Higher Education Controversies
Bob Jensen
at
Trinity University
Message to America's
Higher Education Faculty
You are the reason the colleges are
proud of what they do and your accomplishments represent the
performance that colleges and universities point to in developing
and justifying their reputation. Reputations are not developed in a
vacuum. You, your parents, your children, your colleagues and your
peers are the living remnants of the college experience. Your
success justifies the massive resources poured by private Americans
into supporting colleges and universities. And your success
validates the vocation that characterizes the role of so many
faculty members. There is something special about American higher
education, which continues to produce some of the world’s greatest
scientists and engineers, thinkers and scholars. There is something
unique in the education we offer, which provides a breadth, an
intellectual depth to accompany the skills and aptitudes of the
specialist. And there are the human successes in sectors whose
mission is to produce an involved, thinking efficiency... Not
everyone agrees that American higher education is characterized by
success. Numbers are quoted indicating that the quality of graduates
is not what it used to be. But they forget that sometimes the
numbers go down as the numbers go up. As American higher education
welcomes people less prepared, less gifted and often less motivated,
as the atmosphere at some colleges becomes less rarified by the
proliferation of remedial education, the average accomplishment will
go down.
Bernard Fryshman, "Grasping the Reins of Reality," Inside Higher
Ed, August 16, 2006 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2006/08/16/fryshman
“How many professors does it take to change a light bulb?”
Answer: “Whadaya mean,
“change”?”
Bob Zemsky, Chronicle of
Higher Education's Chronicle Review, December 2007 ---
Click Here
As David
Bartholomae observes, “We make a huge mistake if we don’t try to
articulate more publicly what it is we value in intellectual work.
We do this routinely for our students — so it should not be
difficult to find the language we need to speak to parents and
legislators.” If we do not try to find that public language but
argue instead that we are not accountable to those parents and
legislators, we will only confirm what our cynical detractors say
about us, that our real aim is to keep the secrets of our
intellectual club to ourselves. By asking us to spell out those
secrets and measuring our success in opening them to all, outcomes
assessment helps make democratic education a reality.
Gerald Graff,
"Assessment Changes Everything," Inside Higher Ed, February
21, 2008 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2008/02/21/graff
Gerald Graff is professor of English at the University of Illinois
at Chicago and president of the Modern Language Association. This
essay is adapted from a paper he delivered in December at the MLA
annual meeting, a version of which appears on the MLA’s Web site and
is reproduced here with the association’s permission. Among Graff’s
books are Professing Literature, Beyond the Culture Wars
and Clueless in Academe: How School Obscures the Life of the Mind.
Today the
United States ranks ninth among industrialized nations in
higher-education attainment, in large measure because only 53
percent of students who enter college emerge with a bachelor’s
degree, according to census data. And those who don’t finish pay an
enormous price. For every $1 earned by a college graduate, someone
leaving before obtaining a four-year degree earns only 67 cents.
Jensen Comment
These income statistics are misleading. For example, the reasons
that make a student drop out of college may be the same reason that
dropout will earn a lower wage. In other words, not having a diploma
may not be the reason the majority of dropouts have lower incomes.
Aside from money problems, students often quit college because they
have lower ambition, abilities, concentration, social skills, and/or
health quality, including drug and alcohol addictions. These human
afflictions contribute to lower wages whether or not a student
graduates, and a higher proportion of dropouts have such afflictions
versus students who stick it out to obtain their diplomas. Nations
who rank higher than the U.S. in higher-education attainment do so
because they have higher admission standards for the first year of
college.
Almost 20 years after the
first edition came out, the editors of
The Academic’s Handbook
(Duke University Press)
have released a new version — the third — with many
chapters on faculty careers updated and some
completely new topics added. Topics covered include
teaching, research, tenure, academic freedom,
mentoring, diversity, harassment and more. The
editors of the collection (who also wrote some of
the pieces) are two Duke University professors who
also served as administrators there. They are A.
Leigh Deneef, a professor of English and former
associate dean of the Graduate School, and Craufurd
D. Goodwin, a professor of economics who was
previously vice provost and dean of the Graduate
School.
Inside Higher Ed, January 10, 2007 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/workplace/2007/01/10/handbook
Find out what changes in the last ten
years of academe are the most significant!
We ultimately get satisfaction from our relations
with family and friends, the love we give or
receive, the meaning we find in work, service,
religion or hobbies.
Robert J. Samuelson,
"The Bliss We Can't Buy For better or worse, there
are limits to re-engineering the human spirit.,"
Newsweek, July 11, 2007 ---
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19709408/site/newsweek/page/0/
Historian Professor Dyhouse
shows that students have always gained different
advantages from their degrees depending on their
gender and background. Since they were first
admitted to universities in the late 19th century,
women have benefited less in straight economic terms
from their degrees than men, but have still
considered the experience "a gift beyond price".
Professor Dyhouse's study, which is published on the
History and Policy website, traces the history of
university funding from grants to top-up fees. She
shows how the university experience has changed over
the past century; one hundred years ago the
'typical' student was a full-time male
undergraduate, now female part-time students are
more representative.
"History shows degrees are worth more
than a bigger pay packet: Ten years after the
Dearing Report, which paved the way for tuition
fees, a new University of Sussex study challenges
the current 'market place' approach to higher
education policy," PhysOrg, August 6, 2007
---
http://physorg.com/news105630476.html
In one century we went from
teaching Latin and Greek in high school to offering
remedial English in college.
Joseph Sobran
as quoted by Mark Shapiro at
http://irascibleprofessor.com/comments-11-27-07.htm
A new booklet from the National Academy of Sciences
and the Institute of Medicine offers an overview of
research on evolution and creationism, finding that
the former is sound science and the latter is
anything but.
“Science,
Evolution and Creationism”
won’t surprise many scientists, but its intended
audience is the public, where debates continue to
flare. The booklet argues that religious faith and
belief in evolution are not mutually exclusive. But
teaching creationist beliefs in the classroom is a
problem, the booklet says. “Teaching creationist
ideas in science class confuses students about what
constitutes science and what does not,” the booklet
says.
Inside Higher Ed, January 4, 2007 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/01/04/qt
Bob
Jensen's Advice to New Faculty ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/newfaculty.htm
Bob
Jensen's threads on education technology ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm
Bob Jensen's Education
Technology Workshop ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/EdTech/
Bob Jensen's homepage
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/
Global Education Digest
2007 ---
http://www.uis.unesco.org/ev.php?ID=7002_201&ID2=DO_TOPIC
Center for Academic
Integrity ---
http://www.academicintegrity.org/
|
Grade Inflation and Dysfunctional Teaching
Evaluations (the biggest scandal in higher education)
Upward Trend in
Grades and Downward Trend in Homework
Our Compassless Colleges
Where Highest Ranked Colleges Don't Excel
Our Under Achieving Colleges
Bok's Dark View of the Sad State of Learning in Higher Education
What are the big faculty cat fights all about?
"The Overworked College Administrator," by Barbara Mainwaring,
Inside Higher Ed, August 10, 2007 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2007/08/10/mainwaring
How can teachers/researchers gain collegiate administrative skills?
Many professors worry that colleges these days prefer a
professional class of administrators to promoting faculty members. In turn, many
administrators complain that faculty members — however good at their teaching
and research — may lack key skills for more responsibility. A new program at
Simmons College —
one of six master’s institutions receiving grants
Tuesday to promote “faculty career flexibility” — aims to provide professors
with a path to pick up administrative skills, without just adding on to their
workloads. The grants are being awarded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which
last year
awarded similar grants to research universities.
Scott Jaschik, "Promoting Career Flexibility," Inside Higher Ed, January
30, 2008 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/01/30/sloan
Dating Students May Be Roommates in Dorms
Student Engagement
Student Partying Controversies
How should administrators handle student-sponsored events that feature alcohol?
Or, for that matter, half-naked partygoers dressed in caution tape?
Unacceptable Dropout Rates
Teaching Excellence Secondary to Research
for Promotion, Tenure, and Pay
Teaching Evaluations and RateMyProfessor
Does faculty research improve student
learning in the classrooms where researchers teach?
Put another way, is research more important than scholarship that does not
contribute to new knowledge?
Do we want the Shotgun Game to be so dominant in
academic research?
How much tenure credit should be given to
micro-level research?
How should credit to co-authors (joint authors)
be granted in tenure and performance evaluations?
