Thursday, November 08, 2012
Friday Fragments
Congratulations to the long-suffering California public higher education system, which received a stay of execution from the voters. Proposition 30 raises enough revenue to prevent the next round of cuts, and to actually plan something. Even better, the voters sent enough Democrats to the legislature to achieve the supermajority status that California quixotically mandates for any tax increases. (Tax decreases don’t have the same requirement.)
My hope is that the sector recognizes this for what it is: a brief interruption of a longer term trend. Democratic supermajorities don’t last forever, and a long term plan that relies on biannual sales tax increases will run aground quickly.
The best use of this moment is for repositioning. Since the immediate fire has been contained, there’s a chance to float some serious proposals to make the system sustainable even after the inevitable Republican recrudesence. For example, letting campuses set, and keep, tuition/fee revenue would finally tie costs to revenues in a useful way, and would have the salutary effect for California taxpayers of sticking the Federal government with a bill (via financial aid) that right now California pays for itself.
The next two years are a test case. Used well, the system could potentially make itself viable. Used as nothing more than a respite or a brief taste of partial restoration, though, it would just postpone the inevitable.
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Coffee makes life better. Science proves it!
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The Boy and The Girl really impressed me on election night. In fact, my whole town did.
My town had a voter turnout rate of over 90 percent, which was a new record. It felt like it, too; the line was long, and I saw a bunch of people I knew. The Wife baked some treats for the PTO bake sale at one of the other polling sites, so after I voted, I delivered the treats there and saw even more people I knew. The joint was jumpin’. There’s something heartening about that.
But the kids were even better. The Girl, all of eight years old, did a nice explanation of the electoral college at dinner, explaining how it was that a “big” state like Alaska had fewer votes than a “small” state like ours. She and The Boy watched the election returns with us until bedtime, cheering along with us.
As they get older, they’ll decide their own political leanings, and that’s fine. (We’ve been careful never to demonize the other side. We have a rooting interest, but always try to present it as a matter of agreeing more with one side than the other, rather than some sort of holy war.) But I’m glad that they’re learning that politics is a legitimate subject of interest. I picked that up in my family as a kid, and I’m glad that TB and TG are getting it, too. I want them to see election nights as exciting, and not just for the relief of the campaigns finally being over. At base, elections are exciting because they matter. I’m glad that TB and TG are getting a sense of political interest as something that normal people have.
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Amy Laitinen and Stephen Burd, from the New America Foundation, posted a wish list for higher ed for President Obama’s second term. It’s well worth checking out. It’s mostly about improving measurements and outcomes, with some attention to financial aid.
I agree with most of it -- gainful employment being a partial exception, given that many community colleges have more of a transfer focus -- but would add two things.
1. Robust “maintenance and improvement of effort” requirements for states. When the Feds increase reporting requirements while the states either cut or flatten funding, the cost of measurement actually comes out of the same pot used for performance. When you have to leave faculty lines unfilled to hire more institutional research staff, it’s fair to ask whether the tail is wagging the dog. If we want real improvement, we have to admit that all this data gathering and analysis costs money. I think it’s well worth it, but it has to come from somewhere.
2. Failing that, I’d like the Feds to bundle long-term funding for IR staff in these requirements. You want us to track down every graduate of every program for the last five years, cross-check their student loan balance and payment records, verify their salaries, and post everything in a dynamic public website. Okay, pay for someone whose job it is to do that.
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The Big Reveal is almost here! Stay tuned...
Wednesday, November 07, 2012
Quiet Commuting?
I love this story, and not only because it’s illustrated with a picture of my old dorm.
It’s about a minor trend of some residential colleges designating certain dorms as “quiet housing.” The appeal should be obvious to anyone who remembers trying to sleep while someone in the room next door insisted on blasting the English Beat. If memory serves.
The issue of quiet plays out very differently on a commuter campus. We don’t have dorms, quiet or otherwise, and students mostly go home at night. (We do have some homeless students, which complicates the picture a bit.) Students are clever about finding places to study or relax quietly between classes, but with a few exceptions, they’re off busy hallways. (One of the newer buildings has a window with a sill that seems to attract students.) The campus is so full that almost any area that can be pressed into active service has been.
It’s easy to find quiet spaces when students aren’t around, of course, but that doesn’t help the students much. They need space when they need it.
We’ve been experimenting here and there with “dedicated non-dedicated” space. Last year, mostly to humor me, the library established one of its smaller rooms (that used to be used for periodicals) as a quiet study space. So far, it seems pretty popular, and the noise restriction has been enforced largely by the denizens themselves. The students in the music program have established their own de facto hangout space that they call the “veggie bin,” because it’s where they chill. (They also have practice rooms for quiet, so the veggie bin tends to be a bit more social.) The Foundation has even raised money for chairs at the ends of hallways, so students can camp out there comfortably. I’ve been surprised at just how popular those have been. But even there, ‘quiet’ is often a relative term.
Quiet competes with other needs, and frequently loses. There’s an irreducible social aspect to a physical college, and socializing makes noise. Most available office space has long been dedicated to some function or another, so free space to just hang out is hard to find. In New England, the weather doesn’t always cooperate, so the outdoors isn’t always as inviting as one might like.
The current trend in campus architecture is based on what Susan Cain calls the “new groupthink,” or the idea that students need to be free of the terror of solitude. But sometimes solitude with an idea, or a paper, or a textbook, is what they need more than anything else. That’s especially true when classes are followed by going to work, and then going home to kids or roommates or all manner of electronics.
On an affluent residential campus, set-asides like quiet hours in dorms make sense. At space-starved commuter colleges, quiet requires a bit more forethought. But it’s worth it.
Program Note: The Big Reveal is on Tuesday. To answer a frequently asked question, no, I won’t be using the real names of The Boy and The Girl. To my mind, they have the right to make their own names in their own ways over time; when they get to early adulthood, I don’t want every internet search for them to wind up with stories I told about their childhood. So The Boy and The Girl will remain The Boy and The Girl. Their names will be their own to define for themselves.
It’s about a minor trend of some residential colleges designating certain dorms as “quiet housing.” The appeal should be obvious to anyone who remembers trying to sleep while someone in the room next door insisted on blasting the English Beat. If memory serves.
The issue of quiet plays out very differently on a commuter campus. We don’t have dorms, quiet or otherwise, and students mostly go home at night. (We do have some homeless students, which complicates the picture a bit.) Students are clever about finding places to study or relax quietly between classes, but with a few exceptions, they’re off busy hallways. (One of the newer buildings has a window with a sill that seems to attract students.) The campus is so full that almost any area that can be pressed into active service has been.
It’s easy to find quiet spaces when students aren’t around, of course, but that doesn’t help the students much. They need space when they need it.
We’ve been experimenting here and there with “dedicated non-dedicated” space. Last year, mostly to humor me, the library established one of its smaller rooms (that used to be used for periodicals) as a quiet study space. So far, it seems pretty popular, and the noise restriction has been enforced largely by the denizens themselves. The students in the music program have established their own de facto hangout space that they call the “veggie bin,” because it’s where they chill. (They also have practice rooms for quiet, so the veggie bin tends to be a bit more social.) The Foundation has even raised money for chairs at the ends of hallways, so students can camp out there comfortably. I’ve been surprised at just how popular those have been. But even there, ‘quiet’ is often a relative term.
Quiet competes with other needs, and frequently loses. There’s an irreducible social aspect to a physical college, and socializing makes noise. Most available office space has long been dedicated to some function or another, so free space to just hang out is hard to find. In New England, the weather doesn’t always cooperate, so the outdoors isn’t always as inviting as one might like.
The current trend in campus architecture is based on what Susan Cain calls the “new groupthink,” or the idea that students need to be free of the terror of solitude. But sometimes solitude with an idea, or a paper, or a textbook, is what they need more than anything else. That’s especially true when classes are followed by going to work, and then going home to kids or roommates or all manner of electronics.
On an affluent residential campus, set-asides like quiet hours in dorms make sense. At space-starved commuter colleges, quiet requires a bit more forethought. But it’s worth it.
Program Note: The Big Reveal is on Tuesday. To answer a frequently asked question, no, I won’t be using the real names of The Boy and The Girl. To my mind, they have the right to make their own names in their own ways over time; when they get to early adulthood, I don’t want every internet search for them to wind up with stories I told about their childhood. So The Boy and The Girl will remain The Boy and The Girl. Their names will be their own to define for themselves.
Tuesday, November 06, 2012
This Is Not About the Election
This is not about the election, Instead, it’s about next week’s Big Announcement.
Q: So, what’s the big announcement?
A: You can’t just jump in like that. Show some class, man!
Q: Okay, so can you give a hint?
A: Sure. It’s a two-parter.
Q: Any celebrity scandal? Is Lindsay Lohan involved in some way?
A: No.
Q: Well, that’s refreshing. Does it involve that book you’ve been unsubtly hinting at forever?
A: It does.
Q: Hmm. Y’know, many people would discount a book by an author with a pseudonym.
A: Really?
Q: It’s true. And other people will make a point of smoking you out, just to prove that they can.
A: Hmm. Well, that brings me to the second announcement.
Q: Which is...?
A: On Tuesday, November 13, I’ll drop the pseudonym. The book, and the blog, will be under my real name.
Q: Why?
A: Because I’m thinking the pseudonym has outlived its usefulness. I’d like to participate more fully in the national conversation about public higher education, and I’ve hit a point where stepping up requires stepping out.
Q: What about the folks who already know who you are?
