tasks onto each week of the semester,
4) commit to executing your plan on a daily basis, and 5)
set up whatever support and accountability system will help
you move forward day-by-day and week-by-week. Thankfully,
planning gets easier every time that you do it.
Reconnect With Your Mentors
This transitional time between the end of the summer and the
beginning of the semester is a great time to meet with your
mentors. You can share with them all of your progress and
achievements (mentors love to hear good news) and you can
discuss your fall semester plan to get their feedback. I find
these meetings are the most useful when I have anticipated the
challenges I will face in the upcoming semester and can ask
my mentors for concrete advice and support in these areas.
Having structured exchanges with your mentors will not only
elicit their valuable wisdom, advice, and feedback, but it also
22
August 17th, 2010
communicates the message that you are a serious, organized,
and productive scholar who has clear goals and concrete plans
to achieve them.
Weekly Challenge
This week I challenge you to:
1. Write every day for 30 – 60 minutes (why stop now?)
2. Pull out your summer plan
3. Answer the reflective questions provided above and
congratulate yourself for all of the work that DID get
accomplished
4. Analyze your answers and figure out what IS and is NOT
working for you
5. Create a fall semester plan that is responsive to your
needs and builds in some new experimentation
6. Set up a meeting with at least one of your mentors to
discuss your summer progress and your fall research and
writing plans
I hope this week brings each of you a spirit of gratitude towards
yourself for all the things you have accomplished this summer,
a sense of curiosity about your own patterns, and the renewed
energy that comes from planning a new semester.
Peace and Productivity,
Kerry Ann Rockquemore
Position Description: The Department of South Asia Studies
at the University of Pennsylvania seeks to appoint a standing
faculty member who is a ...
This is a time of unprecedented growth and opportunity
at UMass Lowell. Student enrollment and retention have
improved annually; research funding and ...
Ranking the Wheatons and
Mixing Them Up
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/16/qt/
ranking_the_wheatons_and_mixing_them_up
August 17th, 2010
While two institutions share the name Wheaton College, and
both are proud of their liberal arts traditions, they are actually
quite different. The one in Illinois is a Christian college, while
the one in Massachusetts is not. The one in Massachusetts was
for many years a women's college, while the one in Illinois
never was. But people seem to have a hard time telling them
apart. In May, the commencement speaker in Massachusetts
talked about alumni who were in fact alumni of Wheaton
in Illinois. Now Forbes is having difficulties. In its new
college rankings, the entry with data for the Illinois college
features contact information and a photograph of the college
in Massachusetts, and vice versa.
To What End?
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2010/08/16/obanion
Published by: philosophyandrew
August 17th, 2010
For over 100 years the “Student Access Agenda” has been the
driving force and single most important goal of the community
college movement. This goal — to provide an opportunity for
any high school graduate or 18-year-old (or older) to enroll
in college — permeates every niche of the community college
enterprise.
In the last two decades, and with incredible intensity in the
last 18 months, a second major agenda has been emerging: the
“student success agenda,” which has become the single most
important goal for community colleges. As that agenda has
evolved, it has morphed into the "completion agenda” as the
more sharply focused goal of student success and the goal that
has become an imperative for the nation.
The federal government, leading foundations, various states
and individual colleges are all carving out a piece of this
emerging completion agenda. There are over a dozen major
national initiatives — some supported with millions of dollars
unheard of in the community college world, and some
supported by key national partnerships that recognize the
community college as a major player in American society. This
fairly recent focus — highlighted by major proposals from the
Obama administration, which is also focused on completion —
is a tectonic shift in the community college zeitgeist.
Community college leaders have responded enthusiastically to
the president’s charge. In April, at the annual convention of the
American Association of Community Colleges in Seattle, six
leaders representing some of the most influential community
college organizations in the nation signed a “Call to Action.”
The statement called for a “dramatic increase” in student
completion rates and promised to “produce 50 percent more
students with high quality degrees and certificates by 2020."
The goal was described as a “national imperative.”
Dozens of national initiatives, projects, reports and
organizations are already at work on the completion agenda,
including the Developmental Education Initiative, Complete
College America, Voluntary Framework of Accountability,
High Impact Practices, Survey of Student Engagement,
Pre-College Math Project, Making Achievement Possible,
National Articulation and Transfer Network, Project Win-
Win, Effective Pathways in Developmental Education, and
the Community College Consortium for Immigrant Education.