Privatization Issues
Supplemental fees for excellence
A rose by any other name is , ... , ah er , ... a required supplemental
enhancement charge
Financial and Academic Lack of Accountability
and Conflicts of Interest
Study Abroad Conflict
of Interest Fraud
What students and
their parents should, but probably don't, know about study abroad programs
Professors and Colleges Skating on the Edge of
Questionable Ethics
Colleges throw rocks at students who cheat
Colleges throw powder puffs at professors who cheat
Professors Who Cheat ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm#ProfessorsWhoPlagiarize
Liberal Bias in the Media and in Academe
Are we Overworking Our Graduate Teaching
Assistants?
Admissions and Financial Aid Controversies: Grades
are Even Worse Than Tests as Predictors of Success
Bound to Fail
We need to get serious about creating universities that are actually designed to
educate undergraduates successfully
Too Much Need for
Remedial Learning in College
Pre-collegiate Remedial Studies
Paying for Improved SAT, GRE, GMAT, LSAT, TOEFL and Other
Qualifying Test Scores
Note to College Presidents: We've got
kickback ethics problems right here in River City!
Controversial Changes in Financial Aid: Some Colleges Cut Back Merit Aid
How to recognize
and avoid Advanced Placement (AP) credits
Fraudulent Advanced
Placement (AP) Credits
Students
Don't Particularly Want to Read and Write Well When it Takes Effort
Too Much Need for
Remedial Learning in College
What is "negative learning" in college?
Class Size Matters, But
the Importance of This Factor is Highly Variable
Full Disclosure to Consumers of Higher
Education?
In terms of earnings expectations, should a black
student graduate from a historically black college or another college?
Failure to Utilize Retirees
Playbook: Does Your
School Make The Grade? Here are four things to consider when applying to an
undergrad business program
Tracking undergraduates into graduate school
and into adult life
ROTC and Military Recruiting and the Solomon Amendment
Academic Standards Differences
Between Disciplines
The New European Three Year Plan for
Undergraduate Degrees
Nontraditional and Online Doctoral Degree
Programs: Some With No Courses
Students may take the easiest way out in
customizable curricula
Are Elite Universities Losing Their
Competitive Edge?
Was Earning That Harvard M.B.A. Worth It?
What's it really like to be the president of a
university?
How can you ruin a student's career and maybe her/his
life on a discussion board?
Debates Over the Limits of Academic Freedom
When Professors Can't Get Along
A Call for Professional Attire on Campus
U.S. Supreme Court Speaks Out About Religion on Campus
Controversies in Doctoral and Other Graduate Programs
(more clinical studies possible?)
Are American Scientists an Endangered Species?
An Internet Casualty: The Losing Research
Edge of Elite Universities
Universities in the Marketplace: The
Commercialization of Higher Education
Authoring and Faculty Ethics or Lack Thereof
Issues in Information Technology on Campus
Teaching Without Textbooks
Accreditation: Why We Must Change ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm
Colleges On the Far, Far Left Are Having a
Difficult Time With Finances and Accreditation
Peer Review in Which Reviewer Comments are Shared
With the World
Flawed Peer Review Process
Elite Researchers No Longer Need Peer
Reviewed Elite Journals
Rethinking Tenure, Dissertations, and Scholarship
Academic Publishing in the Digital Age
Obsolete and Dysfunctional System of Tenure
Over 62% of Full-Time Faculty Are Off the Tenure Track
Inexorable March to a Part-Time Faculty
Political Correctness and Other Academic Freedom Issues
Intellectuals, Free speech, and Capitalism
Political Correctness, Free Speech and
Academic Freedom:
How Unsafe Are Horowitz's 101 Most Dangerous
Professors?
Liberals Debate Political Islam
The Politically Correct Fracture of Academe
(including sponsored boycotts of some professors)
Ethics Centers in Universities Devote Scant Attention to Ethics Breaches in
Their Own Houses
What type of alumni gifts to colleges
are just not politically correct?
The Politically Correct Fracture of Harvard University
(including the gender gap in science)
Salary Compression, Inversion, and Controversies
How you can compare living costs between any two college towns in the U.S.?
Gender Differences versus Discipline
Differences in Salaries
Non-salary Controversies
Rethinking the Roles of Spouses of College Executives
Debates on Size: Pomona College, Amherst, and Some
Other Small Colleges Plan to Grow in Size
Debates on Unionization of Faculty and Graduate
Assistants
New Critique of Teacher Ed
Do we need revolutionary changes in Economics 101?
Do we need revolutionary changes in Government 101?
Do we need huge changes in J-Schools and B-Schools?
Some Business Schools No Longer Have Silo Core Courses
New, Albeit Shaky, Partnership Forming Between Professors
and the FBI
Elite colleges are for the rich and the poor and selected minorities,
but less and less for middle income families
Fraternity and Sorority Controversies
College Dating/Marrying Ain't What It Used to Be Many
Long Years Ago
Athletics Controversies in Colleges
On the Dark Side of the Higher Education Academy:
Generation Gaps, Collegial Apathy or Hostility, and Loneliness
How much would you charge to help restore
the tarnished image of a CEO you never knew?
Bob Jensen's threads on the dark side of distance learning and education
technology are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm
Incredible shrinking men in higher education:
The problem is not just a shortage of black male applicants
Declining Rate of Growth
The Eroding Faculty Paycheck
Universities may not provide commissions
or other success-based rewards to student admissions officials
Controversial Issues in Affirmative Action
Hiring and Pay Raises
Controversial Issues in Affirmative Action
and Academic Standards
Pre-collegiate Remedial Studies
Too Much Need for
Remedial Learning in College
Graduation Trends
Why are blacks and latinos avoiding teacher
education majors?
The Controversial Top Ten Percent (10 Percent) Law
Controversial Issues in Silver Spoon Admissions and
Academic Standards
Controversial Issues in Affirmative Action Preferences for Gay Students
Controversial Issues of the Study Abroad
(International Studies) Curriculum
Dealing With Disturbed and Possibly Dangerous
Students
Engineering Programs Facing Up to Possible
Requirements for Masters Degrees
Accounting Programs Were Forced to Do This Via Newly-Enacted State Laws for CPA
Licensure
Many Professors Oppose Free Open Sharing of
Research
Some Disciplines, Especially in Business Research,
Do Not Encourage Replication
Appearance Versus Reality of Trustee/School Kickbacks
Appearance Versus the Reality of Research
Independence and Freedom
Appearance Versus Reality in Church Dogma and Education
Integrity
College Ranking Issues in the Media
Journal Ranking Controversies and Eigenfactor
Scores
Paying More for a Lower-Ranked University: Where What You Pay is Supposed to
Mean Prestige
Commission on the Future of Higher Education Final
Report:
The National Education Database and College Assessment Controversy
Earmarked research funding
The Decline of the Secular University
Too Many Law Schools
Residence Hall and Fraternity/Sorority House Fires a
Growing Threat
Executives' accountability and
responsibility?
Prestige Competition from U.K. Universities:
"Who Needs Harvard or Yale?"
Since the Virginia Tech massacre are college
instructors more at risk?
Are college students good surrogates for real life studies?
How can you protect your work in progress and finished works on your computer?
Why are some of these alternatives problematic for your college and/or your
employer?
Long Deferred Campus Maintenance:
Crumbling Buildings and Stadiums
What is the best method of peer review?
Is it truly a value-adding process?
What are the ethical concerns?
And how can new technology be used to improve traditional models?
Differences between "popular teacher"
versus "master teacher"
versus "mastery learning"
versus "master educator"
Bob Jensen's threads on Cognitive Processes and Artificial Intelligence
are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#CognitiveProcesses
In an educational system strapped for money and
increasingly ruled by standardized tests, arts courses can seem almost a
needless extravagance, and the arts are being cut back at schools across the
country
Miscellaneous Tidbits
From the University of Michigan
National Clearinghouse on Academic Worklife ---
http://www.academicworklife.org/
Today, college and university faculty members face
many challenges, including an increasingly diverse workforce and new models
for career flexibility. The National Clearinghouse on Academic Worklife (NCAW)
provides resources to help faculty, graduate students, administrators and
higher education researchers understand more about all aspects of modern
academic work and related career issues, including tenure track and non
tenure track appointments, benefits, climate and satisfaction, work/life
balance, and policy development.