A: I’m asking them to be good sports and not spoil the surprise. I have the best readers ever, so I’m hoping they’ll indulge me this. Yes, it’s possible to open presents early, but it’s more fun to wait for the right moment.
Q: What about the effects on campus?
A: My president knows, as does the leadership of the faculty union. Most of my colleagues do, and a whole bunch of faculty do, too. So I’m pushing an open door, in that sense.
Q: Aren’t you afraid that people will comb old posts, pull out passages, and have you tarred and feathered?
A: That was the point of the pseudonym in the first place. But I’m hopeful that locally, people will see my work over the last several years and understand the difference between policy preferences and a to-do list. And I’ve made a point of being selective in what I’ve addressed over the years. There’s nothing salacious about anybody in the book or on the blog, despite the title. By now, my wise and worldly readers understand what I’m trying to do. They may or may not agree with all of it, but it should be pretty clear that even when I express frustration or exasperation, it’s out of a desire for things to be better. My criticism is intended to be constructive, to help public higher education fulfill its mission more effectively. Besides, if academic freedom means anything at all, it should mean separating the person from the argument. I trust that my critics will observe academic freedom, just as I do.
Q: Wouldn’t that have been true years ago, too?
A: Maybe, but it took a while for me to develop a writerly voice with which I’m comfortable. In the early posts, there’s a lot of trying too hard. Some of them are actually hard for me to read now. Over the last couple of years, I feel like I’ve finally found a voice I’m comfortable identifying as my own. It took experience to figure out that a degree of circumspection can actually help.
Q: So where will the blog go from here?
A: I intend to keep going as long as my readers will have me. InsideHigherEd has been great, and I hope that dropping a barrier to visibility will allow me to participate more fully in the national conversation. (For example, with the pseudonym dropped, I’ll participate in a panel discussion at the MLA conference in January.) I’ve been frustrated over the years by seeing a yawning gap in the conversation where actual, on-the-ground academic administrators should be. I’ve been able to insinuate myself into that discussion at some level. By taking off the training wheels, I’m hoping to be able to participate more effectively. The stakes for public higher education are incredibly high right now, and I couldn’t forgive myself for staying on the sidelines when there’s public work to be done. It’s time to step up.
Q: What’s the book about?
A: I’ll address that on Tuesday, November 13.
Q: So, what’s the big announcement?
A: You can’t just jump in like that. Show some class, man!
Q: Okay, so can you give a hint?
A: Sure. It’s a two-parter.
Q: Any celebrity scandal? Is Lindsay Lohan involved in some way?
A: No.
Q: Well, that’s refreshing. Does it involve that book you’ve been unsubtly hinting at forever?
A: It does.
Q: Hmm. Y’know, many people would discount a book by an author with a pseudonym.
A: Really?
Q: It’s true. And other people will make a point of smoking you out, just to prove that they can.
A: Hmm. Well, that brings me to the second announcement.
Q: Which is...?
A: On Tuesday, November 13, I’ll drop the pseudonym. The book, and the blog, will be under my real name.
Q: Why?
A: Because I’m thinking the pseudonym has outlived its usefulness. I’d like to participate more fully in the national conversation about public higher education, and I’ve hit a point where stepping up requires stepping out.
Q: What about the folks who already know who you are?
A: I’m asking them to be good sports and not spoil the surprise. I have the best readers ever, so I’m hoping they’ll indulge me this. Yes, it’s possible to open presents early, but it’s more fun to wait for the right moment.
Q: What about the effects on campus?
A: My president knows, as does the leadership of the faculty union. Most of my colleagues do, and a whole bunch of faculty do, too. So I’m pushing an open door, in that sense.
Q: Aren’t you afraid that people will comb old posts, pull out passages, and have you tarred and feathered?
A: That was the point of the pseudonym in the first place. But I’m hopeful that locally, people will see my work over the last several years and understand the difference between policy preferences and a to-do list. And I’ve made a point of being selective in what I’ve addressed over the years. There’s nothing salacious about anybody in the book or on the blog, despite the title. By now, my wise and worldly readers understand what I’m trying to do. They may or may not agree with all of it, but it should be pretty clear that even when I express frustration or exasperation, it’s out of a desire for things to be better. My criticism is intended to be constructive, to help public higher education fulfill its mission more effectively. Besides, if academic freedom means anything at all, it should mean separating the person from the argument. I trust that my critics will observe academic freedom, just as I do.
Q: Wouldn’t that have been true years ago, too?
A: Maybe, but it took a while for me to develop a writerly voice with which I’m comfortable. In the early posts, there’s a lot of trying too hard. Some of them are actually hard for me to read now. Over the last couple of years, I feel like I’ve finally found a voice I’m comfortable identifying as my own. It took experience to figure out that a degree of circumspection can actually help.
Q: So where will the blog go from here?
A: I intend to keep going as long as my readers will have me. InsideHigherEd has been great, and I hope that dropping a barrier to visibility will allow me to participate more fully in the national conversation. (For example, with the pseudonym dropped, I’ll participate in a panel discussion at the MLA conference in January.) I’ve been frustrated over the years by seeing a yawning gap in the conversation where actual, on-the-ground academic administrators should be. I’ve been able to insinuate myself into that discussion at some level. By taking off the training wheels, I’m hoping to be able to participate more effectively. The stakes for public higher education are incredibly high right now, and I couldn’t forgive myself for staying on the sidelines when there’s public work to be done. It’s time to step up.
Q: What’s the book about?
A: I’ll address that on Tuesday, November 13.
Monday, November 05, 2012
Administration as Academic Alternative
I had to smile at this piece in InsideHigherEd. It recommended a more open-minded attitude towards administrative careers as options for academics who had trouble finding the tenure-track position of their dreams. Among other things, it claimed that widespread faculty loathing for administrators as a class -- the term “evil” was used -- prevents good candidates from seeing possibilities that actually exist, and from seeing the good that actually gets done.
Unfortunately, it didn’t answer its own question. “Who is this Admin You Speak of?” is actually a great question. (I’m imagining a Raymond Carver story, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Administration.” “We drank. We smoked. We measured outcomes against rubrics. We drank some more.”) It even fell into its own trap, claiming that the violence prevention coordinator in the Women’s Center is “not faculty but not an administrator either.” Hmm. In the terms usually used when people rail against “administrative bloat,” she absolutely is.
This Chronicle piece (behind a paywall, alas) falls into the usual trap, even though it seems to know better. It points to an alarming rate of increase in “administration,” only to note in passing that the rate of increase among “supervisory” or “executive” ranks has been in the single digits. (I’d guess that since the start of the Great Recession, it’s negative.) In other words, it collapses “staff” into “administration,” and then uses unease with the latter and numbers from the former to imply some sort of Leviathan sucking up resources that rightfully belong to faculty.
Definitions matter.
On my own campus, for example, most of the growth in full-time employment has been among IT and financial aid staff. If you break down expenses into “faculty” and “administration,” they fall under “administration.” But the new hires are mostly not supervisory. They’re highly skilled -- database administrators do not grow on trees -- and relatively inexpensive for the skills they bring. They’re incredibly necessary. Other areas of growth include services for students with disabilities and institutional research. Again, critics of “bloat” are invited to specify which they’d cut. The supervisory ranks are actually thinner now than they were five years ago; it’s the behind-the-scenes staff that has grown, and it has grown in response to real needs.
To the extent that fledgling academics want to try their hand in administration, but don’t have special expertise in IT or statistics, I’d recommend looking at grant-funded programs that target specific populations. These do a world of good for the students in the relevant groups, and call on the people who work in them to be utility infielders.
The more traditional academic management route usually requires some level of full-time faculty experience first, though with the thin bench in many areas, even that is starting to change.
The ideological gulf between “faculty” and “administration,” I think, dates back to the 60’s concept of the “total institution.” Back then, serious people sometimes treated a single institution -- a hospital, a school, or a prison -- as a universe unto itself. If you did that, then whomever was in power locally stood in for Authority, and embodied every resentment against Authority. In other words, it’s a category error born of a sociological shortcut. The truth of the matter is that both “faculty” and “administration” are part of the same institution, higher education, which is coming under unprecedented assault by people from entirely different fields, with entirely different agendas. Colleges aren’t “total institutions” and never were -- they’re relatively small parts of a much larger whole. Slicing those small parts into even smaller warring camps only serves to weaken a sector that already needs all the help it can get.
Getting over that divide involves admitting that higher education isn’t a self-contained universe. Which is good, because it isn’t. It’s a small part of something much larger, and it needs thoughtful and dedicated people in every role. The people who make sure the campus wifi network keeps running aren’t “bloat,” and the folks who help students develop study strategies aren’t, either. In this political time and place, that kind of name-calling and blaming amounts to assembling a circular firing squad and hoping that it will make everything okay.
Program Note: Big Announcement coming November 13. And no, it won’t be President Obama’s college grades.
Unfortunately, it didn’t answer its own question. “Who is this Admin You Speak of?” is actually a great question. (I’m imagining a Raymond Carver story, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Administration.” “We drank. We smoked. We measured outcomes against rubrics. We drank some more.”) It even fell into its own trap, claiming that the violence prevention coordinator in the Women’s Center is “not faculty but not an administrator either.” Hmm. In the terms usually used when people rail against “administrative bloat,” she absolutely is.
This Chronicle piece (behind a paywall, alas) falls into the usual trap, even though it seems to know better. It points to an alarming rate of increase in “administration,” only to note in passing that the rate of increase among “supervisory” or “executive” ranks has been in the single digits. (I’d guess that since the start of the Great Recession, it’s negative.) In other words, it collapses “staff” into “administration,” and then uses unease with the latter and numbers from the former to imply some sort of Leviathan sucking up resources that rightfully belong to faculty.
