A Weird Article on College Education in the New York Times

While I agree that trying to impose the business model on academia is wrong and that high standards of education should be maintained at all costs, I am often baffled by how people go about defending these useful ideas. Take, for example, the recent article in The New York Times titled "Your So-Called Education." After reading it, I realized that, according to the article's authors, the greatest problem in higher ed is me. Let's look at some of the points the article makes.

The quality of college education is slipping because:

1. "In a typical semester, for instance, 32 percent of the students did not take a single course with more than 40 pages of reading per week."

I must be a real underachiever because in my undergraduate courses, I never assign more that 30 pages of reading a week in any given course. I teach literature and culture, so reading is pretty much all we do. However, my goal is not to get the students to skim through as many pages as possible. I want them to read critically, to engage with the text, to try to go through it slowly. If you read 3 pages a week but manage to come up with some analysis of it, it's a lot more useful than gulping down 100 pages of a text just to fulfill some silly requirement.

2. "50 percent did not take any course requiring more than 20 pages of writing over the semester."

In my trademark course on Hispanic Civilization, students write several short essays that come up to less than 20 pages per semester. The writing component is crucial to that course. (Because I decided that it should be.) However, I don't see how it helps anybody to get the students to hand in reams of poorly written garbage. If a student manages to produce a single beautifully written page at the end of the semester, I will believe that my goal in the course has been accomplished. Students come to this Freshman course with no understanding of what distinguishes good and bad writing. Giving them humongous writing assignments will only lead them to reproduce the same horrible writing techniques they brought to college from their high schools.

3. "The average student spent only about 12 to 13 hours per week studying — about half the time a full-time college student in 1960 spent studying."

I wonder if anybody has counted how many of those hours a student in the 1960 spent hunting for information and doing manually all those things that today are simplified to an incredible degree by the Internet and text processing. If we take into account how much faster the writing becomes thanks to text editors, I'm sure we will arrive at a conclusion that today students work more.  

4. "Not surprisingly, a large number of the students showed no significant progress on tests of critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing that were administered when they began college and then again at the ends of their sophomore and senior years. If the test that we used, the Collegiate Learning Assessment, were scaled on a traditional 0-to-100 point range, 45 percent of the students would not have demonstrated gains of even one point over the first two years of college, and 36 percent would not have shown such gains over four years of college."

I must have poor critical thinking skills myself because I truly fail to understand how critical thinking and complex reasoning can be measured on "a traditional 0-to-100 point range." The authors of this article bemoan the fact that the business model has been imposed on academia, but they fail to notice to what incredible degree they have been infected by this very model. Good reading and good writing for them are about a number of pages. Complex reasoning is about a number of points. In short, numbers rule supreme.

5. "Expanded privacy protections have created obstacles for colleges in providing information on student performance to parents, undercutting a traditional check on student lassitude."

The idea that educators would somehow benefit from having even more helicopter parents buzzing around them is bizarre. Has anybody ever developed their critical thinking skills because they were afraid their parents might scold them in case they didn't? 

6. "Too many institutions, for instance, rely primarily on student course evaluations to assess teaching. This creates perverse incentives for professors to demand little and give out good grades."

The idea that professors who demand little and hand out easy grades are the ones who get good student evaluations is completely misguided. If I told you what percentage of students I fail each semester, I think you'd agree that I'm anything but an easy grader. My evaluations, though, have always been fantastic. Students actually don't like professors who ask too little of them. In my teaching experience, the only way to get students to evaluate you highly is to demonstrate that your knowledge of the subject matter is profound.

7. "And the Department of Education could make available nationally representative longitudinal data on undergraduate learning outcomes for research purposes, as it has been doing for decades for primary and secondary education."

Given that primary and secondary education in this country have gone completely to the dogs in the past couple of decades, this suggestion really mystified me. "Longitudinal data on learning outcomes" is the bureaucracy-speak version of teaching to the test. This model inflicted untold damage on our secondary education on a daily basis, but now we are to inflict it on higher education as well.

In short, even when The New York Times is trying to do something good, it ends up  producing the exact opposite.

A Ghost University: Welcome to Ashford

This is the scariest thing I have seen in a while, people. This is what the death of education looks like. A California corporation bought the campus of a small Franciscan college in Iowa. The corporation is now using this campus as a front for its huge online education business:

Inside the red brick campus of Ashford University, perched on a bluff above the Mississippi River, the door marked "President's Office" remains perpetually shut. Telephone calls to the university's head are swiftly transferred to a corporate office some 2,000 miles away, in San Diego. A new, 500-seat football stadium adorns the campus, and is featured prominently in Ashford's promotional literature, though the university has no football team. Signs around campus proudly read "Founded 1918" and "90 Years Strong," despite the fact that Ashford -- one of the nation's fastest-growing for-profit colleges -- has existed for less than a decade. The perplexing campus landscape here in Iowa amounts to an elaborate stage set for a lucrative, online education empire that uses these trappings to sell itself to students as a traditional college experience. 