Colleges, Accreditors Seek Better Ways to Measure Learning
Assessment/Learning Issues: Measurement and the No-Significant Differences ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Assess.htm#AssessmentIssues
Education at a Glance 2007 (Comparisons Across Nations) ---
http://www.oecd.org/document/30/0,3343,en_2649_39263294_39251550_1_1_1_1,00.html
Bob Jensen's threads on oligopoly textbook publisher frauds are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudReporting.htm#ScholarlyJournals
Academic Conferences that Rip Off Colleges ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudReporting.htm#AcademicConferences
Effort Reporting Technology for Higher Education ---
http://www.huronconsultinggroup.com/uploadedFiles/ECRT_email.pdf
Assessment of Learning Achievements of College Graduates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#AdmissionTesting
Work Experience Substitutes for College Credits
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#WorkExperience
Has positivism had a negativism impact on research in the social sciences,
business, accounting, and finance? ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on teaching evaluation controversies and grade inflation
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#GradeInflation
Bob Jensen's threads on cheating are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/plagiarism.htm
Study says B-schoolers (at the graduate level) are more likely to cheat
than other students.
Now administrators are fighting back ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm#MBAs
Bob Jensen's threads on open sharing are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Bob Jensen's threads on the Downsides of
Open Sharing ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/Theworry.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on teaching evaluations are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#TeachingStyle
Bob Jensen's threads on course evaluations and grade inflation are at
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2006/07/28/caesar
Bob Jensen's threads on teaching evaluations and learning styles are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#LearningStyles
Bob Jensen's threads on controversies in assessment ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on cheating and plagiarism ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/plagiarism.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on technology controversies in education ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on classroom, building, and campus design are in a
module at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on the dark side of distance learning and education
technology are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on Hypocrisy in Academia and the Media ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Hypocrisy.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on Cognitive Processes and Artificial Intelligence
are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#CognitiveProcesses
Bob Jensen's advice to new faculty ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/newfaculty.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on fraud ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud.htm
Bob Jensen's home page ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/
My communications on
"Hypocrisy in Academia and the Media" ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/hypocrisy.htm
My “Evil
Empire” essay ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/hypocrisyEvilEmpire.htm
My unfinished essay on the "Pending Collapse of the United
States" ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/entitlements.htm
Bob Jensen's various threads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
Campaign 2008: Issue Coverage
Tracker ---
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/interactives/campaign08/issues/
Grade Inflation and
Dysfunctional Teaching Evaluations (the biggest scandal in higher education)
Question
If median grades for each course are made publically available on the Internet,
will students seek out the high grade average or low grade average courses?
Examples of such postings at Cornell University are at
http://registrar.sas.cornell.edu/Student/mediangradesA.html
Hypothesis 1
Students will seek out the lower grade average courses/sections thinking that
they have a better chance to compete for high grades.
Hypothesis 2
Students will seek out the higher grade average courses/sections thinking that
particular instructors are easier graders.
However, when Cornell researchers studied about
800,000 course grades issued at Cornell from 1990 to 2004, they found that most
students visited the site to shop for classes where the median grade was higher.
Plus, professors who tended to give out higher grades were more popular.
Students with lower SAT scores were the most likely to seek out courses with
higher median grades.
"Easy A's on the Internet: A surprising Cornell experiment in posting
grades; plus a look at recent research into ethical behavior, service charges,
and volunteer habits," by Francesca Di Meglio, Business Week, December
11, 2007 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/dec2007/bs20071211_885308.htm?link_position=link2
In a striking
example of unintended consequences, a move by Cornell
University to give context to student grades by publicly
posting median grades for courses has resulted in exactly
the opposite student behavior than anticipated.
Cornell's College of Arts & Sciences originally set up a
Web site in 1997 where median
grades were posted, with the intention of also printing
median class grades alongside the grade the student actually
received in the course on his or her permanent transcript.
Administrators thought students would use the information on
the Web site to seek out classes with lower median
grades—because, they reasoned, an A in a class that has a
median grade of B-minus would be more meaningful than say,
an A in a course where the median was A-plus.
Course Shopping Leads to Grade Inflation
However,
when Cornell researchers studied about 800,000 course grades
issued at Cornell from 1990 to 2004, they found that most
students visited the site to shop for classes where the
median grade was higher. Plus, professors who tended to give
out higher grades were more popular. Students with lower SAT
scores were the most likely to seek out courses with higher
median grades.
This
"shopping" in turn led to grade inflation, Vrinda Kadiyali,
associate professor of marketing and economics at Cornell's
Johnson Graduate School of Management,
one of the authors, explained in an
interview. The study, which is undergoing peer review, has
not yet been published.
So far,
however, the university has posted the median course grades
only on the Internet and has not yet put those grades on
transcripts. According to an article in the Cornell
Daily Sun, the school will start posting the grades
on transcripts in the spring. School officials were not
immediately available for comment.
The research
team hopes the school follows through on its plans. "That
will allow Cornell to hold itself to a higher standard
because it lets potential employers know where students
stand relevant to other students," says Kadiyali.
The presence
of the median grade data is well-known to students but less
well-known to faculty. The researchers themselves were
prompted to do the study when one of them learned of the Web
site from a student questioning grades in her course.
Kadiyali says the formula the researchers used to come to
these conclusions could easily be applied to Internet
teacher rating sites, such as
ratemyprofessors.com. It's
something educators should consider, she adds, to find out
how these posts affect the decision-making of students and,
thus, professors and their courses.
Jensen Comment
The problem is that, in modern times, grades are the keys to the kingdom (i.e.,
keys unlocking the gates of graduate studies and professional careers) such that
higher grades rather than education tend to become the main student goals. A
hundred years ago, just getting a degree could open postgraduate gates in life
because such a small proportion of the population got college diplomas. With
higher percentages of the population getting college diplomas, high grades
became keys to the kingdom. In many colleges a C grade is viewed as very nearly
a failing grade.
At the same time, formal teaching evaluations and teacher rating sites like
ratemyprofessors.com have led to marked grade inflation in virtually all
colleges. The median grades are often A, A-, B+, or B. The poor student's C
grade is way below average. Just take a look at these course medians from
Cornell University ---
http://registrar.sas.cornell.edu/Grades/MedianGradeSP07.pdf
Bob Jensen's threads on grade inflation and
dysfunctional teaching evaluations are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#GradeInflation
Upward Trend in Grades and Downward Trend in
Homework
Business ranks at the bottom in terms of
having 23% of the responding students having only 1-5 hours of homework per
week!
This in part might explain why varsity athletes choose business as a major
in college.
"Homework by Major," by Mark Bauerlein, Chronicle of Higher
Education, May 5, 2008 ---
http://chronicle.com/review/brainstorm/index.php?id=422
Stephen’s
post last week
about reading complained that students don’t want any more homework, and
their disposition certainly shows up in the surveys. In the 2006
National Survey of Student Engagement,
almost one in five college seniors devoted five hours or less per week to
“Preparing for class,” and 26 percent stood at six to ten hours per week.
College professors say that achievement requires around 25 hours per week of
homework, but only 11 percent reached that mark.
The 2007 NSSE numbers break responses down by
major, and the homework levels for seniors are worth comparing. Here are
numbers for 15 hours or less.
Arts and Humanities majors came in at 16 percent
doing 1-5 hours of homework per week, 25 percent at 6-10 hours, and 20
percent at 11-15 hours.
Biological Sciences: 12 percent do 1-5 hours, 22
percent do 6-10, and 20 percent do 11-15 hours.
Business: 23 percent at 1-5, 30 percent at 6-10,
and 19 percent at 11-15 hours.
Education: 16 percent at 1-5, 27 percent at 6-10,
and 21 percent at 11-15 hours.
Engineering: 10 percent at 1-5, 19 percent at 6-10,
and 17 percent at 11-15 hours.
Physical Science: 12 percent at 1-5 hours, 21
percent at 6-10, and 18 percent at 11-15 hours.
Social Science: 20 percent at 1-5 hours, 28 percent
at 6-10, and 20 percent at 11-15 hours.
The
problem is that our students choose very bland, low nourishment diets in our
modern day smorgasbord curricula. Their concern is with their grade averages
rather than their education. And why not? Grades for students and turf for
faculty have become the keys to the kingdom!