Definitions matter.
On my own campus, for example, most of the growth in full-time employment has been among IT and financial aid staff. If you break down expenses into “faculty” and “administration,” they fall under “administration.” But the new hires are mostly not supervisory. They’re highly skilled -- database administrators do not grow on trees -- and relatively inexpensive for the skills they bring. They’re incredibly necessary. Other areas of growth include services for students with disabilities and institutional research. Again, critics of “bloat” are invited to specify which they’d cut. The supervisory ranks are actually thinner now than they were five years ago; it’s the behind-the-scenes staff that has grown, and it has grown in response to real needs.
To the extent that fledgling academics want to try their hand in administration, but don’t have special expertise in IT or statistics, I’d recommend looking at grant-funded programs that target specific populations. These do a world of good for the students in the relevant groups, and call on the people who work in them to be utility infielders.
The more traditional academic management route usually requires some level of full-time faculty experience first, though with the thin bench in many areas, even that is starting to change.
The ideological gulf between “faculty” and “administration,” I think, dates back to the 60’s concept of the “total institution.” Back then, serious people sometimes treated a single institution -- a hospital, a school, or a prison -- as a universe unto itself. If you did that, then whomever was in power locally stood in for Authority, and embodied every resentment against Authority. In other words, it’s a category error born of a sociological shortcut. The truth of the matter is that both “faculty” and “administration” are part of the same institution, higher education, which is coming under unprecedented assault by people from entirely different fields, with entirely different agendas. Colleges aren’t “total institutions” and never were -- they’re relatively small parts of a much larger whole. Slicing those small parts into even smaller warring camps only serves to weaken a sector that already needs all the help it can get.
Getting over that divide involves admitting that higher education isn’t a self-contained universe. Which is good, because it isn’t. It’s a small part of something much larger, and it needs thoughtful and dedicated people in every role. The people who make sure the campus wifi network keeps running aren’t “bloat,” and the folks who help students develop study strategies aren’t, either. In this political time and place, that kind of name-calling and blaming amounts to assembling a circular firing squad and hoping that it will make everything okay.
Program Note: Big Announcement coming November 13. And no, it won’t be President Obama’s college grades.
Sunday, November 04, 2012
Fingers Crossed
Coming up on the election, I’ve got my fingers crossed.
On the upside, at least the campaigns will be over. That little girl who cried about “Bronco Bamma” spoke a basic truth: we’re all tired of the ads. I can only imagine how bad it must be for people living in swing states. My state has some drama of its own, but it’s pretty much a foregone conclusion at the presidential level, so that has helped contain the madness. The folks in Ohio must be thoroughly sick of it all by now.
In a way, the action that really matters now is in the states. It’s pretty likely that whichever candidate wins the presidency will face at least one part of Congress controlled by the other party, so the range of likely movement is relatively narrow. But individual states can tilt pretty hard one way or the other. The “quality control” function of a meaningful opposition party is missing in some states, which means that if the dominant party falls in love with a bad idea, there’s nobody to stop it.
California is the most obvious case; if a sales tax increase referendum fails, public higher education will take yet another in a series of brutal cuts. (In another sense, though, California is an outlier. Between referenda and a supermajority rule for tax increases, it’s possible to have single-party control and gridlock simultaneously.) I’ve been pretty vocal over the last couple of years in criticizing the funding mechanism for California’s community colleges; if they’re serious about long-term sustainability, they need to tie costs to revenues one way or another. But making an intelligent transition requires the ability to make decisions without a gun to your head. The best-case scenario for California, other than a raging economic boom, would be to use the next couple of years to completely restructure the way colleges are funded. In the meantime, forcing the waitlists to get even longer is not the way to go.
Unfortunately, I don’t see either party asking the right questions at the federal level. The Republicans have forgotten their historic role as the champions of public higher education -- Nelson Rockefeller did great things for SUNY -- and have instead become boosters of for-profits. The Democrats are more supportive of public higher ed, but their concessions to change -- notably “gainful employment” reporting requirements -- are both annoying and unhelpful. They’re picking the wrong battles.
That said, the major issues for higher ed are indirect. Austerity, driven by regressive tax policies and voluntary wars, creates a hostile climate for colleges. Once the climate is set, the available choices are basically different flavors of awful. Recessions help enrollments but devastate funding; at this point, a return to the economy of Clinton’s second term would work wonders, whoever is in power. A long burst of peace and prosperity would be wonderful in its own right, and particularly wonderful for public higher education.
The best argument I can see for voting the other way would be to claim that public colleges won’t undergo the changes they need to without a crisis, so avoiding a crisis means prolonging the inevitable. There’s probably some truth to that. But I prefer optimism; give us a chance, and we’ll find better ways. That’s vulnerable to a charge of naivete, but it’s true.
My position here is close to Jeff Selingo’s call for a new generation of college leaders who don’t deny the tough issues but want to move forward anyway. I think that generation exists; I’d hate to see it denied the chance to save and adapt public higher ed for a country that needs it far more than it knows.
So my fingers are crossed. There’s more at stake than just ending the ads.
Program Note: Loyal readers will want to check in on Tuesday, November 13, for a major announcement. I’m just sayin’.
Thursday, November 01, 2012
Whiskey, Cigarettes, and Jane Austen
According to a task force convened by Governor Scott of Florida, Jane Austen falls into the same category as whiskey and cigarettes.
I’ll admit, I hadn’t thought of that.
I’ve heard proposals about charging different tuition for different majors before. The usual argument is that certain courses of study are much more expensive for colleges to offer, so the students who reap the benefit of the more expensive courses should be asked to pay at least some of the extra cost. Lab fees are the classic example: it’s standard procedure at many colleges to tack on a surcharge for lab science or studio art classes to help cover the cost of the consumables the students use. Differential tuition is usually presented as lab fees applied to an entire course of study.
But this is new.
Apparently, Florida is considering tying tuition levels to how badly the state wants people to major in something. So instead of tacking a lab fee onto a biology class, a college would run biology at a relative discount, and charge more for, say, upper-level English or philosophy. The idea is to treat colleges as the personnel offices of the new economy, and to use tuition pricing as a not-very-subtle signal to students as to what they should study. If you want to do something “useful,” the state will help you; if you want to be a starving artist, do it on your own dime and at your own risk.
Predictably enough, English professors across the internet are aghast, but that’s easy to write off as self-interest. I’m more intrigued at what a move like that would actually entail.
First, and most basically, it decouples cost from revenue. For a college, it’s cheaper to run a simple classroom course than it is to run something with a lab. A history class, say, only requires one instructor and one classroom. A bio class requires an instructor and a lab technician, and it requires a room with specialized equipment and far more square footage per student. That’s why we charge lab fees.
But if you reverse the lab fee model and treat colleges as personnel offices, then the entire economic underpinning of the college has to change.
For the last forty years or so, the uninterrupted trend in public higher education financing has been a cost shift from the state to the student. (If so inclined, you can partially substitute “federal government” for “student,” to the extent that Pell grants come into play.) In theory, it’s possible for that to be neutral in its impact, if you assume a constant total. But enrollments fluctuate, even as state support flatlines or drops. Colleges have adapted by increasing tuition and fees far more quickly than overall costs. Even at many community colleges, direct student payments are a larger share of the budget at this point than state subsidies are. Getting prices closer to costs has been the only way to continue to function as subsidies have declined.
The proposal to levy a sort of sin tax on the liberal arts, like on whiskey and cigarettes, would upend this model. If the sin tax “worked,” and steered more students away from English and into STEM, then a college would quickly fall behind in meeting its budget as students shifted from the profit centers to the loss centers. (That’s part of the argument for sin taxes; if they’re high enough, they deter sin. When cigarettes get expensive enough, fewer teenagers start smoking.) There are only two ways to make this work:
1. Raise the cost of the “undesired” programs, but don’t cut the cost of the “desired” ones.
or
2. Radically increase operating subsidies, and commit to the new, higher levels and a realistic rate of increase for the foreseeable future.
The former strikes me as self-defeating, and the latter as implausible (though desirable).
Leaving aside the academic merits of the proposal -- the interwebs have eviscerated those with predictable vigor -- it’s a complete non-starter economically unless the state is willing to kick in far more money, basically until the end of time. When you decouple costs from revenues, you’d better make up those costs someplace else. If you don’t, like California doesn’t, then you wind up cutting services to the point of turning away hundreds of thousands of students, many of whom will wind up going instead to more expensive for-profits.
Governor Scott, personnel offices are not self-supporting. They’re overhead. If you remake colleges into personnel offices, you have to redo the funding accordingly. Unless you’re willing to accept the increased costs that colleges would face as new overhead for the state, kill this proposal dead. And leave Jane Austen alone.
I’ll admit, I hadn’t thought of that.
I’ve heard proposals about charging different tuition for different majors before. The usual argument is that certain courses of study are much more expensive for colleges to offer, so the students who reap the benefit of the more expensive courses should be asked to pay at least some of the extra cost. Lab fees are the classic example: it’s standard procedure at many colleges to tack on a surcharge for lab science or studio art classes to help cover the cost of the consumables the students use. Differential tuition is usually presented as lab fees applied to an entire course of study.
But this is new.
Apparently, Florida is considering tying tuition levels to how badly the state wants people to major in something. So instead of tacking a lab fee onto a biology class, a college would run biology at a relative discount, and charge more for, say, upper-level English or philosophy. The idea is to treat colleges as the personnel offices of the new economy, and to use tuition pricing as a not-very-subtle signal to students as to what they should study. If you want to do something “useful,” the state will help you; if you want to be a starving artist, do it on your own dime and at your own risk.
