If credits are available for free, what will colleges sell?
This is becoming a lot less hypothetical than it was even a few months ago. The MIT/Harvard MOOC provider edX has signed an agreement with Pearson to allow students who are taking the free online courses to have exams proctored. The next step, obviously, is credit. Already, the Saylor Foundation is allowing students who take free online courses to take exams for credit at Excelsior College. As the “credit for prior learning” movement gains traction, it will be progressively easier for students not only to learn in nontraditional ways, but to accumulate credits for what they’ve learned.
Right now, the arrangements are still nascent, the MOOCs available relatively few, and the routes to transcripted credit scarce. But they exist, which is more than was true even a few months ago. And the momentum is clear. Coursera and edX -- not to mention iTunes -- offer prospective students access to well-presented content, and people are starting to develop methods to turn that knowledge into credits. Bundle enough credits in the right combination, and you have a degree.
(I know it isn’t as simple as that, but many of the barriers to it strike me as wobbly.)
The prospect of MOOC-derived credits comes at the same time that states are pushing “stackable” non-credit-to-credit certificates as part of workforce development, and at the same time that CAEL is gaining traction for providing a systematic way to assess the content knowledge of people who’ve picked things up along the way. MOOCs offer a new method to pick things up along the way.
A few months ago, I was much less worried about MOOCs. They just didn’t seem relevant at the community college level. And at this point, most of them still aren’t. But some of the institutional barriers they were up against have already fallen, and in record time. As MOOCs proliferate, and people start to notice them, colleges will face an entirely new form of competitor.
MOOCs get around Baumol’s cost disease, because they aren’t based on seat time. The marginal cost of another student is shockingly close to zero. Yes, colleges now usually have residency requirements -- that is, ceilings on the number of transfer credits that can comprise a degree from them before it isn’t from them anymore -- but I can see the pressure building. And even with current residency requirements, very few students bump up against the limits. If large numbers of students start doing that, the economic impact on the colleges themselves could be devastating.
The traditional college model was based on scarcity. In the earliest days, books were scarce, so lectures consisted of someone reading from the only book around. (That’s why some places still call lectures “recitations.”) Later, books were common, but colleges provided both help interpreting them and valuable connections. When that was true, the way to provide more access to college was to build more colleges. In the 1960’s alone, the U.S. added almost 500 community colleges -- a rate of nearly one per week. It has built less than half that many in the forty-plus years since, which goes a long way towards explaining the academic job market since 1970.
When the public sector stopped growing, the private sector picked up the slack, and for-profit providers become the engines of growth. The last statistic I saw had nearly 1 in 9 undergraduates in America at for-profit colleges or universities. The for-profits tweaked the non-profit model in ways both good and bad, but they, too, were based on a scarcity model.
As academic bloggers well know, the scarcity model has been harder to uphold since the building boom stopped. The trend towards adjunct faculty is only possible because capable people really aren’t all that scarce. Now the internet is making possible a dissemination of information at a level beyond what even the most ambitious entrepreneur could have imagined just a few years ago. When it comes to access, after all, “free” is a magic word.
At this point, if they are to survive, colleges need to figure out how to adapt to a world in which its former stock-in-trade -- classes for credit -- can be had anywhere, at any time, by anyone, for free. Tomorrow I’ll explore some possible adaptations.
Sunday, September 09, 2012
Thursday, September 06, 2012
Friday Fragments
This year, for the first time, we made new student orientation mandatory. By “mandatory,” I mean that a new student who doesn’t attend any of the orientation sessions would get his schedule dropped. (Obviously, we had to run a whole bunch of sessions on different days and times, so we did.) People on campus keep commenting on how unusually smooth the first few days of class have been. I can’t prove it yet, but it's almost as if there's some sort of connection between students being prepared, and students having fewer last-minute emergencies. We've also noticed that the sun tends to rise in the East. Sometimes it's the obvious stuff that helps.
--------
The Girl: Mom, do you ever see things when you close your eyes?
The Wife: Yup.
TG [The Boy] says it's your mind.
TW: It's your imagination.
TG: Right now my imagination is orange.
--------
TW received an award from the local teachers' union for her work putting together the 5k fundraiser last spring. The kids and I attended, and I have to admit that it was a blast to see her get a standing ovation from an auditorium full of people. And it was fun to be able to spend an entire “annual kickoff” meeting sitting in the audience.
-------
The second-to-last draft of the book manuscript is in. Naturally, the very next morning I thought of an entire chapter to add. Deadlines are good for production, but there's something about the day after a deadline that's good for inspiration. This, in a nutshell, is my argument against Intelligent Design.