Bob Jensen
"Our Compassless Colleges," by Peter
Berkowitz, The Wall Street Journal, September 5, 2007; Page A17 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118895528818217660.html
At universities and colleges throughout the land,
undergraduates and their parents pay large sums of money for -- and federal
and state governments contribute sizeable tax exemptions to support --
"liberal" education. This despite administrators and faculty lacking, or
failing to honor, a coherent concept of what constitutes an educated human
being.
|
To be
sure, American higher education, or rather a part of it, is today
the envy of the world, producing and maintaining research scientists
of the highest caliber. But liberal education is another matter.
Indeed, many professors in the humanities and social sciences
proudly promulgate doctrines that mock the very idea of a standard
or measure defining an educated person, and so legitimate the
compassless curriculum over which they preside. In these
circumstances, why should we not conclude that universities are
betraying their mission?
Many
American colleges do adopt general distribution requirements.
Usually this means that students must take a course or two of their
choosing in the natural sciences, social sciences, and the
humanities, decorated perhaps with a dollop of fine arts,
rudimentary foreign-language exposure, and the acquisition of basic
writing and quantitative skills. And all students must choose a
major. But this veneer of structure provides students only
superficial guidance. Or, rather, it reinforces the lesson that our
universities have little of substance to say about the essential
knowledge possessed by an educated person.
Certainly this was true of the core curriculum at Harvard, where I
taught in the faculty of arts and sciences during the 1990s. And it
remains true even after Harvard's recent reforms.
Harvard's aims and aspirations are in many ways admirable. According
to this year's Report of the Task Force on General Education,
Harvard understands liberal education as "an education conducted in
a spirit of free inquiry undertaken without concern for topical
relevance or vocational utility." It prepares for the rest of life
by improving students' ability "to assess empirical claims,
interpret cultural expression, and confront ethical dilemmas in
their personal and professional lives." But instead of concentrating
on teaching substantive knowledge, the general education at Harvard
will focus on why what students learn is important. To
accomplish this, Harvard would require students to take
single-semester courses in eight categories: Aesthetic and
Interpretive Understanding, Culture and Belief, Empirical Reasoning,
Ethical Reasoning, Science of Living Systems, Science of the
Physical Universe, Societies of the World, and The United States in
the World.
Unfortunately, the new requirements add up to little more than an
attractively packaged evasion of the university's responsibility to
provide a coherent core for undergraduate education. For starters,
though apparently not part of the general education curriculum,
Harvard requires only a year of foreign language study or the
equivalent. Yet since it usually takes more than a year of college
study to achieve competence in a foreign language -- the ability to
hold a conversation and read a newspaper -- doesn't Harvard, by
requiring only a single year, denigrate foreign-language study, and
with it the serious study of other cultures and societies?
Furthermore, in the search for the immediate relevance it disavows,
Harvard's curriculum repeatedly puts the cart before the horse. For
example, instead of first requiring students to concentrate on the
study of novels, poetry, and plays, Harvard will ask them to choose
from a variety of courses on "literary or religious texts,
paintings, sculpture, architecture, music, film, dance, decorative
arts" that involve "exploring theoretical and philosophical issues
concerning the production and reception of meanings and the
formation of aesthetic judgment."
Instead of first requiring students to gain acquaintance with the
history of opinions about law, justice, government, duty and virtue,
Harvard will ask them to choose from a variety of courses on how to
bring ethical theories to bear on contemporary moral and political
dilemmas. Instead of first requiring students to survey U.S. history
or European history or classical history, Harvard will ask them to
choose from a variety of courses that examine the U.S and its
relation to the rest of the world. Instead of first teaching
students about the essential features of Judaism, Christianity, and
Islam, Harvard will ask them to choose from a variety of courses on
almost any aspect of foreign societies.
Harvard's general education reform will allow students to graduate
without ever having read the same book or studied the same material.
Students may take away much of interest, but it is the little in
common they learn that will be of lasting significance. For they
will absorb the implicit teaching of the new college curriculum --
same as the old one -- that there is nothing in particular that an
educated person need know.
Of
course, if parents, students, alumni donors, trustees, professors
and administrators are happy, why worry? A college degree remains a
hot commodity, a ticket of entry to valuable social networks, a
signal to employers that graduates have achieved a certain
proficiency in manipulating concepts, performing computations, and
getting along with peers.
The
reason to worry is that university education can cause lasting harm.
The mental habits that students form and the ideas they absorb in
college consolidate the framework through which as adults they
interpret experience, and judge matters to be true or false, fair or
inequitable, honorable or dishonorable. A university that fails to
teach students sound mental habits and to acquaint them with
enduring ideas handicaps its graduates for public and private life.
Moreover, properly conceived, a liberal education provides
invaluable benefits for students and the nation. For most students,
it offers the last chance, perhaps until retirement, to read widely
and deeply, to acquire knowledge of the opinions and events that
formed them and the nation in which they live, and to study other
peoples and cultures. A proper liberal education liberalizes in the
old-fashioned and still most relevant sense: It forms individuals
fit for freedom.
The
nation benefits as well, because a liberal democracy presupposes an
informed citizenry capable of distinguishing the public interest
from private interest, evaluating consequences, and discerning the
claims of justice and the opportunities for -- and limits to --
realizing it in politics. Indeed, a sprawling liberal democracy
whose citizens practice different religions and no religion at all,
in which individuals have family heritages that can be traced to
every continent, and in which the nation's foreign affairs are
increasingly bound up with local politics in countries around the
world is particularly dependent on citizens acquiring a liberal
education.
Crafting a core consistent with the imperatives of a liberal
education will involve both a substantial break with today's
university curriculum and a long overdue alignment of higher
education with common sense. Such a core would, for example, require
all students to take semester courses surveying Greek and Roman
history, European history, and American history. It would require
all students to take a semester course in classic works of European
literature, and one in classic works of American literature. It
would require all students to take a semester course in biology and
one in physics. It would require all students to take a semester
course in the principles of American government; one in economics;
and one in the history of political philosophy. It would require all
students to take a semester course comparing Judaism, Christianity,
and Islam. It would require all students to take a semester course
of their choice in the history, literature or religion of a
non-Western civilization. And it would require all students to
demonstrate proficiency in a foreign language of their choice by
carrying on a casual conversation and accurately reading a newspaper
in the language, a level of proficiency usually obtainable after two
years of college study, or four semester courses.
Such a
core is at best an introduction to liberal education. Still,
students who meet its requirements will acquire a common
intellectual foundation that enables them to debate morals and
politics responsibly, enhances their understanding of whatever
specialization they choose, and enriches their appreciation of the
multiple dimensions of the delightful and dangerous world in which
we live.
It is
a mark of the politicization and clutter of our current curriculum
that these elementary requirements will strike many faculty and
administrators as benighted and onerous. Yet the core I've outlined
reflects what all successful individuals outside of academia know:
Progress depends on mastering the basics.
Assuming four courses a semester and 32 to graduate, such a core
could be completed in the first two years of undergraduate study.
Students who met the foreign-language requirement through high
school study would have the opportunity as freshman and sophomores
to choose four elective courses. During their junior and senior
year, students could devote 10 courses to their major while taking
six additional elective courses. And students majoring in the
natural sciences, where it is necessary to take a substantial
sequence of courses, would enroll in introductory and lower-level
courses in their major during freshman and sophomore years and
complete the core during junior and senior years.
Admittedly, reform confronts formidable obstacles. The major one is
professors. Many will fight such a common core, because it requires
them to teach general interest classes outside their area of
expertise; it reduces opportunities to teach small boutique classes
on highly specialized topics; and it presupposes that knowledge is
cumulative and that some books and ideas are more essential than
others.
Meanwhile, students and parents are poorly positioned to affect
change. Students come and go, and, in any event, the understanding
they need to formulate the arguments for reform is acquired through
the very liberal education of which universities are currently
depriving them. Meanwhile, parents are too distant and dispersed,
and often they have too much money on the line to rock the boat.
But
there are opportunities. Change could be led by an intrepid
president, provost or dean of a major university who knows the value
of a liberal education, possesses the eloquence and courage to
defend it to his or her faculty, and has the skill to refashion
institutional incentives and hold faculty and administrators
accountable.
Reform
could also be led by trustees at private universities -- the
election in recent years of T.J. Rodgers, Todd Zywicki, Peter
Robinson and Stephen Smith to the Dartmouth Board of Trustees on
platforms supporting freedom of speech and high academic standards
is a start -- or by alumni determined to connect their donations, on
which universities depend, to reliable promises that their gifts
will be used in furtherance of liberal education, well understood.