Predictably enough, English professors across the internet are aghast, but that’s easy to write off as self-interest. I’m more intrigued at what a move like that would actually entail.
First, and most basically, it decouples cost from revenue. For a college, it’s cheaper to run a simple classroom course than it is to run something with a lab. A history class, say, only requires one instructor and one classroom. A bio class requires an instructor and a lab technician, and it requires a room with specialized equipment and far more square footage per student. That’s why we charge lab fees.
But if you reverse the lab fee model and treat colleges as personnel offices, then the entire economic underpinning of the college has to change.
For the last forty years or so, the uninterrupted trend in public higher education financing has been a cost shift from the state to the student. (If so inclined, you can partially substitute “federal government” for “student,” to the extent that Pell grants come into play.) In theory, it’s possible for that to be neutral in its impact, if you assume a constant total. But enrollments fluctuate, even as state support flatlines or drops. Colleges have adapted by increasing tuition and fees far more quickly than overall costs. Even at many community colleges, direct student payments are a larger share of the budget at this point than state subsidies are. Getting prices closer to costs has been the only way to continue to function as subsidies have declined.
The proposal to levy a sort of sin tax on the liberal arts, like on whiskey and cigarettes, would upend this model. If the sin tax “worked,” and steered more students away from English and into STEM, then a college would quickly fall behind in meeting its budget as students shifted from the profit centers to the loss centers. (That’s part of the argument for sin taxes; if they’re high enough, they deter sin. When cigarettes get expensive enough, fewer teenagers start smoking.) There are only two ways to make this work:
1. Raise the cost of the “undesired” programs, but don’t cut the cost of the “desired” ones.
or
2. Radically increase operating subsidies, and commit to the new, higher levels and a realistic rate of increase for the foreseeable future.
The former strikes me as self-defeating, and the latter as implausible (though desirable).
Leaving aside the academic merits of the proposal -- the interwebs have eviscerated those with predictable vigor -- it’s a complete non-starter economically unless the state is willing to kick in far more money, basically until the end of time. When you decouple costs from revenues, you’d better make up those costs someplace else. If you don’t, like California doesn’t, then you wind up cutting services to the point of turning away hundreds of thousands of students, many of whom will wind up going instead to more expensive for-profits.
Governor Scott, personnel offices are not self-supporting. They’re overhead. If you remake colleges into personnel offices, you have to redo the funding accordingly. Unless you’re willing to accept the increased costs that colleges would face as new overhead for the state, kill this proposal dead. And leave Jane Austen alone.
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Scary Monsters and Super Creeps
The Girl dressed as a Tootsie Roll, and The Boy as a Jawa from Star Wars.
They were endearing, but not scary. I had front door duty.
Fears change, with age. If I were to dress up as something really scary, I might go as:
- The Program That Wouldn’t Die. I’d be a zombie with low enrollments, high fixed costs, a powerful ally, and a political minefield. “Funds! Eat Funds!”
- MOOCman. 90 percent of my costume would be missing by the end of the night, since that’s their attrition rate.
- Hatchet Harry, the Human Budget Cut. Picture a really angry accountant wearing a tricorner hat, like the Tea Partiers. Or maybe Santa Claus with a suit on backwards, to symbolize a midyear budget cut.
- The Politician with a Brilliant Idea. I’d have a lightbulb suspended over a dunce cap.
- An Extended Power Outage. Dress all in black. It’s a New York reference twice.
- A standardized test. I could wrap myself in bubble wrap, popping one out of every four bubbles randomly.
- A glob of cholesterol. It might put a damper on the whole ‘candy’ thing, though.
- A home contractor. I’d show up, then leave unexplained for weeks, then show up again, then vanish again, leaving an awful mess in my wake.
- An “Explanation of Benefits” from an HMO. I’d wear a twisted glob of spaghetti that doesn’t smell quite right.
- Comcast! I could dress, and walk, like Mr. Magoo.
- My hairline. But I wouldn’t want to get arrested for indecent exposure.
Wise and worldly readers, what costume would you find truly scary?
They were endearing, but not scary. I had front door duty.
Fears change, with age. If I were to dress up as something really scary, I might go as:
- The Program That Wouldn’t Die. I’d be a zombie with low enrollments, high fixed costs, a powerful ally, and a political minefield. “Funds! Eat Funds!”
- MOOCman. 90 percent of my costume would be missing by the end of the night, since that’s their attrition rate.
- Hatchet Harry, the Human Budget Cut. Picture a really angry accountant wearing a tricorner hat, like the Tea Partiers. Or maybe Santa Claus with a suit on backwards, to symbolize a midyear budget cut.
- The Politician with a Brilliant Idea. I’d have a lightbulb suspended over a dunce cap.
- An Extended Power Outage. Dress all in black. It’s a New York reference twice.
- A standardized test. I could wrap myself in bubble wrap, popping one out of every four bubbles randomly.
- A glob of cholesterol. It might put a damper on the whole ‘candy’ thing, though.
- A home contractor. I’d show up, then leave unexplained for weeks, then show up again, then vanish again, leaving an awful mess in my wake.
- An “Explanation of Benefits” from an HMO. I’d wear a twisted glob of spaghetti that doesn’t smell quite right.
- Comcast! I could dress, and walk, like Mr. Magoo.
- My hairline. But I wouldn’t want to get arrested for indecent exposure.
Wise and worldly readers, what costume would you find truly scary?
Monday, October 29, 2012
And Then, The Scramble
As Sandy continues to rage, I’m already anticipating some messy rescheduling issues as people stream back.
Bureaucratically, the cleanest form of natural disaster is the kind that hits everyone at the same time, and from which everyone emerges at the same time. The messiest ones are the ones from which some people are up and running the next day, while others are unable to show up for several days running. (Anything involving downed trees tends to play out that way; some neighborhoods are barely affected, while others take days to dig out. Some places keep electricity the entire time, while others are out for a week.) It’s hard to penalize students for living on the wrong street, but it’s also hard to extend infinite flexibility while still upholding the integrity of the course.
Of course, students aren’t the only people affected. When professors can’t make it to campus -- again, through no fault of their own -- students lose time. In disciplines with labs or studios, the points of vulnerability multiply: if the professor makes it in but the lab tech doesn’t, then there are real limits on what the class can do. In classes with group work -- particularly presentations -- penalizing the students who showed up for the one who didn’t just violates common sense.
For some sorts of classes and some sorts of disasters, the internet is a savior. If a fairly traditional class has an online component -- which is becoming more common -- then a given week’s lessons can be adapted to online delivery to avoid losing time. This works especially well in January, when the typical disaster is a snowstorm and most people still have power.
But when power is spotty, the internet doesn’t help.
Every time something like this happens, there’s a call for a Policy That Will Solve Everything. I understand the impulse, but it’s hard to imagine what that would look like. “Don’t penalize students for missing class this week” would be pretty heavyhanded, and would set the kind of precedent that even a levelheaded sort would find alarming. “Treat these absences as you would any other” is heavyhanded in the other direction, and is still much more directive about how faculty teach than I think an administration ought to be. There’s quite a gap between what I personally think would be a good idea, and what I’d be comfortable having The Administration announce as a policy. Academic freedom covers a lot of ground.
We’ll probably fall back on “use your best judgment” by default. That doesn’t provide the clarity or consistency that would be ideal, but it’s hard to imagine something that would that wouldn’t be overly directive.
Thinking out loud, this may be a good topic for a future professional development workshop. If everyone is allowed to make their own calls, it’s probably a good idea to at least have some open discussion before the next disaster about the ideas to consider when making those calls.
Wise and worldly readers, have you found or seen graceful ways to deal with students fairly in the wake of an unevenly-distributed recovery from a disaster? If so, how did it work?
Bureaucratically, the cleanest form of natural disaster is the kind that hits everyone at the same time, and from which everyone emerges at the same time. The messiest ones are the ones from which some people are up and running the next day, while others are unable to show up for several days running. (Anything involving downed trees tends to play out that way; some neighborhoods are barely affected, while others take days to dig out. Some places keep electricity the entire time, while others are out for a week.) It’s hard to penalize students for living on the wrong street, but it’s also hard to extend infinite flexibility while still upholding the integrity of the course.
Of course, students aren’t the only people affected. When professors can’t make it to campus -- again, through no fault of their own -- students lose time. In disciplines with labs or studios, the points of vulnerability multiply: if the professor makes it in but the lab tech doesn’t, then there are real limits on what the class can do. In classes with group work -- particularly presentations -- penalizing the students who showed up for the one who didn’t just violates common sense.
For some sorts of classes and some sorts of disasters, the internet is a savior. If a fairly traditional class has an online component -- which is becoming more common -- then a given week’s lessons can be adapted to online delivery to avoid losing time. This works especially well in January, when the typical disaster is a snowstorm and most people still have power.
But when power is spotty, the internet doesn’t help.
Every time something like this happens, there’s a call for a Policy That Will Solve Everything. I understand the impulse, but it’s hard to imagine what that would look like. “Don’t penalize students for missing class this week” would be pretty heavyhanded, and would set the kind of precedent that even a levelheaded sort would find alarming. “Treat these absences as you would any other” is heavyhanded in the other direction, and is still much more directive about how faculty teach than I think an administration ought to be. There’s quite a gap between what I personally think would be a good idea, and what I’d be comfortable having The Administration announce as a policy. Academic freedom covers a lot of ground.