If you feel like telling me that there is nothing wrong with Bridgeport Education Inc. running their business any way they see fit, I'll have to tell you that you are extremely naive. More than 85% of Ashford University's revenue comes from federal financial aid money. Please watch this terrifying video of an empty campus and remember that we, the taxpayers, are giving huge amounts of money to people who run this scam in order to reward them for scamming us.

Now compare the previous video with this promotional piece of garbage that Ashford University shows to unsuspecting future customers:

I haven't felt this disgusted for a long time.

The Price of Education

The following bill is now under consideration at the 97th General Assembly of Illinois:

Amends various Acts concerning State universities. Repeals provisions that permit the children of employees of an Illinois college or university who have been employed by any one or by more than one Illinois college or university for an aggregate period of at least 7 years to receive a 50% tuition waiver. Effective immediately.

Who cares if professors' kids end up without an education, right?

A Great Video on Changing Education Paradigms

Thank you, Canukistani, for sending me this great video on education!!!

Another Instance of Pseudo-Scientific Stupidity

This is what science has come to nowadays:

Want lots of kids? If you're a man, find yourself a neurotic mate. And if you're a woman, look for a gregarious guy. That’s because extroverted men and needy, anxious women are the most fertile coupling, according to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Researchers looked at a population in Senegal for the study. That African nation is run a little differently from the U.S. - its residents practice polygamy and typically don’t believe in birth control. But whether in Senegal or America, extroverted men tend to make more money and presumably have more sex. And more frequent sex leads to more babies. The findings, says study author Prof. Virpi Lummaa of Sheffield University in the U.K., suggest “that the link between extroversion and number of children in men is driven by the effects of extroversion on the probability of belonging to the high social class.”

I was going to comment on this new bout of pseudo-scientific barbarity but then thought better of it. This rubbish definitely speaks for itself.


This is what happens in societies that glorify stupidity. This is what we will have in place of science if the disturbing trends in the academic world continue unchecked.

Closing the State Universities

The president of our university has recently informed us of the prospects our school faces as a result of the refusal by the State of Illinois to give us the money it owes us. The "absolutely worst-case scenario," according to the president, is that our university will be closed altogether. This is highly unlikely, he says, but nevertheless, we need to know that this possibility has been mentioned.

This is, of course, the worst-case scenario for the teachers and the students of our university. It is, however, very much in keeping with the real goals of the current administration, as has become painfully clear from recent events. If 30,000 new troops are to be sent to an unwinnable, useless war in Afghanistan, we need a place to get these fresh bodies to send there. The US Army had a tough time meeting its recruitment goals for a while now. However, if we were to close public universities, the kids who come here to get an education would see their options shrink dramatically. Many of them will have to enlist because there is little else they can possibly do with their lives.

The support of the first-time voters for Barack Obama's candidacy was a huge factor in putting him in the White House. From what I hear, most of my students voted for him.  As one of them told me last week, "I voted for Obama, but today I have no idea why." My students are appalled  (even more than I am) at the possibility that their professors might not get paid for teaching them. I wonder how they would feel if they hear about the recent discussions of our "worst-case scenario." How often have we heard that the young generation is apolitical, that it doesn't care about elections, that it rarely votes? Can we honestly be surprised any more? These young people voted for change, and what they got as a result is more war, less education, less jobs, less opportunities.

Recently, several bloggers have been writing how great it is to see a black family celebrating Christmas in the White House. I agree. It is great. This happy feeling and the joy of "at-least-it-isn't-McCain" are pretty much the only positive results of this administration so far.

Palin: Class and Gender

In the aftermath of Palin's resignation, we've been hearing all kinds of explanations for why she became a target of so much scorn and derision. The version that gets floated around quite a bit has been summarized by Ross Douthat in his article "Palin and Her Enemies": the anti-Palin sentiments "had everything to do with Palin’s gender and her social class." Is that true? Do we dislike Palin for being a female politician and not graduating from an Ivy League school? Do our inherent snobbism and chauvinism make us ridicule her and hate her?

My answer is no. The reasons for my dislike of her are exactly the same that made me feel horrified every time I remembered that George W. was the president of the United States. These two people - Palin and Bush Jr. - represent different genders and very different social backgrounds. What they have in common transcends gender and class boundaries. For me, they symbolize a very scary trend in our political, cultural, and social life: the cult of ignorance. The idea that a public figure, a politician has to be, first and foremost, a nice person you'd like to have a beer with has led us right into 2 Bush administrations. We will be reaping the results for decades to come, possibly even longer.