These are only a few examples of the rich ferment in this arena;
most are funded by foundations.
Like the foundations, most states are also responding to
the call, with many planning or already carrying out the
completion agenda. So are many individual colleges. It is
unlikely than any community college, or any educational
institution, will be untouched by the completion agenda. There
has never been a “movement” in the community college world
so widely joined and supported by such deep pockets. The
completion agenda is, indeed, a tectonic shift.
To What End?
If this completion agenda proves to be successful, the outcome
will be a significant accomplishment for our students and for
our society. No sensible person will argue with these goals or
outcomes.
23
August 17th, 2010
Fortunately, these initiatives are led by some of the most
able community college leaders in the nation, leaders who
are deeply committed to the core values of the community
college. They are well aware of the pitfalls and the skeletons
in the closets of the nation’s community colleges; they fully
understand that cynicism is the sidekick of failed promises.
They know our limitations yet they persevere — because the
cause is good and the cause is right.
Great movements, however — especially those cast as “urgent
imperatives” — often have unintended consequences, and it
would be wise for all of us to consider what some of these
consequences might be for the completion agenda. We must
ask the question: To what end? The savvy leaders of these
initiatives, of course, have not been unaware of the larger
perspective raised by the question: To what end? They ask this
question every day of their efforts. They worry over whether
the agenda is too narrowly focused, if there are sufficient
resources, if college leaders are willing and able to deliver.
They wrestle, and we all need to wrestle, with all of the
following issues:
The Terminal Degree. Complete can mean finished, ended,
concluded; the completion agenda carries the connotation of
an end point. With the completion agenda, are we in danger
of resurrecting the “terminal” degree idea from the 1940s by
placing so much emphasis on the degree or certificate as the
primary goal — the end point of a student’s education? It
took years to purge the idea of the “terminal” degree from
the community college lexicon and years more to embed
the principles of lifelong learning into our programs and
practices. Modern society has evolved significantly in the
last few decades. Today we must prepare students for the
challenges of changing careers and jobs five or six times in
their lives. Of course students need the skills to succeed in an
initial job, but they also need the skills to cope with changes
in the economy and the culture — skills to transition into their
next job. While the community college leaders who orchestrate
the various projects of the completion agenda understand and
support core concepts of lifelong learning and would never
describe the degree and certificate outcomes as “terminal,” we
must make sure the federal and state agencies that champion
the goals of completion do not make the assumption that our
(and their) work is finished when the students receive these
initial degrees and certificates.
A Liberal Education. As we create new pathways to success
for our students, we need to review how we can infuse our
programs with core values and concepts from liberal education
— what the Association of American Colleges and Universities
calls “Essential Learning Outcomes” — to ensure that our
graduates and certificate holders will be able to make informed
decisions and use clear judgment about how they invest and
spend their resources and their lives.
Simply stated, a sound liberal education is designed to liberate
students from ignorance; in our current society ignorance
has many champions with seductive spokespersons in the
national press and among well-known political leaders. We
need to resuscitate Earl McGrath’s early definition of general
education — a common core of knowledge for the common
person — to help our students develop coping skills, life skills,
and team skills so they can create a satisfying philosophy
Published by: philosophyandrew
by which to live and by which to contribute to the general
welfare. General education is a corollary of liberal education,
but both have suffered in application in the community college
curriculum. Are we giving sufficient attention to incorporating
liberal and general education in the new pathways to degree
completion? Can we take the time to address “quality of life”
issues for these students to help them succeed in fulfilling
careers and contribute to the betterment of society rather than
becoming, for example, skilled government bureaucrats who
fail to grasp the impact of their actions or Wall Street analysts
motivated primarily by greed?
A Very Big Deal. The completion agenda, as the Lumina
Foundation says, is a “Big Goal.” The promise is no less
than making sure the U.S. remains “globally competitive”
and reinvigorates the “middle class” so that it, once again,
plays a pivotal role in American culture. Community colleges
have always been assigned, as Frank Newman once said,
the toughest tasks of higher education; with the completion
agenda community colleges have been assigned perhaps the
toughest task ever in higher education.