We’ll probably fall back on “use your best judgment” by default. That doesn’t provide the clarity or consistency that would be ideal, but it’s hard to imagine something that would that wouldn’t be overly directive.
Thinking out loud, this may be a good topic for a future professional development workshop. If everyone is allowed to make their own calls, it’s probably a good idea to at least have some open discussion before the next disaster about the ideas to consider when making those calls.
Wise and worldly readers, have you found or seen graceful ways to deal with students fairly in the wake of an unevenly-distributed recovery from a disaster? If so, how did it work?
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Time Travel
Like about 70 million other people, we’re in the path of Hurricane Sandy. As of this writing, we still have power, but after last year’s catastrophe, we’re expecting to lose it for a while. (If this week’s blogging gets spotty, that’s why.) Given some warning, we spent the weekend preparing.
It has been an exercise in time travel.
When TW and I were kids, the only reason that schools closed was snow. A good blizzard, or maybe a stray ice storm, would do it; otherwise, we went. The Boy and The Girl didn’t believe me when I told them that; bless their short time horizons, they think annual hurricanes are normal. They don’t see anything odd in “frankenstorms” or “thundersnow” or the other weird weather hybrids that have been popping up with unnerving frequency. They think annual extended blackouts are normal. The reliable power that I remember as a kid has become an historical artifact.
When the power goes out, most of the recent technological advances quickly become irrelevant. Anything internet-based is inaccessible without electricity, and batteries drain pretty quick. (Last year, even the local cell towers went dead, so I couldn’t even use tethering to compensate for dead wifi.) The old copper land line went away years ago, replaced by the cable version that goes down when the electricity does. Even television is out.
Last year, our lifeline was radio. We had enough batteries to keep the radio going as needed; since then, we’ve picked up a hand-cranked one. If you ever want to feel really old-fashioned, crank a radio. It’s one step above churning butter.
Which brings me to refrigeration, or the lack thereof. Last year we were caught off-guard, so just finding unspoiled food became a full-time focus. This year, with warning, we were able to stockpile peanut butter, granola, bagels, cereal, and even the juice-box sized milk boxes that don’t require refrigeration. Luckily we don’t have well water, so at least we don’t lose water.
Without electricity, there’s nothing to power the blower that makes the furnace relevant, so the house gets cold fast. The fireplace keeps one room relatively warm, but “high-maintenance” doesn’t begin to cover it. The occasional ornamental fire is one thing; actually using the thing for heat is something else altogether.
Even light is an issue. When it gets dark before dinner, and your battery supply is finite, and you don’t know how long it’ll be before the power comes back, you have to ration light.
Last year, the power came back in a geographic patchwork, rather than all at once. (That makes sense, given that the issue was downed lines.) That meant a sort of foraging, as we looked for places with heat and, ideally, cooked food. We were lucky before that we got gas the night before everything went dead, so we didn’t have to wait in the gas lines we saw. This time, we made sure to get gas and cash. There’s something vaguely Mad Max about it, but there it is.
On Sunday the projected path of Sandy showed it moving north through western New York, crossing Lake Ontario northward towards Toronto. That may not mean much to many people, but to those of us who grew up along Lake Ontario, the idea of a storm moving north across the Lake is deeply weird. They don’t do that. They move either south or east. I don’t remember ever seeing one move north. It’s such a given that it never occurred to me that it was a given until I saw it violated. Toronto will get lake effect rain from Rochester? That. Is. Not. Normal.
As folks who know me can attest, I like my gadgets. I’m a fan of technological progress, and I have little patience for those who try to argue that, say, ditto machines were superior to photocopiers. But as grid failures become more common -- whether through climate change, deregulation-driven neglect, increased demand, or some combination thereof -- I find myself relying more often on newspapers, radio, cash, and firewood.
In a way, we’ve mastered backwards time travel technology. We use it every time the grid goes down. The kids think it has always been that way. It’s up to TW and me, as ambassadors from the past, to explain that no, it wasn’t.
It has been an exercise in time travel.
When TW and I were kids, the only reason that schools closed was snow. A good blizzard, or maybe a stray ice storm, would do it; otherwise, we went. The Boy and The Girl didn’t believe me when I told them that; bless their short time horizons, they think annual hurricanes are normal. They don’t see anything odd in “frankenstorms” or “thundersnow” or the other weird weather hybrids that have been popping up with unnerving frequency. They think annual extended blackouts are normal. The reliable power that I remember as a kid has become an historical artifact.
When the power goes out, most of the recent technological advances quickly become irrelevant. Anything internet-based is inaccessible without electricity, and batteries drain pretty quick. (Last year, even the local cell towers went dead, so I couldn’t even use tethering to compensate for dead wifi.) The old copper land line went away years ago, replaced by the cable version that goes down when the electricity does. Even television is out.
Last year, our lifeline was radio. We had enough batteries to keep the radio going as needed; since then, we’ve picked up a hand-cranked one. If you ever want to feel really old-fashioned, crank a radio. It’s one step above churning butter.
Which brings me to refrigeration, or the lack thereof. Last year we were caught off-guard, so just finding unspoiled food became a full-time focus. This year, with warning, we were able to stockpile peanut butter, granola, bagels, cereal, and even the juice-box sized milk boxes that don’t require refrigeration. Luckily we don’t have well water, so at least we don’t lose water.
Without electricity, there’s nothing to power the blower that makes the furnace relevant, so the house gets cold fast. The fireplace keeps one room relatively warm, but “high-maintenance” doesn’t begin to cover it. The occasional ornamental fire is one thing; actually using the thing for heat is something else altogether.
Even light is an issue. When it gets dark before dinner, and your battery supply is finite, and you don’t know how long it’ll be before the power comes back, you have to ration light.
Last year, the power came back in a geographic patchwork, rather than all at once. (That makes sense, given that the issue was downed lines.) That meant a sort of foraging, as we looked for places with heat and, ideally, cooked food. We were lucky before that we got gas the night before everything went dead, so we didn’t have to wait in the gas lines we saw. This time, we made sure to get gas and cash. There’s something vaguely Mad Max about it, but there it is.
On Sunday the projected path of Sandy showed it moving north through western New York, crossing Lake Ontario northward towards Toronto. That may not mean much to many people, but to those of us who grew up along Lake Ontario, the idea of a storm moving north across the Lake is deeply weird. They don’t do that. They move either south or east. I don’t remember ever seeing one move north. It’s such a given that it never occurred to me that it was a given until I saw it violated. Toronto will get lake effect rain from Rochester? That. Is. Not. Normal.
As folks who know me can attest, I like my gadgets. I’m a fan of technological progress, and I have little patience for those who try to argue that, say, ditto machines were superior to photocopiers. But as grid failures become more common -- whether through climate change, deregulation-driven neglect, increased demand, or some combination thereof -- I find myself relying more often on newspapers, radio, cash, and firewood.
In a way, we’ve mastered backwards time travel technology. We use it every time the grid goes down. The kids think it has always been that way. It’s up to TW and me, as ambassadors from the past, to explain that no, it wasn’t.
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Friday Fragments
This piece on the implications for higher ed in the election is well worth a read. Among other things, it helps to explain the thinking behind the abrupt cut in student lifetime Pell grant eligibility from 18 semesters to 12. Apparently, Republicans wanted to cut funding for the program, and Democrats wanted to preserve the maximum value of a grant, so the compromise was to keep the dollar cap but reduce the number of students eligible.
-----------
The Wife: You can be anything you want to be.
The Girl: Except a bird!
-----------
Workforce training matters, but the first order of business is getting the economy rolling. When people go through programs with no job waiting for them on the other end, it doesn’t help much.
In my darker moments, I wonder if some of the political consensus on training as the answer is a function of a sort of venn diagram; it’s one of the few areas of overlap between the parties. The conservatives don’t want to stimulate aggregate demand, since that might involve a short-term sacrifice by their base. And the liberals are too timid to push the full Keynesian treatment. So we pretend that the employment freefall from 2007 to 2009 was a function of tectonic shifts in job skills, rather than the inevitable collapse of what amounted to a Ponzi scheme. If the problem is unskilled workers, then we all know, more or less, what needs to be done. If the problem is unregulated finance capital, then the political consensus evaporates.
I’m glad to support training programs in fields with genuine prospects for graduates. But in fields with limited or negative demand, it’s hard to argue that the obstacle to prosperity is a lack of workers. Any long-suffering adjunct knows that.
----------
Since The Wife started working in the local elementary school, she has been coming home with stories about the things the kids there say and do.
Yesterday at dinner she shared with us the way she says the Pledge of Allegiance in class.
I pledge allegiance to the flag
Ryan, look at the flag!
of the United States of America
Look at the flag! Over there!
And to the republic for which it stands
Get your hands out of your pants!
One nation, under God
Put that down!
Indivisible, with liberty
Madison! Hailey! MADISON!!
And justice for all
Sit down, Tyler. Sit down, Tyler. Tyler? Tyler!
There’s the pledge as written, and there’s the pledge as performed by a roomful of squirmy first graders.
Somehow, the latter is more reassuring. Any lit critters looking for a “reader response” exercise in its rawest form should watch some first graders in action sometime.
-----------
The Wife: You can be anything you want to be.
The Girl: Except a bird!
-----------
Workforce training matters, but the first order of business is getting the economy rolling. When people go through programs with no job waiting for them on the other end, it doesn’t help much.