---------
Kevin Carey’s recent piece on Silicon Valley and higher education is a must-read. Check it out if you haven’t already.
---------
In our first new semester after the “ability to benefit” test went away, the first-blush results indicate a relatively minor impact. I admit being pleasantly surprised. Even the lowest level ESL classes are full; I expected that they would take a severe hit. No explanation, at this point, but sometimes it’s nice to be wrong.
---------
BWI airport is falsely named. It's Baltimore. There's no non-awful way to get to DC from there. At least Newark has the common decency to call itself Newark, instead of New York City South.
--------
The Girl: Mom, do you ever see things when you close your eyes?
The Wife: Yup.
TG [The Boy] says it's your mind.
TW: It's your imagination.
TG: Right now my imagination is orange.
--------
TW received an award from the local teachers' union for her work putting together the 5k fundraiser last spring. The kids and I attended, and I have to admit that it was a blast to see her get a standing ovation from an auditorium full of people. And it was fun to be able to spend an entire “annual kickoff” meeting sitting in the audience.
-------
The second-to-last draft of the book manuscript is in. Naturally, the very next morning I thought of an entire chapter to add. Deadlines are good for production, but there's something about the day after a deadline that's good for inspiration. This, in a nutshell, is my argument against Intelligent Design.
---------
Kevin Carey’s recent piece on Silicon Valley and higher education is a must-read. Check it out if you haven’t already.
---------
In our first new semester after the “ability to benefit” test went away, the first-blush results indicate a relatively minor impact. I admit being pleasantly surprised. Even the lowest level ESL classes are full; I expected that they would take a severe hit. No explanation, at this point, but sometimes it’s nice to be wrong.
---------
BWI airport is falsely named. It's Baltimore. There's no non-awful way to get to DC from there. At least Newark has the common decency to call itself Newark, instead of New York City South.
Wednesday, September 05, 2012
Don’t Forget Self-Interest...
As regular readers know, I’ve carried on a bit of a crusade against the credit hour for a while now. The credit hour is a time-based measure that essentially forces colleges to measure outputs entirely in terms of inputs, thereby defeating any productivity gain. Combine that with Baumol’s cost disease -- by which sectors whose productivity rises more slowly than the average are doomed to higher real costs over time -- and higher education is in a tough spot.
Amy Laitinen, of the New America Foundation, issued a must-read report this week that provides some excellent context. Among other things, it reveals that the initial impetus for the credit hour as we know it came from Andrew Carnegie trying to find a basis for faculty pensions at Cornell, where he was a trustee. Credit hours were initially used to equate different high schools, but they quickly became the coin of the realm in higher education, even though they were never tied to student learning.
Dissent came early; Laitinen mentions serious misgivings about the overuse of the credit hour as early as the 1930’s. But it solved several bureaucratic problems, and has since become, by default, the way that colleges denote work.
Laitinen notes, correctly, that the absence of content in the credit hour is made clear when one college won’t take transfer credits from another. But this is where I have to offer a friendly amendment.
Yes, it’s true that a three credit class at college A may well have different outcomes than a similarly-titled three credit class at college B. But that’s not the only reason that transfer credits get denied.
Most of us at community colleges have been through this dance a few times. Credit hours don’t only count what students have taken; they also denote what professors have taught. Credit hours are the way that FTE’s are calculated, which can have direct impact on state funding. They’re how individual teaching loads are calculated, and over time, they’re part of how departmental staffing allocation decisions are made.
Which is to say, a department at a receiving school that “gives away too many credits,” as I’ve had it said to my face, potentially hurts its own claim on resources. Being too generous on transfer credits can cost a department jobs.
There’s a standard playbook for departments that want to deny transfer credits. One way is to fudge the distinction between 200- and 300- level courses. That way, it can deny credit for transferred 200-level classes by claiming that they’re really at the 300 level. They can play with prerequisites, require idiosyncratic sub-sequences, or change the number of credits that a given course carries. Or they can just assign anything threatening to “free elective” status, which is where credits go to die.
Laitinen notes, correctly, that there’s some theoretical room to move in the definition of the credit hour, but that recent clampdowns in financial aid have made colleges wary of trying anything. (The reaction to abuses of financial aid in the for-profit sector has had a severe chilling effect among community colleges. Ironically, handcuffing community colleges actually strengthens the for-profits. You’d think someone would figure that out...) But there are also very real issues of self-interest at every level. I would be shocked to see faculty stand idly by while students were awarded non-trivial amounts of academic credit for learning in venues where the faculty did not teach; the faculty would see that as a direct threat to their continued employment. (That’s lurking below the surface of much of the discussion of MOOCs, for example.)