And
some enterprising smaller colleges or public universities, taking
advantage of the nation's love of diversity and openness to
innovation, might discover a market niche for parents and students
eager for an education that serves students' best interests by
introducing them in a systematic manner to their own civilization,
to the moral and political principles on which their nation is
based, and to languages and civilizations that differ from their
own.
Citizens today are called on to analyze a formidable array of hard
questions concerning war and peace, liberty and security, markets
and morals, marriage and family, science and technology, poverty and
public responsibility, and much more. No citizen can be expected to
master all the issues. But liberal democracies count on more than a
small minority acquiring the ability to reason responsibly about the
many sides of these many-sided questions. For this reason, we must
teach our universities to appreciate the aims of a liberal
education. And we must impress upon our universities their
obligation to pursue them responsibly.
Mr. Berkowitz, a
senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, teaches
at George Mason University School of Law. This commentary draws from
an essay that previously appeared in Policy Review.
|
"The Bachelor’s Degree Is Obsolete?" by
Peter Agoos, Inside Higher Ed, May 13, 2008 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2008/05/13/sloane
"America's Most Overrated Product: the
Bachelor's Degree," by Marty Nemko, Chronicle of Higher Education,
May 2, 2008 ---
http://chronicle.com/free/v54/i34/34b01701.htm
Among my saddest
moments as a career counselor is when I hear a story like this: "I wasn't a
good student in high school, but I wanted to prove that I can get a college
diploma. I'd be the first one in my family to do it. But it's been five
years and $80,000, and I still have 45 credits to go."
I have a hard time telling such people the killer
statistic: Among high-school students who graduated in the bottom 40 percent
of their classes, and whose first institutions were four-year colleges,
two-thirds had not earned diplomas eight and a half years later. That figure
is from a study cited by Clifford Adelman, a former research analyst at the
U.S. Department of Education and now a senior research associate at the
Institute for Higher Education Policy. Yet four-year colleges admit and take
money from hundreds of thousands of such students each year!
Even worse, most of those college dropouts leave
the campus having learned little of value, and with a mountain of debt and
devastated self-esteem from their unsuccessful struggles. Perhaps worst of
all, even those who do manage to graduate too rarely end up in careers that
require a college education. So it's not surprising that when you hop into a
cab or walk into a restaurant, you're likely to meet workers who spent years
and their family's life savings on college, only to end up with a job they
could have done as a high-school dropout.
Such students are not aberrations. Today,
amazingly, a majority of the students whom colleges admit are grossly
underprepared. Only 23 percent of the 1.3 million high-school graduates of
2007 who took the ACT examination were ready for college-level work in the
core subjects of English, math, reading, and science.
Perhaps more surprising, even those high-school
students who are fully qualified to attend college are increasingly unlikely
to derive enough benefit to justify the often six-figure cost and four to
six years (or more) it takes to graduate. Research suggests that more than
40 percent of freshmen at four-year institutions do not graduate in six
years. Colleges trumpet the statistic that, over their lifetimes, college
graduates earn more than nongraduates, but that's terribly misleading. You
could lock the collegebound in a closet for four years, and they'd still go
on to earn more than the pool of non-collegebound — they're brighter, more
motivated, and have better family connections.
Also, the past advantage of college graduates in
the job market is eroding. Ever more students attend college at the same
time as ever more employers are automating and sending offshore ever more
professional jobs, and hiring part-time workers. Many college graduates are
forced to take some very nonprofessional positions, such as driving a truck
or tending bar.
How much do students at four-year institutions
actually learn?
Colleges are quick to argue that a college
education is more about enlightenment than employment. That may be the
biggest deception of all. Often there is a Grand Canyon of difference
between the reality and what higher-education institutions, especially
research ones, tout in their viewbooks and on their Web sites. Colleges and
universities are businesses, and students are a cost item, while research is
a profit center. As a result, many institutions tend to educate students in
the cheapest way possible: large lecture classes, with necessary small
classes staffed by rock-bottom-cost graduate students. At many colleges,
only a small percentage of the typical student's classroom hours will have
been spent with fewer than 30 students taught by a professor, according to
student-questionnaire data I used for my book How to Get an Ivy League
Education at a State University. When students at 115 institutions were
asked what percentage of their class time had been spent in classes of fewer
than 30 students, the average response was 28 percent.
That's not to say that professor-taught classes are
so worthwhile. The more prestigious the institution, the more likely that
faculty members are hired and promoted much more for their research than for
their teaching. Professors who bring in big research dollars are almost
always rewarded more highly than a fine teacher who doesn't bring in the
research bucks. Ernest L. Boyer, the late president of the Carnegie
Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, used to say that winning the
campus teaching award was the kiss of death when it came to tenure. So, no
surprise, in the latest annual national survey of freshmen conducted by the
Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California at Los
Angeles, 44.6 percent said they were not satisfied with the quality of
instruction they received. Imagine if that many people were dissatisfied
with a brand of car: It would quickly go off the market. Colleges should be
held to a much higher standard, as a higher education costs so much more,
requires years of time, and has so much potential impact on your life.
Meanwhile, 43.5 percent of freshmen also reported "frequently" feeling bored
in class, the survey found.
College students may be dissatisfied with
instruction, but, despite that, do they learn? A 2006 study supported by the
Pew Charitable Trusts found that 50 percent of college seniors scored below
"proficient" levels on a test that required them to do such basic tasks as
understand the arguments of newspaper editorials or compare credit-card
offers. Almost 20 percent of seniors had only basic quantitative skills. The
students could not estimate if their car had enough gas to get to the gas
station.
Continued in article
April 28, 2008 reply from Flowers, Carol
[cflowers@OCC.CCCD.EDU]
Another example of commitment to education -- I
have researched and found that at least 40% of my students are carrying
16-21 units and working full time. I explain this is not realistic. They
explain to me that they have to get this "degree" quickly. If they are doing
poorly in my course -- it is because they don't have the time and I should
understand this and take this into consideration when assigning a grade.
Just this past semester, I had a student explain to me, though he barely
earned a "C", that I had to assign him an "A" as he needed those grade
points to get accepted at a college he wanted to transfer to. Besides, it
wasn't his fault he only earned a "C", he was working two jobs and carrying
17 units! Somewhere along the way, reality has been lost -- they want it all
and they want it NOW!!
April 28, 2008 reply from Abacus Capalini
[abacuscapalini@YAHOO.COM]
The question that comes to my mind is, is this
"devaluation" due to the marketing of colleges and/ or diploma mills? Where
they focus on a quick degree turnaround or credit for work experience.
As a faculty member at a community college, I have
also had students demand a higher grade because they had to work and go to
school. It is an interesting position to be in.
April 28, 2008 reply from Patricia Doherty
[pdoherty@BU.EDU]
I'm a bit put off by the article's bias toward the
"bored" argument. Are we there to teach then something or entertain them? Do
we have to make every class sound like MTV or an episode of Saturday Night
Live? I don't find all aspects of accounting terribly entertaining. In fact
I'd rather go get a filling done that listen to someone talk about the
beauty of debits and credits. But I'm intelligent enough to understand that
, although "boring," debits and credits serve a purpose, and the end results
of the chain they begin ARE both useful and interesting.
There was a time when the value of a college
education was considered to be a broadening of the mind, and the acquisition
of knowledge that had value in and of itself, regardless of its ability to
raise your salary. Isn't that still a good thing? I think so.
Maybe the problem (Haven't I ranted about this
before? Stop reading if I have.) is the gradual shifting of the orientation
from educational institution to trade school.
April 28, 2008 message from Peter Kenyon
[pbk1@HUMBOLDT.EDU]
While we're beating up students (largely deserved)
we ought to save some indignation for ourselves.
Along with healthcare, higher ed runs near the
front of the pack in price level increases. We've invented an education
establishment were most faculty are rewarded for finding ways out of the
classroom to do "more important" work. We create "mission creep" in co- and
extra-curricular activities that come with massive overhead. We run up
tuition and fees while lobbying for more financial aid passthroughs from our
students. We encourage them to lard up with debt to earn our degrees.
It isn't just the student body that changed it
values.
Peter Kenyon
April 29, 2008 reply from Bob Jensen
Hi
Abacus,
Glad you joined us. My compliments to your parents if Abacus is the name on your
birth certificate.