In my darker moments, I wonder if some of the political consensus on training as the answer is a function of a sort of venn diagram; it’s one of the few areas of overlap between the parties. The conservatives don’t want to stimulate aggregate demand, since that might involve a short-term sacrifice by their base. And the liberals are too timid to push the full Keynesian treatment. So we pretend that the employment freefall from 2007 to 2009 was a function of tectonic shifts in job skills, rather than the inevitable collapse of what amounted to a Ponzi scheme. If the problem is unskilled workers, then we all know, more or less, what needs to be done. If the problem is unregulated finance capital, then the political consensus evaporates.
I’m glad to support training programs in fields with genuine prospects for graduates. But in fields with limited or negative demand, it’s hard to argue that the obstacle to prosperity is a lack of workers. Any long-suffering adjunct knows that.
----------
Since The Wife started working in the local elementary school, she has been coming home with stories about the things the kids there say and do.
Yesterday at dinner she shared with us the way she says the Pledge of Allegiance in class.
I pledge allegiance to the flag
Ryan, look at the flag!
of the United States of America
Look at the flag! Over there!
And to the republic for which it stands
Get your hands out of your pants!
One nation, under God
Put that down!
Indivisible, with liberty
Madison! Hailey! MADISON!!
And justice for all
Sit down, Tyler. Sit down, Tyler. Tyler? Tyler!
There’s the pledge as written, and there’s the pledge as performed by a roomful of squirmy first graders.
Somehow, the latter is more reassuring. Any lit critters looking for a “reader response” exercise in its rawest form should watch some first graders in action sometime.
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Overheard in the Locker Room
One of the consolations of middle age is that it brings the power of invisibility. That brings with it a certain amount of unintentional eavesdropping.
Earlier this week, as I was getting changed in the locker room before work, I overheard a retiree -- I’d put him around 70 -- talking to a student who I’d put around 19. The exchange:
Retiree: Enjoy yourself now, young man. Once you start working and join the real world, the party’s over, yes, sir.
Student: Actually, I work about 45 hours a week now. I have afternoon shifts at (local employer).
Retiree: You do? When do you do your homework?
Student: (laughs) It’s hard.
The exchange, as short as it was, gave me pause. From the tone of it, I don’t think either man was kidding or pranking; it sounded pretty straightforward. But the assumption gap between the two was glaring.
The older man seemed to assume that college was a relatively carefree time in which a young man could spent most of his time, well, being young. That’s a popular image of college, and there’s ample historical precedent for it.
But the younger man is living in a very different world. For him, college is one set of time commitments among others, and his days are all about time management. Just the fact that he was in the gym at dark o’clock in the morning suggested a certain density to his day; at that age, I was dead to the world at that hour. (I assume he has some “being young” time in there somewhere; some things don’t change.)
The perception gap between them matters, I think, because the older man’s cohort has far more political power than the younger man’s. Among the people who actually make the decisions that impact everyone, the idea of college as a sort of sybaritic retreat is still the default assumption. And they make decisions based on that. Cut the Pell lifetime limit by a third? Sure, why not? They’re just goofing off anyway...
But they’re not. They’re working harder than most of us did at that age, at greater cost and greater risk.
For some reason, that message still comes as a surprise to many, even to those of us in positions to know better. It’s easy to fall into “kids today...” laments if you don’t look very hard, or if you look backwards with rose-colored glasses. (I went to college before the era of handheld internet devices. Kids did crosswords in class. Distraction is not new.) That’s harmless enough when it’s confined to cranky observations about, say, pajama pants in class. But when we base public policy on it, it’s destructive.
Is there a better narrative out there to describe the world as current students actually experience it? Preferably one that doesn’t involve eavesdropping in locker rooms?
Earlier this week, as I was getting changed in the locker room before work, I overheard a retiree -- I’d put him around 70 -- talking to a student who I’d put around 19. The exchange:
Retiree: Enjoy yourself now, young man. Once you start working and join the real world, the party’s over, yes, sir.
Student: Actually, I work about 45 hours a week now. I have afternoon shifts at (local employer).
Retiree: You do? When do you do your homework?
Student: (laughs) It’s hard.
The exchange, as short as it was, gave me pause. From the tone of it, I don’t think either man was kidding or pranking; it sounded pretty straightforward. But the assumption gap between the two was glaring.
The older man seemed to assume that college was a relatively carefree time in which a young man could spent most of his time, well, being young. That’s a popular image of college, and there’s ample historical precedent for it.
But the younger man is living in a very different world. For him, college is one set of time commitments among others, and his days are all about time management. Just the fact that he was in the gym at dark o’clock in the morning suggested a certain density to his day; at that age, I was dead to the world at that hour. (I assume he has some “being young” time in there somewhere; some things don’t change.)
The perception gap between them matters, I think, because the older man’s cohort has far more political power than the younger man’s. Among the people who actually make the decisions that impact everyone, the idea of college as a sort of sybaritic retreat is still the default assumption. And they make decisions based on that. Cut the Pell lifetime limit by a third? Sure, why not? They’re just goofing off anyway...
But they’re not. They’re working harder than most of us did at that age, at greater cost and greater risk.
For some reason, that message still comes as a surprise to many, even to those of us in positions to know better. It’s easy to fall into “kids today...” laments if you don’t look very hard, or if you look backwards with rose-colored glasses. (I went to college before the era of handheld internet devices. Kids did crosswords in class. Distraction is not new.) That’s harmless enough when it’s confined to cranky observations about, say, pajama pants in class. But when we base public policy on it, it’s destructive.
Is there a better narrative out there to describe the world as current students actually experience it? Preferably one that doesn’t involve eavesdropping in locker rooms?
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
“That’s an Implementation Issue”
Back in my feminist theory days -- yes, I had feminist theory days -- I remember learning that strict body/mind distinctions were suspect. In the halcyon days of postmodernism, we learned that clear fact/value distinctions were mystifications, that public/private splits were far more problematic than usually supposed, and that subject/object distinctions were almost entirely perspectival.
I was reminded of that this week in a discussion about a proposed program. When I raised a series of questions about the practicality of it, I was hit with the concept/implementation distinction. And I realized that from the perspective of someone responsible for budgeting and staffing, the distinction is false. A concept that can’t be implemented is a flawed concept.
That cuts against the grain of a certain kind of idealism. (Postmodernism did the same thing.) It suggests that the popular move of attacking from a position of presumed perfection is inherently suspect. The “critique from imagined perfection” erases the embodied reality of an institution and wishes away the messy realities of resource constraints, other perspectives, and hard-won laws and habits. At base, the critique from perfection is narcissistic; it presumes that the perspective of the critic is the only one free of contingency, or messy particulars. Or, what amounts to the same thing, that other people’s needs just don’t count.
That’s a difficult point to convey to the idealist, who thinks he’s being selfless. He thinks that the shining truth of the idea transcends any individual perspective, and that he’s just being clearsighted about it. The lefty version of that perspective assumes that justice involves approaching the ideal asymptotically; the conservative version assumes a falling away from it, and only hopes to slow the decline. But either way, the truth of the idea is presumed to exist independent of the people holding it.
But the presumption of an entitlement to bulldoze messy reality to fit a personally held idea is nothing if not selfish. Ideas are embodied, and bodies exist in contingent networks of power, resource, flaw, and need. Nobody is above that.
As anyone who spent time in the weeds of postmodernism knows, it’s possible to get lost and paralyzed in an infinite regression of what’s already implicated in what. But that, too, strikes me as a form of selfishness. It takes for granted the work of social construction, and attacks those constructs parasitically.
And here’s where I fled postmodernism for its American cousin, pragmatism. At some point, you have to make a decision if you actually want to get anything done. That doesn’t mean either denying contingencies or surrendering to them; it means accepting the reality of them and owning the decision to move anyway. It means rejecting both the “critique from perfection” and fatalism, and, not incidentally, noticing that the former is often just a dressed-up version of the latter.
From this perspective, the way to attack an existing practice or idea is to propose -- or, preferably, to develop -- a better one. An idea that relies on people to be superhuman is bound to fail, and therefore of little interest; I’d much rather hear about something that could actually work. That means doing the hard work of tending to the details. Do we really have that many classrooms available at 3:00? Would that class actually transfer? What are the financial aid implications? What about staffing? How would we sustain it when the grant runs out? How does this fit with students’ plans? Who would run it? How would it fit in the curriculum? What would we have to displace to make room for it?
Those aren’t technicalities to be waved away by the heroic leader. They’re the guts of the organization, each with its own history and reasons, and they matter. The folks who win my respect are the ones who come to grips with those issues and continue to move forward anyway. I’ve seen it done. Done well, it makes a tremendous difference. It’s harder than just opining from on high and passing dismissive judgment on mere mortals, but it carries the prospect of real, sustainable, positive results.
Pure, unadulterated certainty can be intoxicating and addictive. In small doses, in the right moments, it can provide some motivation. But the high comes at a cost, and the addict is every bit as selfish as any other addict. The feminist theorists had a great point when they noted that we’re all embodied, and flawed, and, in some sense, blinkered. The lesson I drew from that was a need for humility in the face of complicated, messy realities. But the humility isn’t in the service of fatalism or a flight to innocence and virtue. It’s in the service of making changes that aren’t doomed from the outset. The “beautiful loser” may be romantic, but I prefer wins we can actually implement.
I was reminded of that this week in a discussion about a proposed program. When I raised a series of questions about the practicality of it, I was hit with the concept/implementation distinction. And I realized that from the perspective of someone responsible for budgeting and staffing, the distinction is false. A concept that can’t be implemented is a flawed concept.