A reform that would actually take hold has to do more than overcome the flaws of the current system. It would also have to address, in some meaningful way, the self-interest of the various actors in place. Some people would probably lose something, obviously, but a reform that isn’t in any of the incumbents’ best interest will fall prey to interest-group politicking.
Still, kudos to Laitinen and the New America Foundation for doing the homework to explain how we got where we are. It clearly isn’t where we should be, and I suspect that the longer we cling to where we are, the more vulnerable to external disruption we’ll be. But the crafting of alternatives, if it’s going to work, will have to take seriously the less-exalted motives of the current actors. Without that, well, read the quote from 1938.
Amy Laitinen, of the New America Foundation, issued a must-read report this week that provides some excellent context. Among other things, it reveals that the initial impetus for the credit hour as we know it came from Andrew Carnegie trying to find a basis for faculty pensions at Cornell, where he was a trustee. Credit hours were initially used to equate different high schools, but they quickly became the coin of the realm in higher education, even though they were never tied to student learning.
Dissent came early; Laitinen mentions serious misgivings about the overuse of the credit hour as early as the 1930’s. But it solved several bureaucratic problems, and has since become, by default, the way that colleges denote work.
Laitinen notes, correctly, that the absence of content in the credit hour is made clear when one college won’t take transfer credits from another. But this is where I have to offer a friendly amendment.
Yes, it’s true that a three credit class at college A may well have different outcomes than a similarly-titled three credit class at college B. But that’s not the only reason that transfer credits get denied.
Most of us at community colleges have been through this dance a few times. Credit hours don’t only count what students have taken; they also denote what professors have taught. Credit hours are the way that FTE’s are calculated, which can have direct impact on state funding. They’re how individual teaching loads are calculated, and over time, they’re part of how departmental staffing allocation decisions are made.
Which is to say, a department at a receiving school that “gives away too many credits,” as I’ve had it said to my face, potentially hurts its own claim on resources. Being too generous on transfer credits can cost a department jobs.
There’s a standard playbook for departments that want to deny transfer credits. One way is to fudge the distinction between 200- and 300- level courses. That way, it can deny credit for transferred 200-level classes by claiming that they’re really at the 300 level. They can play with prerequisites, require idiosyncratic sub-sequences, or change the number of credits that a given course carries. Or they can just assign anything threatening to “free elective” status, which is where credits go to die.
Laitinen notes, correctly, that there’s some theoretical room to move in the definition of the credit hour, but that recent clampdowns in financial aid have made colleges wary of trying anything. (The reaction to abuses of financial aid in the for-profit sector has had a severe chilling effect among community colleges. Ironically, handcuffing community colleges actually strengthens the for-profits. You’d think someone would figure that out...) But there are also very real issues of self-interest at every level. I would be shocked to see faculty stand idly by while students were awarded non-trivial amounts of academic credit for learning in venues where the faculty did not teach; the faculty would see that as a direct threat to their continued employment. (That’s lurking below the surface of much of the discussion of MOOCs, for example.)
A reform that would actually take hold has to do more than overcome the flaws of the current system. It would also have to address, in some meaningful way, the self-interest of the various actors in place. Some people would probably lose something, obviously, but a reform that isn’t in any of the incumbents’ best interest will fall prey to interest-group politicking.
Still, kudos to Laitinen and the New America Foundation for doing the homework to explain how we got where we are. It clearly isn’t where we should be, and I suspect that the longer we cling to where we are, the more vulnerable to external disruption we’ll be. But the crafting of alternatives, if it’s going to work, will have to take seriously the less-exalted motives of the current actors. Without that, well, read the quote from 1938.
Tuesday, September 04, 2012
Kermit
A few months ago, Dahlia Lithwick had a charming piece in Slate about two kinds of Muppets: Order Muppets and Chaos Muppets. She suggested that most people fall into one of the two camps. The Order Muppets -- Kermit, Bert, Scooter, Sam the Eagle -- are concerned with keeping the show running. The Chaos Muppets -- Cookie Monster, Ernie, Gonzo, Animal -- are a bit more, well, demonstrative. They bring energy, and entropy.
