The Higher Education Thread

[Solon]

I'm not trying for anything. Just pointing out where the real oddballs are.

As someone who isn't LDS the northern half of Salt Lake county is pretty nice. The further south or north you go it gets weirder.

To bring this conversation almost back on track, I went to a lecture last week from a man who is studying the dynamics between town & gown in the cities with Utah (public) universities. His comments: while the LDS culture certainly flavors Utah higher ed., most of the foibles are traceable to small-town vs. larger city. In other words, the weirdness of Ephraim or the quirks of Cedar City, and their sometimes ambivalent relationships with higher education, are more-or-less consistent with other (non-LDS) small towns throughout the country.

The Utah version of the small town just happens to be Mormon-oriented. Other places in America have different cultural-religious factors at work, but are just as eccentric.

[OceanBlue]

Would this be smart ? Kid wants to be LEO, if it really doesn't matter what degree you get, why not get degree in something like economics in case LEO doesn't work out ?

[LA Ute]

Would this be smart ? Kid wants to be LEO, if it really doesn't matter what degree you get, why not get degree in something like economics in case LEO doesn't work out ?

He should study English and become the next Joseph Waumbaugh.

EDIT: That seems too flip. I should add that I know many LEOs who have done other very interesting things after their retirements, so if he gets a degree in something he enjoys he'll be set to move on to something he enjoys when he hangs up his badge.

[wuapinmon]

Would this be smart ? Kid wants to be LEO, if it really doesn't matter what degree you get, why not get degree in something like economics in case LEO doesn't work out ?

Leo Major

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Major

[LA Ute]

"College Administrators’ Priorities Not Always The Students"

http://blogs.the-american-interest.c...ways-students/

Really?

[Solon]

"College Administrators’ Priorities Not Always The Students"

http://blogs.the-american-interest.c...ways-students/

Really?

This is a ridiculous article and I regret wasting the time I spent reading it.

1. The gist of it hinges on the difference between "somewhat important" and "very important". Hardly any (<5%) are saying things like graduation rates & employment are not important at all.

2. The criticism that Administrators aren't sold on MOOCs (massive open online courses) is weak criticism. Online education is very uneven at best. At worst, it's a complete waste of tuition.

3. The Gallup survey sample "is not nationally representative of U.S. colleges and universities" and includes 4-year schools, 2-year schools, for-profit schools, and community colleges, complicating any idea of a consensus (the problems and mission of a for-profit school are different to some extent from those of a 4-year private liberal arts school)

4. Of course the article decided that this was far too encouraging: 67& somewhat or strongly agree that "The faculty at my institution continues to adopt better pedagogical strategies in their teaching."

http://www.gallup.com/strategicconsu...al-report.aspx

[LA Ute]

Georgia Tech will be offering an online master's degree in computer science:

http://www.cringely.com/2013/07/10/g...puter-science/

Georgia Tech is a major research university. In big research universities research and publishing count for everything and teaching counts for close to nothing, which is why there are so many bad teachers with endowed professorships. . . . Research grad students are slave labor while professional grad students are cash cows for their institutions and matter mostly for the money they can pay. Computer science is a research field but this new degree at Georgia Tech is specifically branded as being a professional degree. While that sounds extra-important what it really means is the students won’t matter at all to the University, which sees them strictly as cash flow — up to $18 million per year according to the business plan.

[Ma'ake]

Every generation brings behavioral & attitude peculiarities that defy their elders. We all did.

This generation is running headlong into a general shift in the employment landscape since about 2000, and some (hopefully) short term imbalances between productivity and employment. (Corporations and the wealthy are awash in money, productivity is very high, but aggregate demand is not rising enough to generate enough jobs, especially "good" jobs, which is in turn contributing to the overall sluggish demand).

A couple of MIT professors, McAfee and Brynjolfsson have tracked the impact of technology on employment, with some sobering explanations for some of the current displacement, and potentially highly disruptive trends for the future. http://www.technologyreview.com/feat...stroying-jobs/

The stagnant labor market either dampens the Millenials' sense of entitlement, or it will help fuel upheaval, among Millenials and a lot of folks who've been displaced and not fully recovered in the last 10 years.