That cuts against the grain of a certain kind of idealism. (Postmodernism did the same thing.) It suggests that the popular move of attacking from a position of presumed perfection is inherently suspect. The “critique from imagined perfection” erases the embodied reality of an institution and wishes away the messy realities of resource constraints, other perspectives, and hard-won laws and habits. At base, the critique from perfection is narcissistic; it presumes that the perspective of the critic is the only one free of contingency, or messy particulars. Or, what amounts to the same thing, that other people’s needs just don’t count.
That’s a difficult point to convey to the idealist, who thinks he’s being selfless. He thinks that the shining truth of the idea transcends any individual perspective, and that he’s just being clearsighted about it. The lefty version of that perspective assumes that justice involves approaching the ideal asymptotically; the conservative version assumes a falling away from it, and only hopes to slow the decline. But either way, the truth of the idea is presumed to exist independent of the people holding it.
But the presumption of an entitlement to bulldoze messy reality to fit a personally held idea is nothing if not selfish. Ideas are embodied, and bodies exist in contingent networks of power, resource, flaw, and need. Nobody is above that.
As anyone who spent time in the weeds of postmodernism knows, it’s possible to get lost and paralyzed in an infinite regression of what’s already implicated in what. But that, too, strikes me as a form of selfishness. It takes for granted the work of social construction, and attacks those constructs parasitically.
And here’s where I fled postmodernism for its American cousin, pragmatism. At some point, you have to make a decision if you actually want to get anything done. That doesn’t mean either denying contingencies or surrendering to them; it means accepting the reality of them and owning the decision to move anyway. It means rejecting both the “critique from perfection” and fatalism, and, not incidentally, noticing that the former is often just a dressed-up version of the latter.
From this perspective, the way to attack an existing practice or idea is to propose -- or, preferably, to develop -- a better one. An idea that relies on people to be superhuman is bound to fail, and therefore of little interest; I’d much rather hear about something that could actually work. That means doing the hard work of tending to the details. Do we really have that many classrooms available at 3:00? Would that class actually transfer? What are the financial aid implications? What about staffing? How would we sustain it when the grant runs out? How does this fit with students’ plans? Who would run it? How would it fit in the curriculum? What would we have to displace to make room for it?
Those aren’t technicalities to be waved away by the heroic leader. They’re the guts of the organization, each with its own history and reasons, and they matter. The folks who win my respect are the ones who come to grips with those issues and continue to move forward anyway. I’ve seen it done. Done well, it makes a tremendous difference. It’s harder than just opining from on high and passing dismissive judgment on mere mortals, but it carries the prospect of real, sustainable, positive results.
Pure, unadulterated certainty can be intoxicating and addictive. In small doses, in the right moments, it can provide some motivation. But the high comes at a cost, and the addict is every bit as selfish as any other addict. The feminist theorists had a great point when they noted that we’re all embodied, and flawed, and, in some sense, blinkered. The lesson I drew from that was a need for humility in the face of complicated, messy realities. But the humility isn’t in the service of fatalism or a flight to innocence and virtue. It’s in the service of making changes that aren’t doomed from the outset. The “beautiful loser” may be romantic, but I prefer wins we can actually implement.
Monday, October 22, 2012
Telling the Right Story
Some movies don’t impress me much in the moment I’m watching them, but age well in the recollection. (“Fargo” was like that.) They typically have more going on than meets the eye, and the first impression doesn’t do them justice.
The CASE conference was like that for me. I enjoyed the conference, but one lesson from it has stubbornly stuck in my mind ever since. I don’t think I fully appreciated it in the moment.
It’s about telling the right story.
It’s hardly news that public higher education is under unprecedented scrutiny. Years of a rough job market for new graduates, combined with tuition increases, combined with a lingering sense that colleges are job programs for aging hippies, have put public colleges and universities in an unaccustomed spot. And I’m embarrassed to admit that the shift caught many of us off-guard.
The sector has fought political battles before, but they were different, and the scripts we developed back then don’t work now. In the 70’s, I’m told, the issues were about hippies and protests generally. In the 90’s, they were about diversity and multiculturalism. (Anyone remember the “culture wars?” Back when conservatives believed that the humanities mattered enough to fight about? Good times...) Now they’re about cost.
As a sector, we’re having a hard time finding the right script for this one.
The stories we told in past conflicts don’t help. “Free speech” is a fine defense when you’re accused of harboring liberals, but it doesn’t do much to address tuition increases. “Teach the conflict” may have been a useful way around the definition of the literary canon, but it’s pretty off-point when discussing budget cuts.
The first impulse is usually some variation on denial. “We’re just making up for state cuts” is true in the short term, but only partially true over the long term, and not helpful for students facing increased loan burdens and a tough job market. And given the reputational nature of higher ed, there’s a limit to how much bragging you want to do about austerity. (“Come to Compass Direction State. We’ve reduced the humanities to an online video!”)
We’ve used the “lifetime payoff” argument for a long time, generally to good effect. But that argument gets less convincing when the cost to the student goes up and entry-level opportunities go down. Yes, you may be better off in ten years, but if you need to the rent now, that’s of little comfort.
“Inspiring stories” are always good; the fundraisers are especially fond of them. They put a human face on success, they make abstractions accessible, and they give warm fuzzies all around. But the last few years suggest limits to the strategy, and it can inadvertently play into the myth that superpeople don’t need institutions in the first place. It can also inadvertently feed some pretty negative stereotypes about public colleges, especially community colleges. In the American political imagination, institutions that are closely identified with the poor quickly become poor themselves. Let’s not paint ourselves into a corner here.
President Obama is fond of the “educated workforce” argument, which is compelling to people who major in public policy. So we’ve locked up that vote. But it reduces education to training, and it makes us even more vulnerable to blame when a graduate crashes into a recession. I’d like to see much more focus on the “transfer” story, but we haven’t developed a good hook for that yet. And stories like “the second chance reverse transfer” are much too complicated to sell to a skeptical public.
Wise and worldly readers, have you seen or heard a better story for demonstrating the value of public higher ed to the public? Ideally something pithy, clear, true, and unlikely to bite back?
The CASE conference was like that for me. I enjoyed the conference, but one lesson from it has stubbornly stuck in my mind ever since. I don’t think I fully appreciated it in the moment.
It’s about telling the right story.
It’s hardly news that public higher education is under unprecedented scrutiny. Years of a rough job market for new graduates, combined with tuition increases, combined with a lingering sense that colleges are job programs for aging hippies, have put public colleges and universities in an unaccustomed spot. And I’m embarrassed to admit that the shift caught many of us off-guard.
The sector has fought political battles before, but they were different, and the scripts we developed back then don’t work now. In the 70’s, I’m told, the issues were about hippies and protests generally. In the 90’s, they were about diversity and multiculturalism. (Anyone remember the “culture wars?” Back when conservatives believed that the humanities mattered enough to fight about? Good times...) Now they’re about cost.
As a sector, we’re having a hard time finding the right script for this one.
The stories we told in past conflicts don’t help. “Free speech” is a fine defense when you’re accused of harboring liberals, but it doesn’t do much to address tuition increases. “Teach the conflict” may have been a useful way around the definition of the literary canon, but it’s pretty off-point when discussing budget cuts.
The first impulse is usually some variation on denial. “We’re just making up for state cuts” is true in the short term, but only partially true over the long term, and not helpful for students facing increased loan burdens and a tough job market. And given the reputational nature of higher ed, there’s a limit to how much bragging you want to do about austerity. (“Come to Compass Direction State. We’ve reduced the humanities to an online video!”)
We’ve used the “lifetime payoff” argument for a long time, generally to good effect. But that argument gets less convincing when the cost to the student goes up and entry-level opportunities go down. Yes, you may be better off in ten years, but if you need to the rent now, that’s of little comfort.
“Inspiring stories” are always good; the fundraisers are especially fond of them. They put a human face on success, they make abstractions accessible, and they give warm fuzzies all around. But the last few years suggest limits to the strategy, and it can inadvertently play into the myth that superpeople don’t need institutions in the first place. It can also inadvertently feed some pretty negative stereotypes about public colleges, especially community colleges. In the American political imagination, institutions that are closely identified with the poor quickly become poor themselves. Let’s not paint ourselves into a corner here.
President Obama is fond of the “educated workforce” argument, which is compelling to people who major in public policy. So we’ve locked up that vote. But it reduces education to training, and it makes us even more vulnerable to blame when a graduate crashes into a recession. I’d like to see much more focus on the “transfer” story, but we haven’t developed a good hook for that yet. And stories like “the second chance reverse transfer” are much too complicated to sell to a skeptical public.
Wise and worldly readers, have you seen or heard a better story for demonstrating the value of public higher ed to the public? Ideally something pithy, clear, true, and unlikely to bite back?
Sunday, October 21, 2012
Mad Scientists and Marshmallows
Last week I had the chance to talk to a group of new full-time faculty. Someone in the group asked me what I considered my goal as an administrator, especially regarding faculty.
It was a nifty question, and I probably should have expected it. But since the question came out of the blue, my answer did, too.
I’d love to see a culture in which faculty use their academic freedom to experiment. In my ideal setting, they’d be working together -- and separately, as appropriate -- to keep trying different approaches to helping students succeed. That could mean different teaching techniques, different scheduling ideas, different course content, novel uses of technology, or whatever; the one thing it absolutely would not mean is doing the exact same thing year after year. I would love to see faculty as a group of mad scientists, innovating gleefully.
This story about the marshmallow experiment came out at about the same time, and I think it offers a useful nuance. Most of us know the classic marshmallow study in which young children were left alone for several minutes in a room with a marshmallow. They were told that they could eat the marshmallow, or, if they managed not to until the adult returned, they could have two. The kids who exhibited enough self-discipline to hold out for the second marshmallow wound up having better lives by a host of measures.