Lithwick’s point was that a functioning organization needs the right mix of Order and Chaos Muppets. If you have nothing but Order Muppets, the organization will calcify and nothing creative will happen. If you have nothing but Chaos Muppets, the theater will quickly collapse in a smoldering pile of rubble. You don’t want Order Muppets cracking all the jokes, and you don’t want Chaos Muppets in charge of paying the electric bill. The mix is the key.
It was a cute piece, and the Gen X’er in me got a kick out of it. But it also stuck with me, because it says something about academic administration.
I’d make a distinction between “soft” and “hard” variants of each type. Soft Chaos Muppets, like Grover, Ernie, or Fozzie, are a little rough around the edges, but they aren’t threats to anyone. They’re sweet, even if a little scattered. Hard Chaos Muppets -- Animal, Gonzo, or that guy with the dynamite blaster -- have moments of brilliance, but need to be contained. Left unchecked, they have a way of destroying everything. Similarly, Hard Order Muppets -- Bert, Sam the Eagle -- are so organized that they actually become bitter. Left to their own devices, they would suck the life out of everything, on the grounds that life is messy, and messy is bad. Soft Order Muppets, like Kermit, maintain just enough order to give the Chaos Muppets a venue in which to shine. Kermit understands that the show must go on, but he also understands that the show is better when Gonzo can be Gonzo. Asking Gonzo to tone it down would defeat the point of Gonzo, and would result in a much worse show.
(I admit, I’m not sure what to do with Miss Piggy in this typology. Maybe she’s a Chaos Muppet who thinks she’s an Order Muppet, even while quietly suspecting that she isn’t.)
In this typology, Kermit is a great model for academic administration. He keeps the show running, but it’s clear that he actually enjoys the Chaos Muppets and wants them to be able to do what they do. His work makes it possible for Gonzo to jump through the flaming hoop with a chicken under his arm while reciting Shakespeare, even though Kermit would never do that himself.
Kermit endures snark from Statler and Waldorf in the balcony; let’s just say I get that. And the few times that Kermit freaks out have much more impact than when, say, Animal does, because a freaked-out Kermit threatens the working of the show. Freaking out is just what Animal does.
Old-school viewers of Sesame Street -- before it was corrupted by the Unwatchable Elmo -- will recall that Kermit also worked as a journalist. (My quasi-hipster take on Sesame Street: I liked their old stuff...) He reported from the scene in his trenchcoat and fedora, trying to make a silly scene legible. Let’s just say I get that, too.
Administrators can fail if they’re too Chaos-y themselves, obviously, but they can also fail if they’re too much like Bert or Sam. Successful administration involves genuinely appreciating the Chaos folks for the energy and breakthroughs they bring, even while keeping them from blowing the place up.
It’s not easy being dean. But it helps having a little green role model.
Lithwick’s point was that a functioning organization needs the right mix of Order and Chaos Muppets. If you have nothing but Order Muppets, the organization will calcify and nothing creative will happen. If you have nothing but Chaos Muppets, the theater will quickly collapse in a smoldering pile of rubble. You don’t want Order Muppets cracking all the jokes, and you don’t want Chaos Muppets in charge of paying the electric bill. The mix is the key.
It was a cute piece, and the Gen X’er in me got a kick out of it. But it also stuck with me, because it says something about academic administration.
I’d make a distinction between “soft” and “hard” variants of each type. Soft Chaos Muppets, like Grover, Ernie, or Fozzie, are a little rough around the edges, but they aren’t threats to anyone. They’re sweet, even if a little scattered. Hard Chaos Muppets -- Animal, Gonzo, or that guy with the dynamite blaster -- have moments of brilliance, but need to be contained. Left unchecked, they have a way of destroying everything. Similarly, Hard Order Muppets -- Bert, Sam the Eagle -- are so organized that they actually become bitter. Left to their own devices, they would suck the life out of everything, on the grounds that life is messy, and messy is bad. Soft Order Muppets, like Kermit, maintain just enough order to give the Chaos Muppets a venue in which to shine. Kermit understands that the show must go on, but he also understands that the show is better when Gonzo can be Gonzo. Asking Gonzo to tone it down would defeat the point of Gonzo, and would result in a much worse show.
(I admit, I’m not sure what to do with Miss Piggy in this typology. Maybe she’s a Chaos Muppet who thinks she’s an Order Muppet, even while quietly suspecting that she isn’t.)
In this typology, Kermit is a great model for academic administration. He keeps the show running, but it’s clear that he actually enjoys the Chaos Muppets and wants them to be able to do what they do. His work makes it possible for Gonzo to jump through the flaming hoop with a chicken under his arm while reciting Shakespeare, even though Kermit would never do that himself.