No question but that the community colleges are the right
institutions to be assigned this task; they have the right
philosophy, the right programs, and they are strategically
located in the right places. But everything is not quite right:
at many institutions, success rates in the past have been
dismal; enrollments have greatly expanded while resources
have been greatly reduced; the faculty and the leaders who
made the community colleges great have been retiring in
record numbers, and the leadership and staff development
programs cannot keep up with the demand for replacements;
the colleges are still primarily staffed by part-time faculty who
instruct a study body that is primarily part-time. These are
not the best conditions for taking on a mandate to change the
world.
But the community colleges will take on this job, and they will
do their best to achieve the goals of doubling the number of
degree and certificate holders in the next several decades. As
they engage the completion agenda, the leaders of community
colleges should consider several key questions: What will
they do when the foundation funds dry up, as they surely
will? How will they balance the needs of other programs
and other students not connected to or interested in the
completion agenda? Will the leaders use the completion
agenda as leverage for reforming other key components of
the college? How will community colleges adapt when the
next administration in the White House changes course?
If the community college does not succeed in meeting the
goals of this agenda, how will it be viewed by the federal
government, state governments, foundations, and the rest of
higher education when it volunteers to step up to the plate the
next time society comes calling?
A Chance for Reform. When the social order is rumbling with
change, when new movements are afoot, when fear stalks the
land, when money flows from the heavens — when there is
a tectonic shift in the community college zeitgeist — there is
great opportunity to change our routine; there is opportunity
for significant reform. The completion agenda opens the door
for reform, serves as a trigger moment that can unleash
24
August 17th, 2010
pent-up frustrations with resistance and propel champions of
reform to the forefront.
Highly visible as a national imperative, strongly supported
by the movers and shakers from the White House to the
state houses, the completion agenda is a formidable spearhead
for reform efforts that have been brewing over the past
several decades. Thoughtful community college leaders will
recognize the completion agenda as an opportunity to leverage
change and will capitalize on the energy and the resources
to bring about changes in the traditional architecture of
education. Roger Moe, a state legislator in Minnesota,
described the challenge of reform when he said “Higher
education is a thousand years of tradition wrapped in a
hundred years of bureaucracy.” Most reform efforts tinker
around the edges of tradition, but the completion agenda has
the potential to open wide the doors to reform — of placing
on the table for examination the core structures, programs,
policies, and practices that contribute to or stand in the
way of student completion. This is the moment to follow
the recommendations of the Wingspread Group on Higher
Education: “Putting learning at the heart of the academic
enterprise will mean overhauling the conceptual, procedural,
curricular, and other architecture of postsecondary education
on most campuses.” This is a powerful game-changing
recommendation if we mean that “learning” is the same thing,
or at least is deeply reflected, in what we mean by degree and
certificate completion.
But there is another side to this potential of reform created
by the completion agenda; there is the danger of a collective
momentum to create streamlined pathways to completion
by applying the industrial and factory models of education
in which a turn-key process moves our students efficiently
through the system. As the advocates of the completion
agenda chant “Farther, faster” as their mantra, they may
settle for piecemeal reform, creating an island of reform for
pathway completion which will be ingested by the traditional
bureaucracy of education when the goal no longer seems an
“imperative” or when funds run out. The completion agenda
may alas prove to be the enemy of reform rather than its
champion.
We have engaged these and similar issues many times in the
past, and we always seem to come out the other side by hanging
onto a pendulum that swings too far in one direction or
another. With the completion agenda, we are this time clearly
swinging in a direction that could prove to be off balance. We
can help balance that swing in mid air now, or we can mount
another movement in a decade or so and undo all this good
work as we push the pendulum in the opposite direction. It
would be uncharacteristic of us — some might even say un-
American — to delay this rush to course/program/certificate/
degree completion in order to engage and explore in more
depth the issues of our overall purpose and what we mean by a
truly educated person. We don’t have to delay these numerous
efforts to increase the number of certificates and degrees, and
we should not, but we should expand the discussion and the
plans to make sure that if we are successful in doubling the
number of completers we have accomplished a goal worthy of
our role in changing the lives of our students and contributing
to the continuing development of our democracy.