Apparently, researchers at the University of Rochester replicated the study, but with a twist. They had some adults come through with the second marshmallow, and others seemingly forget. Then they ran the experiment again with the same kids. Unsurprisingly, kids whose trust had been violated the first time were much less likely to defer gratification the second time. It’s one thing to wait for a payoff; it’s quite another to wait for a broken promise. The study suggested that kids whose home lives are chaotic will have a harder time in school, since they will have a harder time believing that delaying gratification will result in a payoff. At home, the promised marshmallow never comes. Why would school be different?
It occurred to me that, in a sense, I’m hoping that faculty will wait for the second marshmallow. I’m hoping that they’ll use their autonomy and academic freedom to experiment, rather than to coast (or fulminate). Which requires a certain faith on their part that there will be some sort of payoff, and that they won’t be punished if an experiment fails.
With people who are relatively new to the college, it’s easier to set a certain expectation. But with those who’ve been here longer, through various administrations, it can be hard to get past old, forgotten marshmallows. Habits learned early are hard to shake. That’s why the marshmallow study matters.
In the meantime, here’s hoping that enough security will lead to gleeful experimentation, rather than just digging in. The marshmallow parallel works in two directions, after all.
It was a nifty question, and I probably should have expected it. But since the question came out of the blue, my answer did, too.
I’d love to see a culture in which faculty use their academic freedom to experiment. In my ideal setting, they’d be working together -- and separately, as appropriate -- to keep trying different approaches to helping students succeed. That could mean different teaching techniques, different scheduling ideas, different course content, novel uses of technology, or whatever; the one thing it absolutely would not mean is doing the exact same thing year after year. I would love to see faculty as a group of mad scientists, innovating gleefully.
This story about the marshmallow experiment came out at about the same time, and I think it offers a useful nuance. Most of us know the classic marshmallow study in which young children were left alone for several minutes in a room with a marshmallow. They were told that they could eat the marshmallow, or, if they managed not to until the adult returned, they could have two. The kids who exhibited enough self-discipline to hold out for the second marshmallow wound up having better lives by a host of measures.
Apparently, researchers at the University of Rochester replicated the study, but with a twist. They had some adults come through with the second marshmallow, and others seemingly forget. Then they ran the experiment again with the same kids. Unsurprisingly, kids whose trust had been violated the first time were much less likely to defer gratification the second time. It’s one thing to wait for a payoff; it’s quite another to wait for a broken promise. The study suggested that kids whose home lives are chaotic will have a harder time in school, since they will have a harder time believing that delaying gratification will result in a payoff. At home, the promised marshmallow never comes. Why would school be different?
It occurred to me that, in a sense, I’m hoping that faculty will wait for the second marshmallow. I’m hoping that they’ll use their autonomy and academic freedom to experiment, rather than to coast (or fulminate). Which requires a certain faith on their part that there will be some sort of payoff, and that they won’t be punished if an experiment fails.
With people who are relatively new to the college, it’s easier to set a certain expectation. But with those who’ve been here longer, through various administrations, it can be hard to get past old, forgotten marshmallows. Habits learned early are hard to shake. That’s why the marshmallow study matters.
In the meantime, here’s hoping that enough security will lead to gleeful experimentation, rather than just digging in. The marshmallow parallel works in two directions, after all.
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Friday Fragments
The $249 chromebook is the best idea I’ve heard all week. It seems like the chromebook is finally moving from “proof of concept” to “something actual people would actually buy.” Finally, decent size and specs at a community college price. This could fulfill the promise that netbooks made, but crapped out on, back in 2009.
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Minnesota is banning Coursera? Say what you want about MOOCs, but this is catastrophically stupid. 1001 varieties of internet porn? No problem! But using the web for unauthorized learning? Scandalous!
For those who aren’t fans of MOOCs, the way to defeat them is to offer something better. Relying on state-level protectionism is not going to cut it. Anyone with a VPN can make a mockery of this, and rightly so. Honestly, when I think about all of the things that people can, and will, do on the internet, following free academic classes is the least of my concerns.
--------
It will surprise nobody that I plan to vote for President Obama, but I have to admit being annoyed at him. During the second debate, he continued to use “community colleges” and “job training centers” interchangeably. They aren’t. Community colleges are important job training and workforce development sites, but they’re also -- and I use this word deliberately -- colleges. For many students, taking the first two years of a four year degree at a community college is a viable way to get an education while keeping costs down. Given that student loan burdens are a major issue, it would be nice for someone in public life to connect those dots.
---------
The Girl is starting to decipher genre. We’ve watched a few episodes of “Gilligan’s Island” over the last few weeks; it’s a gobsmacking nostalgia trip for me, and she enjoys the candy-colored slapstick. As with the old “Star Trek” episodes, I have to do some serious deprogramming of the casual sexism, lest she get too much of it, but with enough parental counterpoint, it still seems worthwhile.
After a recent episode, she turned to me and said “I get it! Gilligan is like SpongeBob, and the Skipper is like Squidward!”
I hadn’t thought of it that way, but she was basically right. What made it gratifying, though, was that she was able to recognize genre. The goofy, carefree underling who flusters the voluble but basically harmless boss -- that could be Gilligan, or it could be SpongeBob.
Pretty good for a third grader, I think.
--------
This story made me smile, albeit wistfully. Some public universities are going to their legislatures with a proposition: restore subsidies, and we’ll hold the line on tuition.
In a more perfect world, legislatures would jump at the deal. But I have no illusions that the current crop will.
The great virtue of this strategy is that it connects cause and effect. (More cynically, it provides a palatable excuse for a university to do what it was going to do anyway.) I’m a fan of reality-based decisions, so I like the idea of pointing out explicitly that much of the recent spike in tuition increases is a function of cost-shifting, rather than a lack of discipline. If you want to flatten the spike, stop cost-shifting.
Unfortunately, I can imagine a fairly smart argument from the other side: in the absence of a squeeze, higher education isn’t known for cost discipline. So I’ll suggest a different idea:
Ask the legislatures to fund experiments. Make money available, conditional on trying something different. And I don’t mean yet another workforce program. I mean something that addresses the underlying cost disease of higher education, something that gets at the credit hour and the various structural issues that push up costs at every institution, regardless of local quirks. If you want a system fix, pony up resources for people to try some.
Otherwise, we’ll be stuck in annual games of budgetary chicken, with diminishing returns. The for-profits are already suffering; if we don’t change, we’ll be next. And asking the legislature to keep Coursera out of town is not a serious answer.
----------
Minnesota is banning Coursera? Say what you want about MOOCs, but this is catastrophically stupid. 1001 varieties of internet porn? No problem! But using the web for unauthorized learning? Scandalous!
For those who aren’t fans of MOOCs, the way to defeat them is to offer something better. Relying on state-level protectionism is not going to cut it. Anyone with a VPN can make a mockery of this, and rightly so. Honestly, when I think about all of the things that people can, and will, do on the internet, following free academic classes is the least of my concerns.
--------
It will surprise nobody that I plan to vote for President Obama, but I have to admit being annoyed at him. During the second debate, he continued to use “community colleges” and “job training centers” interchangeably. They aren’t. Community colleges are important job training and workforce development sites, but they’re also -- and I use this word deliberately -- colleges. For many students, taking the first two years of a four year degree at a community college is a viable way to get an education while keeping costs down. Given that student loan burdens are a major issue, it would be nice for someone in public life to connect those dots.
---------
The Girl is starting to decipher genre. We’ve watched a few episodes of “Gilligan’s Island” over the last few weeks; it’s a gobsmacking nostalgia trip for me, and she enjoys the candy-colored slapstick. As with the old “Star Trek” episodes, I have to do some serious deprogramming of the casual sexism, lest she get too much of it, but with enough parental counterpoint, it still seems worthwhile.
After a recent episode, she turned to me and said “I get it! Gilligan is like SpongeBob, and the Skipper is like Squidward!”
I hadn’t thought of it that way, but she was basically right. What made it gratifying, though, was that she was able to recognize genre. The goofy, carefree underling who flusters the voluble but basically harmless boss -- that could be Gilligan, or it could be SpongeBob.
Pretty good for a third grader, I think.
--------
This story made me smile, albeit wistfully. Some public universities are going to their legislatures with a proposition: restore subsidies, and we’ll hold the line on tuition.
In a more perfect world, legislatures would jump at the deal. But I have no illusions that the current crop will.
The great virtue of this strategy is that it connects cause and effect. (More cynically, it provides a palatable excuse for a university to do what it was going to do anyway.) I’m a fan of reality-based decisions, so I like the idea of pointing out explicitly that much of the recent spike in tuition increases is a function of cost-shifting, rather than a lack of discipline. If you want to flatten the spike, stop cost-shifting.
Unfortunately, I can imagine a fairly smart argument from the other side: in the absence of a squeeze, higher education isn’t known for cost discipline. So I’ll suggest a different idea:
Ask the legislatures to fund experiments. Make money available, conditional on trying something different. And I don’t mean yet another workforce program. I mean something that addresses the underlying cost disease of higher education, something that gets at the credit hour and the various structural issues that push up costs at every institution, regardless of local quirks. If you want a system fix, pony up resources for people to try some.
Otherwise, we’ll be stuck in annual games of budgetary chicken, with diminishing returns. The for-profits are already suffering; if we don’t change, we’ll be next. And asking the legislature to keep Coursera out of town is not a serious answer.
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