Kermit endures snark from Statler and Waldorf in the balcony; let’s just say I get that. And the few times that Kermit freaks out have much more impact than when, say, Animal does, because a freaked-out Kermit threatens the working of the show. Freaking out is just what Animal does.
Old-school viewers of Sesame Street -- before it was corrupted by the Unwatchable Elmo -- will recall that Kermit also worked as a journalist. (My quasi-hipster take on Sesame Street: I liked their old stuff...) He reported from the scene in his trenchcoat and fedora, trying to make a silly scene legible. Let’s just say I get that, too.
Administrators can fail if they’re too Chaos-y themselves, obviously, but they can also fail if they’re too much like Bert or Sam. Successful administration involves genuinely appreciating the Chaos folks for the energy and breakthroughs they bring, even while keeping them from blowing the place up.
It’s not easy being dean. But it helps having a little green role model.
Monday, September 03, 2012
My Wish for Election Season
This year, for the first time since leaving grad school, I’d love to hear students on campus seriously discuss the election outside of class.
Admittedly, that’s a tall order. Most of the national role models for political conversation don’t exactly make it look appealing; as Dana Gould put it, it’s professional wrestling, with ties. The convention last week showed speakers ranging from ‘vaguely disappointing’ to ‘entirely fictitious,’ with a special category of ‘What was that?’ reserved for Clint Eastwood. None of them came close to making an intelligent case for a coherent position.
Not that I expect a lot more from this week’s convention, either. Even if nothing tops Eastwood for sheer weirdness, I’d be surprised to hear anything actually thoughtful.
In the last few national elections, I just haven’t heard students having actual conversations about politics.
That’s not unique to students, of course, but it’s particularly disappointing. Students are supposed to think big thoughts, think out loud, try on arguments for size, and generally practice being citizens. Missing the opportunity to develop those skills here is a real loss.
Tragically, I suspect some of that comes from being at a community college. At Snooty Liberal Arts College, it wasn’t hard to find students discussing politics, especially around the election. Part of that was a function of leisure time, but I think part of it came from a sense of relevance. At SLAC, we felt important enough to believe that our opinions mattered. Many of the students here don’t seem to feel that important, and that’s disturbing.
In the late 90’s, the sociologist Nina Eliasoph wrote a brilliant book, Avoiding Politics, which was about the deliberate production of political apathy. Among other points, she argued that one of the most powerful ways that real discussion gets short-circuited is through mandatory appeals to identity. (“As a mother...”) When identities are either highly charged -- as in race -- or very much in flux -- as in almost everything else at age eighteen -- it can be difficult to find a secure position from which to speak. And when the larger issues are too poorly understood to form the basis for discussion, that tends not to leave much room.
In my ideal world, students would consider themselves important enough that their opinions would actually matter; therefore, they would make the effort to develop opinions. And as long as I’m being idealistic, I’d love to see students (and the rest of us, really) get sophisticated enough that we could look at politics beyond the lens of team sports. As our politics have become more polarized, it has become far less common to hear thoughtful people stray from a party line.
Wise and worldly readers -- especially the academics among you -- have you seen settings in which young people have thoughtful discussions of politics? What made it work?
Admittedly, that’s a tall order. Most of the national role models for political conversation don’t exactly make it look appealing; as Dana Gould put it, it’s professional wrestling, with ties. The convention last week showed speakers ranging from ‘vaguely disappointing’ to ‘entirely fictitious,’ with a special category of ‘What was that?’ reserved for Clint Eastwood. None of them came close to making an intelligent case for a coherent position.
Not that I expect a lot more from this week’s convention, either. Even if nothing tops Eastwood for sheer weirdness, I’d be surprised to hear anything actually thoughtful.
In the last few national elections, I just haven’t heard students having actual conversations about politics.
That’s not unique to students, of course, but it’s particularly disappointing. Students are supposed to think big thoughts, think out loud, try on arguments for size, and generally practice being citizens. Missing the opportunity to develop those skills here is a real loss.
Tragically, I suspect some of that comes from being at a community college. At Snooty Liberal Arts College, it wasn’t hard to find students discussing politics, especially around the election. Part of that was a function of leisure time, but I think part of it came from a sense of relevance. At SLAC, we felt important enough to believe that our opinions mattered. Many of the students here don’t seem to feel that important, and that’s disturbing.