My
parents weren’t as imaginative but then again they might've chosen “Sue” (as in
the Johnny Cash classic."
Message to America's Higher
Education Faculty
You are the reason the colleges are proud of
what they do and your accomplishments represent the performance that colleges
and universities point to in developing and justifying their reputation.
Reputations are not developed in a vacuum. You, your parents, your children,
your colleagues and your peers are the living remnants of the college
experience. Your success justifies the massive resources poured by private
Americans into supporting colleges and universities. And your success validates
the vocation that characterizes the role of so many faculty members. There is
something special about American higher education, which continues to produce
some of the world’s greatest scientists and engineers, thinkers and scholars.
There is something unique in the education we offer, which provides a breadth,
an intellectual depth to accompany the skills and aptitudes of the specialist.
And there are the human successes in sectors whose mission is to produce an
involved, thinking efficiency... Not everyone agrees that American higher
education is characterized by success. Numbers are quoted indicating that the
quality of graduates is not what it used to be. But they forget that sometimes
the numbers go down as the numbers go up. As American higher education welcomes
people less prepared, less gifted and often less motivated, as the atmosphere at
some colleges becomes less rarified by the proliferation of remedial education,
the average accomplishment will go down.
Bernard Fryshman, "Grasping the Reins of Reality," Inside Higher Ed,
August 16, 2006 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2006/08/16/fryshman
Today the
United States ranks ninth among industrialized nations in higher-education
attainment, in large measure because only 53 percent of students who
enter college emerge with a bachelor’s degree, according to census data. And
those who don’t finish pay an enormous price. For every $1 earned by a college
graduate, someone leaving before obtaining a four-year degree earns only 67
cents.
Jensen Comment
These income statistics are misleading. For example, the reasons that make a
student drop out of college may be the same reason that dropout will earn a
lower wage. In other words, not having a diploma may not be the reason the
majority of dropouts have lower incomes. Aside from money problems, students
often quit college because they have lower ambition, abilities, concentration,
social skills, and/or health quality, including drug and alcohol addictions.
These human afflictions contribute to lower wages whether or not a student
graduates, and a higher proportion of dropouts have such afflictions versus
students who stick it out to obtain their diplomas. Nations who rank higher than
the U.S. in higher-education attainment do so because they have higher admission
standards for the first year of college.
The problem is that our students choose very
bland, low nourishment diets in our modern day smorgasbord curricula. Their
concern is with their grade averages rather than their education. And why not?
Grades for students and turf for faculty have become the keys to the kingdom!
Bob Jensen
May 8, 2008 message from The Carnegie Foundation
A New Agenda for Higher Education
To prepare students to respond to the world with informed and responsible
judgments about the role they will play within it, a new model of
undergraduate teaching is needed. A New Agenda for Higher Education
(Jossey-Bass, 2008), by Carnegie Senior Scholar William M. Sullivan and
Consulting Scholar Matthew S. Rosin, offers a conception of educational
purpose focused on the interdependence of liberal education and professional
training. More than just positing a theory of a better integrated
undergraduate education, the book highlights practices to educate students
for lives of significance and responsibility.
What would your college do with an added $200
million?
First I want to congratulate Claremont McKenna College for receiving such a huge
gift.
Second I want to congratulate them on how they intend to spend it in this era
where so many students opt for professional program majors rather than liberal
arts.
Claremont McKenna College on Thursday announced a
$200 million gift, from a trustee and alumnus, Robert Day. One purpose of the
funds will be to create new academic programs in which students can combine
liberal arts education with an education in business and finance — either during
their undergraduate program or through a one-year master of finance program
immediately after an undergraduate program is completed. The new options are
meant to be an alternative to a traditional M.B.A.
Inside Higher Ed, September 28, 2007 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/09/28/qt
Bob Jensen's threads on free mathematics and statistics tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Mathematics
Where the Highest Ranked Colleges Don't Excel
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#DoNotExcel
Our Under Achieving Colleges Bok's Dark View of the Sad State of Learning in
Higher Education ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#Bok
Carnegie Foundation's case for integrating
statistics into "a manifold" of undergraduate courses
Figures don't lie, but liars figure.
Mark Twain
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and
statistics.
Mark Twain, attributed by him to Benjamin Disraeli
October 31, 2007 message from Lee S. Shulman
carnegiepresident@carnegiefoundation.org
Michael Burke teaches mathematics at the College of
San Mateo and is a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Foundation. He is
working on a book, drawn from his own integrative approaches to teaching,
that advocates teaching students to use mathematics in ways that prepare
them for active lives as citizens in a democracy.
He encourages the integration of mathematics,
statistics and their manifold forms of representation with other
undergraduate courses. In this manner, he helps students understand,
critique and write about serious issues that range from global warming to
world population growth, all of which require the proper interpretation and
use of quantitative data in a variety of forms.
Mike Burke issues a challenge to his fellow
educators—both those who teach mathematics and those who teach the other
disciplines—to emerge from their monastic disciplinary cells and address the
challenges of quantitative literacy. I am persuaded by his argument. I dream
of a time when those liars who figure can less easily pull the wool over our
collective eyes.
Carnegie has created a forum—Carnegie
Conversations—where you can engage publicly with the author and read and
respond to what others have to say about this article at
http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/perspectives/october2007 . Or you may
respond to Mike privately through
carnegiepresident@carnegiefoundation.org .
We look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Lee S. Shulman, President
The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching
Adult Learners Find Some College Web
Sites Wanting
Before they choose to enroll in continuing-education
courses, adult learners spend plenty of time perusing college Web sites, looking
for the right fit. But those prospective students don’t always like what they
see, says a
report
from Eduventures. The college consulting firm surveyed
more than 500 adults who were considering taking classes. Most said the sites
they visited were at least somewhat helpful, but many said the college sites
were difficult to search or skimpy on useful content. For example, more than
nine out of 10 prospective students visited continuing-education Web sites to
figure out how much courses will cost, the study found. But only 59 percent said
the sites spelled out pricing plans clearly and comprehensively. Colleges that
do make that information easily accessible, it would seem, are getting a leg up
on their competition.
Brock Read, The Chronicle of Higher
Education, November 14, 2007 ---
Click Here
"Twenty-Five Years Later, A Nation Still at
Risk," by chester E. Finn Jr., The Wall Street Journal, April 26, 2008; Page
A7 ---
Today marks the 25th anniversary of "A Nation at
Risk," the influential Reagan-era report by a blue-ribbon panel that alerted
Americans to the weak performance of our education system. The report warned
of a "rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a nation
and a people." That dire forecast set off a quarter century of education
reform that's yielded worthy changes – yet still not the achievement gains
we need to turn back the tide of mediocrity.
After decades of furthering educational "equality,"
the 1983 commission admonished the country, it was time to attend to
academic excellence and school results. Educators didn't want to hear this
and a generation later many still don't. Our ponderous public-school system
resists change. Teachers don't like criticism and are loath to be judged by
pupil performance. In educator circles, one still encounters grumbling that
"A Nation at Risk" lodged a bum rap.
Others heeded the alarm, though, and that report
launched an era of forceful innovation and accountability guided by
noneducators – elected officials, business leaders and philanthropists.
Such "civilian" leadership has brought about two
profound shifts that the professionals, left to their own devices, would
never have allowed. Today, instead of judging schools by their services,
resources or fairness, we track their progress against preset academic
standards – and hold them to account for those results.
We're also far more open to charter schools,
vouchers, virtual schools, home schooling. And we no longer suppose kids
must attend the campus nearest home. A majority of U.S. students now study
either in bona fide "schools of choice," or in neighborhood schools their
parents chose with a realtor's help.
Those are historic changes indeed – most of today's
education debates deal with the complexities of carrying them out. Yet our
school results haven't appreciably improved, whether one looks at test
scores or graduation rates. Sure, there are up and down blips in the data,
but no big and lasting changes in performance, even though we're also
spending tons more money. (In constant dollars, per-pupil spending in 1983
was 56% of today's.)
And just as "A Nation at Risk" warned, other
countries are beginning to eat our education lunch. While our outcomes
remain flat, theirs rise. Half a dozen nations now surpass our high-school
and college graduation rates. International tests find young Americans
scoring in the middle of the pack.