[LA Ute]

I agree. That article is garbage.

I thought it was bad enough to be kind of funny. MOOCs are very popular among the libertarian set, but I don't think MOOCs' time has come yet.

[Applejack]

Higher ed has a host of problems: outrageous tuition, outdated classes, tenure abuses, etc., etc. But higher education is not a bubble, at least not yet. The decision to go to college is still quite rational. From the NYtimes:

college grads employment.jpg

[Diehard Ute]

It's a symptom of society.

Kids aren't held to a standard, aren't punished, they're just told showing up is enough.

In sports, school etc there are participation medals instead of medals for winning.

Society has decided everything should be warm and fuzzy, forgetting the real world is rarely either.

Society needs to change. The softer side of sears approach isn't working.

[wuapinmon]

It's a symptom of society.

Kids aren't held to a standard, aren't punished, they're just told showing up is enough.

In sports, school etc there are participation medals instead of medals for winning.

Society has decided everything should be warm and fuzzy, forgetting the real world is rarely either.

Society needs to change. The softer side of sears approach isn't working.

I disagree. There's plenty of competition out there still. They typically don't give participation trophies after puberty, and even before then, there are always stars, MVPs, and the kid that you want on your team--kids still understand this. Also, for boys, the video game networks are complete hierarchies of competence with rankings on every little thing that someone can do well. Some are good at 1st-person shooters, others at strategy games, others at sports, still others at racing ones.

Schools are still meritocracies in high school, but in elementary schoo, the resources dedicated to mentally-retarded children and their presence in regular classes, while stellar for them and their progress, does create imbalances that didn't use to exist, and does impact expectations for acceptable classroom behavior in some settings. I can remember how unfair it felt in elementary school when the special-ed kids would come back to class for writing practice right before lunch, and their bad behavior would make us all, daily, suffer through silent lunch. Now, those same class of kids are in my daughter's classes all day long, and the teacher spends an inordinate amount of time working with them, disciplining them, and giving them the extra help that they need since no child can be left behind, no matter the consequences to those out in front. The effect I have seen on the kids who don't suffer from mental disabilities is one of learning doldrums. They are rarely challenged, so unless they are self-starters (which I don't think is always innate, but can be a combination of nature/nurture), then there are few who will rise above the level of expectation set for them (which is abysmally low thanks to accrediting bodies like SACS [the Sith Lords of Academia] working in cahoots with politicians and the education industry). My daughter, a bright 5th-grader, told me last week that she's not allowed to bring her textbook home or read ahead in the chapters because, "We might read something that isn't a Standard." It's not society that has changed as much as we've been altered, slowly, by the insidious hand of the accrediting bodies and their Ed.D.-sporting pedagogues (who almost universally insist on being called "Dr.") who seek to tell us what 'best practices' are even as the ship is sinking.

[LA Ute]

Who Ruined the Humanities?

Of course it's important to read the great poets and novelists. But not in a university classroom, where literature has been turned into a bland, soulless competition for grades and status.

http://m.us.wsj.com/articles/SB10001...95803296798048

[Solon]

The MOOCs are coming!!!

http://www.economist.com/blogs/econo...omist-explains

According to RUMOR, small colleges are investigating registering their own students for MOOCS, then hiring graders to assign & score quizzes based on the content. They pay a nominal fee to the folks who are doing the MOOC (and/or their institution), but essentially the small colleges get to rent the courses of a Stanford or MIT professor and pay a TA $10/hr. to run the class's logistics. The underlying assumption that knowledge & teaching can be boiled down into little single-serving packets, and that once an online course is in place all a school has to do is hire a cafeteria worker to sling the slop onto the students' plates is a pretty naive way of looking at education.

Don't get me wrong. The MOOC phenomenon is cool for some reasons. The access to MOOC information can vastly enrich a teaching experience, and obviously online teaching & learning have revolutionized access to higher education.

But the predictions of the inevitable demise of the university system are a bit premature.