In the late 90’s, the sociologist Nina Eliasoph wrote a brilliant book, Avoiding Politics, which was about the deliberate production of political apathy. Among other points, she argued that one of the most powerful ways that real discussion gets short-circuited is through mandatory appeals to identity. (“As a mother...”) When identities are either highly charged -- as in race -- or very much in flux -- as in almost everything else at age eighteen -- it can be difficult to find a secure position from which to speak. And when the larger issues are too poorly understood to form the basis for discussion, that tends not to leave much room.
In my ideal world, students would consider themselves important enough that their opinions would actually matter; therefore, they would make the effort to develop opinions. And as long as I’m being idealistic, I’d love to see students (and the rest of us, really) get sophisticated enough that we could look at politics beyond the lens of team sports. As our politics have become more polarized, it has become far less common to hear thoughtful people stray from a party line.
Wise and worldly readers -- especially the academics among you -- have you seen settings in which young people have thoughtful discussions of politics? What made it work?
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Place
Richard Florida and Bill Bishop, in their different ways, have pointed out the increased geographic clustering of the educated/creative classes. Broadly speaking, the creative classes tend to cluster in urban areas near oceans, leaving the vast middle “hollowing out,” as Richard Longworth put it.
This wasn’t always true. As late as the 1970’s, middle-class life in, say, Ohio wasn’t all that different economically or politically than middle-class life in New Jersey. (New York City was always something of an outlier.) But various dynamics over the last generation or two have clustered demographic likes with likes. Now there’s less economic or political diversity within counties, and much more between them.
Most community colleges in America were built before what Bishop calls The Big Sort. Far more were built in the decade leading up to 1970 than have been built in the four-plus since. They were monuments to middle-class ubiquity, built on the assumption that middle-class-hood was attainable just about everywhere in the country.
I was reminded of that in looking at this story in IHE, and especially at the accompanying map. Broad swaths of Pennsylvania don’t have community colleges in them, so some local four-year colleges are retrofitting two year programs to make up the difference. At a time when middle-class-hood is more fervently desired than ever, its institutional incarnation is becoming harder to sustain.
The divergence shows up in a number of ways. What many job-seeking academics refer to as the “two-body problem” is often, at least in part, a two economy problem. Since academics tend to partner with other academics or professionals, moving two of them to one of the hollowing-out regions can be a major challenge. It’s hard enough to find individual professional jobs in places like that; finding a pair can be daunting. That means we tend to have severe underemployment in the metro regions -- where options exist, and people are reluctant to leave -- while colleges in the hinterlands have trouble recruiting.
It also means that issues of cultural ‘fit’ are growing more complicated. An article in Slate yesterday claimed that regional accents in the U.S. are actually becoming more distinct, rather than less. I think that’s another symptom of The Big Sort. As each region becomes more distinctly itself, it’s harder for transplants to feel at home. Where Ohio may once have been a reasonably viable option for a young academic fresh out of grad school, it may not be quite so welcoming now.
Place becomes even more complicated when an increasing percentage of instruction is delivered online. At least theoretically, online instruction can be delivered from anywhere to anywhere, as long as both ends have broadband access.
Now, with President Obama issuing a stay of deportation for people under age 30 who came to America as children, the definition of who belongs in a particular place is getting even more muddled. (Apparently, some Republicans are considering banning Federal financial aid from any colleges that allow undocumented students to pay in-state tuition. There’s community, and then there’s community.) Community colleges, by dint of the “community” part, are tied to particular places. As those places become more polarized, and as instruction becomes more removed from those places, some of the baseline assumptions of the colleges come into question.
None of this is the fault of the colleges, exactly. But the places for which they were built -- places in which instruction happened onsite, and in which middle-class-hood was attainable almost anywhere -- are fading away, and we haven’t really come to grips with what is replacing them.
Program Note: My publisher sent me the “speak now or forever hold your peace” draft of the book, so I’ll be spending next week poring over that. The blog will return the day after Labor Day, white shoes safely stowed away.
This wasn’t always true. As late as the 1970’s, middle-class life in, say, Ohio wasn’t all that different economically or politically than middle-class life in New Jersey. (New York City was always something of an outlier.) But various dynamics over the last generation or two have clustered demographic likes with likes. Now there’s less economic or political diversity within counties, and much more between them.
Most community colleges in America were built before what Bishop calls The Big Sort. Far more were built in the decade leading up to 1970 than have been built in the four-plus since. They were monuments to middle-class ubiquity, built on the assumption that middle-class-hood was attainable just about everywhere in the country.