What to do now? It's no time to ease the push for a
major K-12 education make-over – or to settle (as Barack Obama and Hillary
Clinton apparently would) for reviving yesterday's faith in still more
spending and greater trust in educators. But we can distill four key
lessons:
First, don't expect Uncle Sam to manage the reform
process. Not only does Washington lack the capacity to revamp thousands of
schools and create alternatives for millions of kids, but viewing education
reform as a federal obligation lets others off the hook. Yet some things are
best done nationally – notably creating uniform standards and tests in place
of today's patchwork of uneven expectations and noncomparable assessments.
These we have foolishly resisted.
Second, retain civilian control but push for more
continuity. Governors and mayors remain indispensable leaders on the ground
– but the instant they leave office, the system tries to revert. The adult
interests that rule it – teacher unions, yes, but also colleges of
education, textbook publishers and more – look after themselves and fend off
change. If three consecutive governors or mayors hew to the same agenda,
those reforms are more apt to endure.
Third, don't bother seeking one grand innovation.
Education reform is not about silver bullets. But huge gains can be made by
schools that are free to run (and staff) themselves, attended by choice,
expected to meet high standards, and accountable for their results.
Consider the more than 50 schools in the acclaimed
Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) network. We don't have nearly enough
today, but we're likelier to grow more of them outside the traditional
system than by trying to alter the system itself.
Finally, content matters. Getting the structures,
rules and incentives right is only half the battle. The other half is sound
curriculum and effective instruction. If we can't place enough expert
educators in our classrooms, we can use technology to amplify the best of
them across the state or nation. Kids no longer need to sit in school to be
well educated.
Far from delivering an undeserved insult to a
well-functioning system, the authors of "A Nation at Risk" were clear-eyed
about that system's failings, and prescient about the challenges these posed
to America's future. Now that we're well into that future, we owe them a
vote of thanks. But our most solemn responsibility is to keep the reform
flag flying high in the wind that they created.
Mr. Finn, a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution
and president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, is the author of
"Troublemaker: A Personal History of School Reform Since Sputnik," published
in February by the Princeton University Press.
Where Highest Ranked Colleges Don't Excel
Thomas Toch and Kevin Carey, "Where Colleges
Don't Excel," The Washington Post, April 6, 2007; Page A21 ---
Click Here
Millions of anxious high
school seniors have been hearing from college admissions offices in recent
days, and if one believes the rhetoric cascading from campus administration
buildings, corporate headquarters and the U.S. Capitol, students lucky
enough to get acceptance letters will be entering the best higher education
system in the world.
Hardly a week goes by without a prominent
politician or business leader declaring America's advantage in the global
battle for brainpower, citing as evidence a study from Shanghai's Jiao Tong
University that
rates17 American universities among
the world's 20 best.
But those rankings are based
entirely on measures of advanced research, such as journal articles
published and Nobel Prizes won -- measures, that is, of the work that's done
mostly in graduate programs. And while advanced research is vital to the
nation's economic competitiveness, so is producing enough well-educated
workers to compete for the high-value jobs of the future.
Undergraduate students are going to make up
the bulk of those workers because only 13 percent of the nation's 17 million
students in higher education are at the graduate level. Yet a hard look at
our undergraduate programs suggests that when it comes to the business of
teaching students and helping them graduate, our universities are a lot less
impressive than the rhetoric suggests.
Seventy-five percent of high school graduates
go on to higher education, but only half of those students earn degrees. And
many of those who do graduate aren't learning much. According to the
American Institutes for Research, only
38 percent of graduating college seniors can successfully perform tasks such
as comparing viewpoints in two newspaper editorials.
And it's an open secret that many of our
colleges and universities aren't challenging their students academically or
doing a good job of teaching them. In the latest findings from the
National Survey of Student Engagement,
about 30 percent of college students reported
being assigned to read four or fewer books in their entire senior year,
while nearly half (48 percent) of seniors were assigned to write no papers
of 20 pages or more.
Ironically, our global dominance in research
and persistent mediocrity in undergraduate education are closely related.
Both are the result of the same choices. The 17 institutions atop the
Shanghai rankings are driven by professional and financial incentives that
favor research and scholarship over teaching. Funding from the federal
government, publish-or-perish tenure policies, and college rankings from the
likes of U.S. News & World Report all push universities and professors to
excel at their research mission. There are no corresponding incentives to
teach students well.
Take the U.S. News rankings. Ninety-five
percent of each college's score is based on measures of wealth, fame and
admissions selectivity. As a result, college presidents looking to get ahead
focus on marketing, fundraising and recruiting faculty with great research
credentials instead of investing their resources in helping undergraduates
learn and earn degrees.
This problem can't and shouldn't be fixed by
government regulation. Independence and diversity make our higher-education
sector strong, and that shouldn't change.
The way to drive higher education institutions
to stop ignoring undergraduates in favor of pursuing research is to provide
more information about their performance with undergraduates to the
consumers who pay tuition bills: students and their parents.
By investing in new ways to gauge the quality
of teaching and learning and by requiring taxpayer-subsidized colleges to
disclose their performance to the public, the federal government can change
the market dynamics in higher education, creating strong incentives for
colleges to produce the caliber of undergraduates we need to compete in the
global marketplace, incentives to make the rhetoric of being first in the
world in higher education a reality.
Thomas Toch and Kevin Carey are,
respectively, co-director and policy manager of Education Sector, a
Washington think tank.
How a single teacher can influence many lives!
"My Meeting With Mephistopheles," by Heidi Storl, Chronicle of Higher
Education's Chronicle Review, February 29, 2008 ---
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i25/25b02001.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medium=e
|
I think now
that I might have met Mephistopheles in college, though at the time
I thought only that I was encountering my first philosopher. I was a
biochemistry major, looking forward to a career in genetics. I still
needed to fulfill a number of those basic-education requirements
that students seem either to get out of the way early or put off
until the bitter end. As I stood in the registration line,
memorizing the molecular structures of proteins, fate intervened.
The easy history course that I had planned to take was full.
Determined not to lose my spot in line, I scrambled to come up with
another course and chose philosophy.
The
professor was a little late for the first philosophy class. He was a
short, bearded man with a limp, and my first thought was that if he
wore the right kind of hat, he'd make a perfect elf. But then he
looked at each of the 10 students in turn, and spoke: "Does God
command an action because it is good, or is an action good because
God commands it?"
Whoa! I sat
up, put my chemistry notes away, and started thinking. Fifty minutes
later, I was exhausted. As I walked to my next class, two thoughts
jumped about in my head. First, I liked — really liked — the way I
had felt in philosophy: out of breath, struggling to keep up with
the argument, my mind on fire. Second, what was this course going to
do to my GPA?
Several
weeks later, I put my chemistry notes away for good. A year later, I
entered graduate school in philosophy, having taken only three
courses in the discipline — "Introduction to Philosophy,"
"Introduction to Ethics," and "Introduction to Logic." My passion
for the field made my change of direction possible.
In the
years since then, three things have continued to fascinate me:
manifestations of Mephistopheles, superstitions, and passion. For
me, the three shed light on the problem that Martha Nussbaum wrote
about in "Liberal Education and Global Responsibility," "jolting the
imagination out of its complacency, and getting it to take seriously
the reality of lives at a distance."
That quote
is embedded in a larger discussion of the essential features of the
liberal arts: critical thinking, world citizenry, and an empathy
born out of the narrative imagination. At first glance, my
fascinations may seem at odds with those basic skills. After all,
how can superstitions survive a critical analysis? Similarly, people
who experience manifestations of Mephistopheles have long been
recognized as psychotic. Yet I believe all three have helped me
"take seriously the reality of lives at a distance." That is not
easy going, but it is a hallmark of a liberally educated person.
Nussbaum
seems to suggest that our imaginations need to be "jolted" out of
the smug slumber of our daily lives. Whether we sit passively in
front of the television or the computer, get in the zone as we play
sports, or shop till we drop, we learn quickly how to lose
ourselves. So "jolting the imagination out of its complacency" is no
small task. Moreover, we can't predict if and when it will actually
happen. There is no 12-step process or project manual to follow. The
awakening of one's mind just happens. The trick is to recognize when
it occurs, and to harness the associated energy, or spiritedness,
and use it to help us live wisely.
That is why
I'm so interested in Mephistopheles. I can still see the mural of
Mephisto on the wall of Auerbach's Keller; the smells and tastes of
the place remain fresh; and when I return as an adult, I can almost
feel the spirits of the tavern. Goethe was right: Mephisto lives
there. As a child, I didn't know it, but I have realized it since my
awakening in that philosophy class.