[Mormon Red Death]

The MOOCs are coming!!!

http://www.economist.com/blogs/econo...omist-explains

According to RUMOR, small colleges are investigating registering their own students for MOOCS, then hiring graders to assign & score quizzes based on the content. They pay a nominal fee to the folks who are doing the MOOC (and/or their institution), but essentially the small colleges get to rent the courses of a Stanford or MIT professor and pay a TA $10/hr. to run the class's logistics. The underlying assumption that knowledge & teaching can be boiled down into little single-serving packets, and that once an online course is in place all a school has to do is hire a cafeteria worker to sling the slop onto the students' plates is a pretty naive way of looking at education.

Don't get me wrong. The MOOC phenomenon is cool for some reasons. The access to MOOC information can vastly enrich a teaching experience, and obviously online teaching & learning have revolutionized access to higher education.

But the predictions of the inevitable demise of the university system are a bit premature.

honestly I can see them go further. How about a gigantic e-book that has video lectures, assignments and virtual "learning activities"? A bunch of professors get together and compile a whole humanities or economics coures load. Skip the whole university all together.

[Solon]

They did this in "Diamond Age" by Neil Stephenson, and it led to world war.

Harvard, Stanford, and MIT are loving the MOOC "revolution". They have nothing to fear. People assume that their lectures are of the highest quality. But you don't become a professor at those schools for your teaching ability. There are many great lecturers out there who could do a better job.

You make a fine point, my friend.

The research is ongoing, but it seems like online education can be just as effective as face-to-face teaching if the students are motivated, capable, etc.
If the students are marginal, or don't put in the work, or whatever, they do worse in online courses than in a classroom setting.

To me, this suggests that putting more graduate courses online might be a useful tool for certain programs. Unfortunately, it seems like most schools prefer to put the lower-division classes online, thus putting the beginning students in a potentially tougher spot.

At my school, I had a meeting last week with the Director of Continuing Education who wants to adapt one of my upper-division face-to-face classes to offer it online (I developed the class as an Interdisciplinarity seminar, and the folks who paid me to develop it turned it over to him). I gladly handed him the syllabus, readings, powerpoint slides, handouts, exams, etc. and told him to go for it. His goal was to develop a class that essentially a trained monkey could run by unlocking the modules on the correct days. I think he was stunned by the amount of knowledge and preparation that go into an upper-division course, from both instructors & students. He is now looking for another class to put online.

[wuapinmon]

I'm not worried about the end of higher ed. Andrew Wiggin was a professor on Trondheim, and that's like 3,000 years from now.

[LA Ute]

Curious what Solon and others in academia think of this, by Peter Dreier. He "teaches politics and chairs the Urban & Environmental Policy Department at Occidental College."

Academic Drivel Report
Confessing my sins and exposing my academic hoax.

http://prospect.org/article/academic-drivel-report


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[LA Ute]

That was fun. Don't lawyers do the same thing, though?

When I read stuff that is intentionally written to be unintelligible, I just assume it's void of content. I feel safe in that assumption.

Lawyers do obfuscate sometimes but when we are writing we have to convince someone (usually a judge) we are right, and we have opponents who keep us on our toes. What Drieier says makes me wonder if the same rigor is applied consistently these days in academia.


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[LA Ute]

Interesting piece.


How Not to Address Liberal Bias in Academia

[LA Ute]

A Confession of Liberal Intolerance

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/05/08...nTG%2Fs%2F6RVF


"It's men in shorts." -- Rick Majerus

[LA Ute]

Interesting short op-ed, expanding on Kristof's points in the op-ed linked in my last post. I worry about this happening to the U. of U. It could get ugly because of the added religious element.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...l-intolerance/

The effects of ideological orthodoxy on the quality of higher education may not spur university faculties to reform themselves, but self-interest might. We academics are a fortunate lot, increasingly divorced from society at large. At the same time, many universities are heavily subsidized by the state, and thousands of college grads are swimming in debt. I doubt this is a sustainable equilibrium.

After all, how long will taxpayers in red states be willing to subsidize universities that appear to be their ideological enemies? In a politically polarized nation, why subsidize the other side?