Published by: philosophyandrew
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“Wherefore art thou,” . . . Wait,
who are you, again?
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/university_of_venus/
wherefore_art_thou_wait_who_are_you_again
August 17th, 2010
By Afshan Jafar August 15, 2010 9:45 pm
Guest blogger, Afshan Jafar, writing from Connecticut in the
USA.
For a while now, everywhere I go--whether I’m teaching, doing
research, interviewing for a job, or cooking—authenticity
rears its ugly head and demands that I answer questions
about myself, about my teaching, my research, the clothes I
wear, even the spices I use in my cooking. Questions that I
sometimes don’t have answers for, questions that sometimes
I’d rather not answer, and questions that sometimes I am too
exhausted to answer all over again.
To label something as authentic is almost always a positive
label. Inauthentic, on the other hand, is almost always
something that is to be shunned or not held in high esteem. Let
me try and persuade you to think of authenticity differently-
to think of it as a dangerous idea that is capable of doing much
harm. Allow me to give you a couple of examples, both from my
personal life and from my scholarly interests. I am a Pakistani
Muslim woman living and teaching in the United States. I
came here in 1995 as an undergraduate student, having never
left Pakistan before that time. One would think my background
would qualify me as an “authentic” Pakistani Muslim woman.
Not so. A few years ago I interviewed for a job which fit very
nicely with my research. The institution was looking for a
scholar of Islam (in a very broad sense), and my research
on women’s NGOs in Pakistan and Islamic fundamentalism
seemed like a good fit. The people on the search committee
must have thought so too because I was interviewed for the
position. I never did get the position and was later told by a
friend of mine (who worked at this institution) that it would’ve
been better had I shown up in a burqa! Apparently, my (very)
short hair and my “Western” dress somehow did not live up
to the image of a female Muslim scholar that the institution
had in mind. I have no way of knowing what the precise
reasons were for why I was turned down, but the fact that my
appearance played a role (even if it was a minor one) cannot
be ignored.
25
August 17th, 2010 Published by: philosophyandrew
Several years ago, when I was doing research on women’s
NGOs in Pakistan, the issue of authenticity became hard
to avoid as it is quite central to the question of activism
and feminism in a non-Western country. Change, and agents
of change (such as NGOs), are often criticized by Islamic
fundamentalists for aping the West, for not being respectful
of traditions and practices that are authentic to local cultures.
This makes the work of social change agents very difficult since
they become labeled as traitors, or unpatriotic, simply because
they are questioning something that is seen as tradition (read:
authentic). An interviewee said to me once: “We [Pakistani
women] shouldn’t become so Westernized that we forget that
our place is in the home. For instance we shouldn’t work
once we have children. As Pakistani women it is our duty to
raise our children.” Here being a working mother was seen
as an inauthentic version of Pakistani womanhood. What this
interviewee failed to take into account is that many women in
Pakistan have not been raising their children themselves: Poor
women have always worked outside the home, and women
who belong to the upper classes have hired domestic workers
and nannies.
In a strange turn of events, these examples have brought
together academics and Islamic fundamentalists, both of
whom subscribe to similar notions of authenticity. Calls for
authenticity are always calls for stifling change; they are
almost always calls for promoting a one-dimensional, and an
ahistorical view of a culture or people. The search committee
for the position I interviewed for wanted the stereotypical
Muslim woman- disregarding the fact that Muslim women
are just as diverse in their practices and appearance as
women anywhere else. The fundamentalists in Pakistan who
denigrate NGOs as Westernized or unpatriotic view culture as
unchanging, and also want to hold on to an image of Muslim
women that does not reflect the diversity of their lives. Both
of these examples ignore the reality of cultures – that they are
porous, permeable, changing, and dynamic--and by so doing,
limit the portrayals of and expectations of the people from
these cultures.
My hair is long now. And every now and then I wonder: Did I
give in? Did I grow my hair long so I would be seen as more
authentic?
Afshan Jafar is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at
Connecticut College. Her research and teaching interests
are cultural globalization, gender, religious fundamentalism,
and trans-national women's movements. She can be reached
at afshan.jafar@conncoll.edu.

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