There too,
as I've already suggested, I encountered Mephistopheles in person.
Though I didn't see him coming, I recognized him when I saw and
heard him, and I made a Faustian bargain with him. My imagination —
actually, my life — had been jolted. Nothing would be the same
again, because my perspective and attitude toward life had
fundamentally shifted. I wasn't comfortable anymore. I didn't know
where I was going or what I might do when I got there. But I did all
at once possess a passion, a heartfelt yearning, for the travels of
the mind — and I survived.
Heidi Storl is a
professor of philosophy at Augustana College, in Rock Island, Ill. |
"Beyond Merit Pay and Student Evaluations," by James D. Miller,
Inside Higher Ed, September 8, 2007 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2007/09/07/miller
What tools
should colleges use to reward excellent teachers? Some rely
on teaching evaluations that students spend only a few
minutes filling out. Others trust deans and department
chairs to put aside friendships and enmities and objectively
identify the best teachers. Still more colleges don’t reward
teaching excellence and hope that the lack of incentives
doesn’t diminish teaching quality.
I propose instead that
institutions should empower graduating seniors to reward teaching
excellence. Colleges should do this by giving each graduating senior $1,000
to distribute among their faculty. Colleges should have graduates use a
computer program to distribute their allocations anonymously.
My proposal would have
multiple benefits. It would reduce the tension between tenure and merit pay.
Tenure is supposed to insulate professors from retaliation for expressing
unpopular views in their scholarship. Many colleges, however, believe that
tenured professors don’t have sufficient incentives to work hard, so
colleges implement a merit pay system to reward excellence. Alas, merit pay
can be a tool that deans and department heads use to punish politically
unpopular professors. My proposal, however, provides for a type of merit pay
without giving deans and department heads any additional power over
instructors. And because the proposal imposes almost no additional
administrative costs on anyone, many deans and department heads might prefer
it to a traditional merit pay system.
Students, I suspect, would
take their distribution decisions far more seriously than they do
end-of-semester class evaluations. This is because students are never sure
how much influence class evaluations have on teachers’ careers, whereas the
link between their distributions and their favorite teachers’ welfare would
be clear. Basing merit pay on these distributions, therefore, will be
“fairer” than doing so based on class evaluations. Furthermore, these
distributions would provide very useful information to colleges in making
tenure decisions or determining whether to keep employing a non-tenure track
instructor.
The proposal would also
reward successful advising. A good adviser can make a student’s academic
career. But since advising quality is difficult to measure, colleges rarely
factor it into merit pay decisions. But I suspect that many students
consider their adviser to be their favorite professor, so great advisers
would be well rewarded if graduates distributed $1,000 among faculty.
Hopefully, these $1,000
distributions would get students into the habit of donating to their alma
maters. The distributions would show graduates the link between donating and
helping parts of the college that they really liked. Colleges could even ask
their graduates to “pay back” the $1,000 that they were allowed to give
their favorite teachers. To test whether the distributions really did
increase alumni giving, a college could randomly choose, say, 10 percent of
a graduating class for participation in my plan and then see if those
selected graduates did contribute more to the college.
My reward system would help
a college attract star teachers. Professors who know they often earn their
students adoration will eagerly join a college that lets students enrich
their favorite teachers.
Unfortunately, today many
star teachers are actually made worse off because of their popularity.
Students often spend much time talking to star teachers, make great use of
their office hours and frequently ask them to write letters of
recommendation. Consequently, star teachers have less time than average
faculty members do to conduct research. My proposal, though, would help
correct the time penalty that popularity so often imposes on the best
teachers.
College trustees and regents
who have business backgrounds should like my idea because it rewards
customer-oriented professors. And anything that could persuade trustees to
increase instructors’ compensation should be very popular among faculty.
But my proposal would be the
most popular among students. It would signal to students that the college is
ready to trust them with some responsibility for their alma mater’s
finances. It would also prove to students that the way they have been
treated at college is extremely important to their school.
James D. Miller is an associate professor of economics at Smith
College.
Jensen Comment
One-time "gifts" to teachers are not the same as salary increases that are
locked in year after year after year until the faculty member resigns or
retires. It is also extremely likely that this type of reward system might be
conducive to grade inflation popularity contests. Also some students might ask
why they are being charged $1,000 more in tuition to be doled out as bonuses
selectively to faculty.
But by far the biggest flaw in this type of reward system is the bias toward
large class sections. Some of the most brilliant research professors teach
advanced-level courses to much smaller classes than instructors teaching larger
classes to first and second year students. Is it a good idea for a top
specialist to abandon his advanced specialty courses for majors in order to have
greater financial rewards for teaching basic courses that have more students at
a very elementary level?
Bob Jensen's threads on how student evaluations have greatly contributed
to grade inflation are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#GradeInflation
Adult Learners Find Some College Web Sites Wanting
Before they choose to enroll in continuing-education
courses, adult learners spend plenty of time perusing college Web sites, looking
for the right fit. But those prospective students don’t always like what they
see, says a
report
from Eduventures. The college consulting firm surveyed
more than 500 adults who were considering taking classes. Most said the sites
they visited were at least somewhat helpful, but many said the college sites
were difficult to search or skimpy on useful content. For example, more than
nine out of 10 prospective students visited continuing-education Web sites to
figure out how much courses will cost, the study found. But only 59 percent said
the sites spelled out pricing plans clearly and comprehensively. Colleges that
do make that information easily accessible, it would seem, are getting a leg up
on their competition.
Brock Read, The Chronicle of Higher
Education, November 14, 2007 ---
Click Here
"Berkeley Amasses
$1.1-Billion 'War Chest' to Prevent Professor Poaching,"
by Paula Wasley, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 17, 2008 ---
Click Here
The University of California at Berkeley has
accumulated a $1.1-billion “war chest” to fend off Ivy League poachers, the
Bloomberg news
service reported today.
Berkeley administrators hope the money, which will
go toward endowed chairs for 100 professors, will dissuade faculty members
from defecting to wealthier competitors like Harvard and Yale, where
salary offers
are significantly higher.
For the 2006 fiscal year, full professors at
Berkeley earned an average of $134,672 and associate professors $88,576 —
about 15 percent less than peers at private institutions. And, since 2003,
the California university has lost at least 30 faculty members to its eight
main competitors, chief among them Harvard.
“These institutions are competing for exactly the
same faculty that we are trying to hire, and so an important question is
whether the public universities are going to be able to compete,” said
Berkeley’s chancellor, Robert J. Birgeneau.
Mr. Birgeneau also announced plans to restructure
Berkeley’s $2.9-billion
endowment,
to match Harvard’s 23-percent return on its
$34.9-billion fund.
Berkeley, which faces a 10-percent cut in state
support under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposed budget, plans to raise
$107-million from donors and to add it to a
$113-million grant from the William and Flora
Hewlett Foundation to help create the 100 endowed chairs.
The
picture drawn by Bok is an
astonishingly dark one
Undergraduate education today bears no resemblance
to the instruction masters and tutors gave to the trickle of adolescents
entering one of the nine colleges that existed prior to the American Revolution.
Our Underachieving Colleges, by Derek
Bok, ISBN: 0691125961 # Pub. Date: January 2006
(You can read free excerpts in the Amazon.com Reader)
Those conclusions come
from
a national survey of employers
with at least 25 employees and significant
hiring of recent college graduates, released
Tuesday by the Association of American
Colleges and Universities. Over all, 65
percent of those surveyed believe that new
graduates of four-year colleges have most or
all of the skills to succeed in entry-level
positions, but only 40 percent believe that
they have the skills to advance.
. .
.
In
terms of specific skills, the employers didn’t give many A’s
or fail many either. The employers were asked to rank new
graduates on 12 key areas, and the grads did best in
teamwork, ethical judgments and intercultural work, and
worst in global knowledge, self-direction and writing.
Employers Ratings of College
Graduates Preparedness on 1-10 Scale
|
Category |
Mean Rating |
% giving high (8-10) rating |
% giving low (1-5) rating |
|
Teamwork |
7.0 |
39% |
17% |
|
Ethical judgment |
6.9 |
38% |
19% |
|
Intercultural skills |
6.9 |
38% |
19% |
|
Social responsibility |
6.7 |
35% |
21% |
|
Quantitative reasoning |
6.7 |
32% |
23% |
|
Oral communication |
|