"It's men in shorts." -- Rick Majerus

[NorthwestUteFan]

Wouldn't be surprising. Brigham Young shut down the U in the mid 1850s because it didn't teach courses in a manner supportive of his theology.

In many ways it would be nice to go back to the old model where state universities were effectively free.

[Dwight Schr-Ute]

Wouldn't be surprising. Brigham Young shut down the U in the mid 1850s because it didn't teach courses in a manner supportive of his theology.

In many ways it would be nice to go back to the old model where state universities were effectively free.

Not until they shut down the liberal BYU Bookstore first.

http://archive.sltrib.com/story.php?...store.html.csp


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[UtahsMrSports]

Wouldn't be surprising. Brigham Young shut down the U in the mid 1850s because it didn't teach courses in a manner supportive of his theology.

In many ways it would be nice to go back to the old model where state universities were effectively free.

Or due to lack of funding and feeder schools in the still-settling salt lake valley, but hey........

[NorthwestUteFan]

Or due to lack of funding and feeder schools in the still-settling salt lake valley, but hey........

Funding was a real problem, as was finfing a continuous location. This is the reason we should revere John Park as the true founder of the University of Utah. And perhaps this is the reason Park chose the site on property owned by the US Army at Fort Douglas.

This quote gives a peek into the mind of Brigham Young:

"We have enough and to spare, at the present time in these mountains, of schools where young infidels are made because the teachers are so tender-footed that they dare not mention the principles of the gospel to their pupils, but have no hesitancy in introducing into the classroom the theories of Huxley, or Darwin, or Mill and the false political economy which contend against co-operation and the United Order. This course I am resolutely and uncompromisingly opposed to, and I hope to see the day when the doctrines of the gospel will be taught in our schools, when the revelations of the Lord will be our texts, and our books will be written and manufactured by ourselves in our own midst. As a beginning in this direction I have endowed the Brigham Young Academy in Provo."

Brigham Young, Letters of Brigham Young to his Sons

[NorthwestUteFan]

On a serious note, we recently saw just how petty the state legislature can be. It only takes a couple of legislators to get a bee in their bonnet to create a significant problem for the University. State Universities exist on funding from the state, but if the state refused to find them based on an ideological basis (whether religious or political), them they will scramble to find funding in other places including through raised tuition.

Here in Washington, UW makes up budget shortfalls by accepting an increasingly higher percentage of out-of-state students rather than in-state. OOS tuition is $20k+ higher than in-state ($34k vs $12k).

[Diehard Ute]

On a serious note, we recently saw just how petty the state legislature can be. It only takes a couple of legislators to get a bee in their bonnet to create a significant problem for the University. State Universities exist on funding from the state, but if the state refused to find them based on an ideological basis (whether religious or political), them they will scramble to find funding in other places including through raised tuition.

Here in Washington, UW makes up budget shortfalls by accepting an increasingly higher percentage of out-of-state students rather than in-state. OOS tuition is $20k+ higher than in-state ($34k vs $12k).

People would be shocked if they saw how small the states contribution to the U really is




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[NorthwestUteFan]

People would be shocked if they saw how small the states contribution to the U really is




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The problem is the fact that the Universities accept an amount of anything over $1 means the state legislature still holds the school by the short hairs. Their power over the school likely outpaces the expectation based on the dollar amount given.

We used to see this at the U hospital. The state have us around 2% of our budget (including reimbursements), and in return we had to treat all of the prisoners, as well as having all of the homeless or indigent people shunted away from LDS Hospital.

[Diehard Ute]

The problem is the fact that the Universities accept an amount of anything over $1 means the state legislature still holds the school by the short hairs. Their power over the school likely outpaces the expectation based on the dollar amount given.

We used to see this at the U hospital. The state have us around 2% of our budget (including reimbursements), and in return we had to treat all of the prisoners, as well as having all of the homeless or indigent people shunted away from LDS Hospital.

Well treating the prisoners is a good thing. Having worked in billing at the U the best paying patients were prisoners. They paid more than Medicare

The last year I worked there the U wrote off about $250,000,000 in charges.

In 2016 the U likely carries no more burden than any other hospital for initial care of those who can't pay.


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