I was reminded of that in looking at this story in IHE, and especially at the accompanying map. Broad swaths of Pennsylvania don’t have community colleges in them, so some local four-year colleges are retrofitting two year programs to make up the difference. At a time when middle-class-hood is more fervently desired than ever, its institutional incarnation is becoming harder to sustain.
The divergence shows up in a number of ways. What many job-seeking academics refer to as the “two-body problem” is often, at least in part, a two economy problem. Since academics tend to partner with other academics or professionals, moving two of them to one of the hollowing-out regions can be a major challenge. It’s hard enough to find individual professional jobs in places like that; finding a pair can be daunting. That means we tend to have severe underemployment in the metro regions -- where options exist, and people are reluctant to leave -- while colleges in the hinterlands have trouble recruiting.
It also means that issues of cultural ‘fit’ are growing more complicated. An article in Slate yesterday claimed that regional accents in the U.S. are actually becoming more distinct, rather than less. I think that’s another symptom of The Big Sort. As each region becomes more distinctly itself, it’s harder for transplants to feel at home. Where Ohio may once have been a reasonably viable option for a young academic fresh out of grad school, it may not be quite so welcoming now.
Place becomes even more complicated when an increasing percentage of instruction is delivered online. At least theoretically, online instruction can be delivered from anywhere to anywhere, as long as both ends have broadband access.
Now, with President Obama issuing a stay of deportation for people under age 30 who came to America as children, the definition of who belongs in a particular place is getting even more muddled. (Apparently, some Republicans are considering banning Federal financial aid from any colleges that allow undocumented students to pay in-state tuition. There’s community, and then there’s community.) Community colleges, by dint of the “community” part, are tied to particular places. As those places become more polarized, and as instruction becomes more removed from those places, some of the baseline assumptions of the colleges come into question.
None of this is the fault of the colleges, exactly. But the places for which they were built -- places in which instruction happened onsite, and in which middle-class-hood was attainable almost anywhere -- are fading away, and we haven’t really come to grips with what is replacing them.
Program Note: My publisher sent me the “speak now or forever hold your peace” draft of the book, so I’ll be spending next week poring over that. The blog will return the day after Labor Day, white shoes safely stowed away.
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Selling Liberal Arts to 18 Year Olds
How do you sell the idea of liberal arts to an 18 year old?
Admittedly, the question scans differently at different institutions. At the snooty/exclusive liberal arts colleges, the sale has already been made. At a community college in a non-affluent area -- my beat -- the issue is a little trickier.
The liberal arts major is the largest major on campus, though that’s partly a function of its use as the ‘default’ or ‘effectively undecided’ major. (For financial aid reasons, we can’t have an “undecided” major as such.) It works reasonably well as a default major, since it’s comprised of transferable gen ed courses. For a student who switches into another program after a semseter or two, typically everything they’ve taken will carry over. The liberal arts greatest hits -- intro to psych, freshman composition, college algebra -- “count” in almost every other program anyway, so it’s a reasonable choice for a student who needs some time.
But some of us like to think that there’s value beyond the old chestnut of “getting your gen eds out of the way, “ as real as that is. Yes, it transfers well, but why would they want to transfer in the first place?
There’s the classic “intellectual calisthenics” argument -- it makes you smarter -- but the appeal of that is probably limited. It plays into the “scold” stereotype of academics that doesn’t make us many friends. And it doesn’t address the real -- and largely valid -- economic concerns that are never far from the surface for so many students.
Aspirational sociology can also work. These are the courses that the rich and powerful take. Do you think there might be a reason for that? Of course, that can also backfire; students could hear it as “these courses are for people with money, not people like you.”
I’m thinking that the best sales approach -- yes, I said sales -- involves more showing and less telling. And that’s true of almost any field.
Scientists and engineers have an advantage here; they have great toys to show off. The engineering folks can show off their robots and Van de Graaf generators. But even the more bookish fields have some great hooks, if only they’d bother to use them.
Poli sci sounds boring, but it’s the study of money and power. Sociology sounds dreary, until you see it as showing the ways that a society organizes sex, power, and family. Literature can seem stuffy, but it’s about how other people think, and how stories work.
Incoming students may not know any of that. They may be put off by unfamiliar labels, or by an inability to locate the immediate relevance. And telling them to take eventual relevance on faith doesn’t quite cut it; the whole point of the liberal arts is to free yourself from having to take statements like that on faith. It’s self-defeating, and students sense that.