It's terrifying that somebody would come to a job interview (for any position but especially so for the job of a Vice-President of a huge country) and believe that it's ok to offer winks, giggles, and a barrage of platitudes instead of facts. It's scary that the opposing candidate would be vilified for being too smart and having too much knowledge. And didn't this happen both during the McCain/Palin and the first Bush campaign? Remember how the Conservatives criticized Al Gore for being too intellectual?

Douthat and Co would, of course, suggest that my dislike of Palin is motivated - at least in part - by my Ivy League education. But they would be wrong. I went to the same school as George W., which didn't prevent me from believing that he was the worst thing that could have happened to the American politics. As to despising everybody who didn't go to an Ivy League school, that's also rubbish. I proudly attended my first two graduation ceremonies from a less known university. That school gave me a real education and for that I will always be thankful. I didn't, however, attend my Yale graduation ceremony this year. In spite of its fame, the university didn't offer me the kind of intellectual and professional advancement I'd been hoping to get.

In the conclusion to his article, Douthat says: "Sarah Palin is beloved by millions because her rise suggested, however temporarily, that the old American aphorism about how anyone can grow up to be president might actually be true." I agree that it's a beautiful ideal that anybody should be able to become a President. Shouldn't we, however, add that anybody should be able to occupy any public or political position after studying and working a lot? And also after they demonstrate that they are qualified for the job? Surely, "the old American aphorism" doesn't suggest that we elect people to these important position without even considering their qualifications? Does "anyone" mean that it would be ok at some point to elect as president somebody who knows nothing whatsoever and can hardly read, just because they are a nice person? Or to prove that the aphorism is working?

Sarah Palin symbolizes the cult of ignorance carried to the extreme. The idea that somebody so unprepared would even be considered for the job is terrifying. People who support her don't stop to consider that if they demonstrated the same level of incompetence in their job interviews (whatever their profession is), they would not be able to make a living.

Academics Slaughter the English Language

In a previous post, I discussed how politicians kill the English language by ignoring its most basic rules. Well, what can you expect from them if the academics do the same? The president of an Ivy League school writes in a message to his faculty members: "we will require colleges to carefully review and consider..."

No wonder my students don't believe me when I tell them it's wrong to split their infinitives.

School Reform

What is it with the New York Times and school reform? Every new article they publish on the subject is even more hilarious than the previous one. Yesterday's article by Harold Levy titled "Five Ways to Fix America’s Schools" contains some pretty interesting suggestions. They are, however, undermined by certain statements that cannot possibly be taken seriously.

Consider at the following sentence: "Just as we are moving toward a longer school day (where is it written that learning should end at 3 p.m.?) and a longer school year (does anyone really believe pupils need a three-month summer vacation?), so we should move to a longer school career. " In my opinion, EVERYBODY would absolutely benefit from a 3-month summer vacation. I most certainly do and I'm not a child. Do we aim to make kids hate school by forcing them to spend their entire lives there? Do we want to turn them into little adults, who work 9-5 workdays 50 weeks per year? This regimen, in my view, is even detrimental to grown-ups, let alone children.

But this is far from being the most egregious (or the most entertaining, depending on how you choose to look at it) part of the article. This is how Mr. Levy proposes to fight against truancy: "But truant officers can borrow a page from salesmen, who have developed high-pressure tactics so effective they can overwhelm the consumer’s will. Making repeated home visits and early morning phone calls, securing written commitments and eliciting oral commitments in front of witnesses might be egregious tactics when used by, say, a credit card company. But these could be valuable ways to compel parents to ensure that their children go to school every day. " This is so bizzare on so many levels that I hardly know where to start. What kind of parents would allow a truancy officer to barge into their house early in the morning and bully their child in front of them with the purpose of "overwhelming the child's will"? Also, what is the use of education that is so violently enforced? You can force somebody into the school building but you cannot force them to learn. You just can't. The only way of making anybody learn anything is through making them interested in the subject. There is no other way.

In conclusion, I want to say that when I was younger I practiced truancy as a way of life. I wouldn't show my face in school for months. I would come up with most egregious lies possible to justify my truancy. This did not, however, prove to be in any way detrimental to my life or education. I have 5 scholarly degrees, one of which is a PhD from an Ivy League school. As an educator, I never punish my students for missing class. My goal is to make them want to be in my classroom. If they only come because they are scared of the repercussions, their presence in class is useless both to me and to them.

A School without a Voice

The university where I spoke at a conference over the weekend recently closed down its departments of foreign languages and literatures. It had never occurred to me that a school could do that and still call itself a "university" (instead of a polytechnic or an institute, for example).

It's shocking to imagine that there would be an actual university (located in the capital of Canada, to make things even more bizarre) that would eliminate any possibility that it students might have to familiarize themselves with other cultures. Is this the future of higher education? Has the goal of universities now become to create complacent little robots who don't think, don't speak, don't wander or wonder but rather just produce and consume ad infinitum?

The war against the humanities started as soon as Bush ascended to power. At Yale, Bush's crony President Levin is in the final stages of implementing the program of changes that will effectively destroy the humanities at that school. I know what happens there from personal experience but I can only assume that the same changes are being introduced in other places. Unlike Carleton, Yale will not go as far as eliminating its language departments altogether (at least for now). It is, however, doing everything it can to make them as poorly funded, irrelevant, and powerless as possible.

I understand how certain forces could see what I'm teaching my students as dangerous. The main thing I'm teaching them is not to speak Spanish or distinguish between realism and naturalism. In my courses, students learn to read critically, think for themselves, formulate their own opinions, argue, and express themselves orally and in writing. Carleton University has decided it doesn't need any of this. Who will be next?

Politicians Kill the English Language

I've been correcting too many students' papers this week. Now I can't stop discovering mistakes everywhere. Just look at this exchange between Louis Caldera (the idiot who scared New Yorkers by flying very low around the city) and the White House:

Caldera: "I have concluded that the controvery surrounding the Presidential Airlift Group's aerial photo shoot over New York City has made it impossible for me to effectively lead the White House Military Office. "

And the White House press release: "The President has asked his Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina and Defense Secretary Gates or his designee to jointly review the organizational structure of the White House Military Office and the reporting relationship of its components to the White House and the Air Force."

Splitting the infinitives? Has anybody been to college? This is the most basic mistake in the English language.

With the huge numbers of unemployed English lit MAs and PhDs, I'm sure the White House and the Military Office could hire a couple of qualified people to write their press releases.

The source for the statements: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/5/8/729371/-Louis-Caldera-Resigns

Higher Education Reform

The current economic crisis has brought to light the problems that have plagued higher education for years. Immediately, everybody decided to propose their own plan for the reform of higher education. Today, The New York Times published an article by Mark C. Taylor, the chairman of the religion department at Columbia. The title of the article is "End the University as We Know It," although a more appropriate title would have been simply "End the University."

Here are some of the author's suggestions:

1. Universities must be "rigorously regulated" by trustees and administrations. According to Taylor, "many academics who cry out for the regulation of financial markets vehemently oppose it in their own departments." The funny thing is that he then proceeds to decry the narrow specialization that plagues academia. Evidently, Taylor hasn't been able to avoid this problem himself, since he so blatantly disregards any differences that might exist between the world of finance and academia. According to Taylor, if we can regulate one area of our existence, then why not the other? I wonder why he doesn't insist on bringing the practices of the criminal justice system to the academia. Let's establish jail sentences for any infraction within the college system. That would make our world easy to understand and keep under control.

2. The second brilliant suggestion is to "abolish permanent departments, even for undergraduate education, and create problem-focused programs." These programs should be organized around "practical problems." Of course, if you can't make your field of research "practical" enough, then who needs you? Evidently, as a chairman of the religion department, Taylor doesn't believe that teaching students to reason, analyze, and express their opinions is practical enough.

3. The next suggestion is so weird that I can't even paraphrase it: "Let one college have a strong department in French, for example, and the other a strong department in German; through teleconferencing and the Internet both subjects can be taught at both places with half the staff." The only reason any one would make such an idiotic proposition is because they need to really suck up to the administration of their educational institution. How is this going to happen in practical terms (which should be so near and dear to Taylor)? Who will decide which college deserves to have a French department and which doesn't?

Notice, also, that he immediately goes after modern languages and literatures. Taylor never comes close to suggesting that the departments of religion (such as his own) might only be needed in one college out of 20. But languages are totally dispensable, aren't they? On the other hand, we (the people in modern languages departments) should be honored that pseudo-intellectual charlatans of Taylor's caliber would find us so dangerous.

4. Taylor also wants to help the graduate students: "Most graduate students will never hold the kind of job for which they are being trained. It is, therefore, necessary to help them prepare for work in fields other than higher education." Observe how there is no attempt to analyze why "most graduate students will never hold the kind of job for which they are being trained." Maybe it's because of the proliferation of the horribly exploitative postdoc and non-tenure-track positions? Maybe if we stopped the horrible practice of hiring people without the possibility of tenure, with very low pay, and without any benefits, there would be more good tenure-track positions for graduate students to look forward to?

5. This ridiculous piece of intellectual ass-licking ends with the expected suggestion to abolish tenure. Without it, Taylor would have never felt that he had thrust his tongue deep enough into the anuses of his bosses.

Here is the link to this exercise in brown-nosing to the administration:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/opinion/27taylor.html?_r=1