In the rush to fulfill requirements, I worry sometimes that many students never really get a chance to watch faculty love what they do. Enthusiasm is contagious, and there’s something attractive about watching someone really engrossed and enthused in a subject. (Though his politics were not mine, one of my favorite professors from college was a historian who was palpably tickled to teach what he taught. His stories were rich, polished, and funny as hell. The enthusiasm made an impression vivid enough that I still remember it.) That’s difficult with heavy teaching loads, or with professors freeway flying from one college to the next. But it’s possible even in difficult circumstances, if only students get in the door in the first place.
I don’t think many young students are persuaded by the usual “this is good for you” speech. In a way, that’s actually to their credit. But they can be persuaded by example.
Wise and worldly readers, have you seen or found ways to make the more bookish subjects appealing to 18 year olds who may not even recognize the names of the disciplines?
Admittedly, the question scans differently at different institutions. At the snooty/exclusive liberal arts colleges, the sale has already been made. At a community college in a non-affluent area -- my beat -- the issue is a little trickier.
The liberal arts major is the largest major on campus, though that’s partly a function of its use as the ‘default’ or ‘effectively undecided’ major. (For financial aid reasons, we can’t have an “undecided” major as such.) It works reasonably well as a default major, since it’s comprised of transferable gen ed courses. For a student who switches into another program after a semseter or two, typically everything they’ve taken will carry over. The liberal arts greatest hits -- intro to psych, freshman composition, college algebra -- “count” in almost every other program anyway, so it’s a reasonable choice for a student who needs some time.
But some of us like to think that there’s value beyond the old chestnut of “getting your gen eds out of the way, “ as real as that is. Yes, it transfers well, but why would they want to transfer in the first place?
There’s the classic “intellectual calisthenics” argument -- it makes you smarter -- but the appeal of that is probably limited. It plays into the “scold” stereotype of academics that doesn’t make us many friends. And it doesn’t address the real -- and largely valid -- economic concerns that are never far from the surface for so many students.
Aspirational sociology can also work. These are the courses that the rich and powerful take. Do you think there might be a reason for that? Of course, that can also backfire; students could hear it as “these courses are for people with money, not people like you.”
I’m thinking that the best sales approach -- yes, I said sales -- involves more showing and less telling. And that’s true of almost any field.
Scientists and engineers have an advantage here; they have great toys to show off. The engineering folks can show off their robots and Van de Graaf generators. But even the more bookish fields have some great hooks, if only they’d bother to use them.
Poli sci sounds boring, but it’s the study of money and power. Sociology sounds dreary, until you see it as showing the ways that a society organizes sex, power, and family. Literature can seem stuffy, but it’s about how other people think, and how stories work.
Incoming students may not know any of that. They may be put off by unfamiliar labels, or by an inability to locate the immediate relevance. And telling them to take eventual relevance on faith doesn’t quite cut it; the whole point of the liberal arts is to free yourself from having to take statements like that on faith. It’s self-defeating, and students sense that.
In the rush to fulfill requirements, I worry sometimes that many students never really get a chance to watch faculty love what they do. Enthusiasm is contagious, and there’s something attractive about watching someone really engrossed and enthused in a subject. (Though his politics were not mine, one of my favorite professors from college was a historian who was palpably tickled to teach what he taught. His stories were rich, polished, and funny as hell. The enthusiasm made an impression vivid enough that I still remember it.) That’s difficult with heavy teaching loads, or with professors freeway flying from one college to the next. But it’s possible even in difficult circumstances, if only students get in the door in the first place.
I don’t think many young students are persuaded by the usual “this is good for you” speech. In a way, that’s actually to their credit. But they can be persuaded by example.
Wise and worldly readers, have you seen or found ways to make the more bookish subjects appealing to 18 year olds who may not even recognize the names of the disciplines?
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
The Grant Program I’d Love to See
I spend a fairly alarming amount of my time these days on grant-related projects. Each is worthy in its own way, of course, but they have certain limitations in common.
The dollars come with a time limit, and they require management. Each has its own reporting requirements. For the ones that work directly on academic issues, one or more full-time faculty have some time bought out by the grant so they can work on the grant project. (Put differently: with every new grant, either we increase our adjunct percentage, or we decrease our course offerings.) Each requires a liaison to somewhere else, and several of them require a full-time project director.
For certain academic disciplines -- STEM, mostly -- so many projects are brewing that simply covering classes is becoming a challenge. (Last week someone from Student Affairs practically begged me to open up more sections of math, since they were having an awful time finding slots for students. I explained that I can’t just conjure up faculty on short notice. But with available adjuncts finite, every course release for yet another project is yet another section we can’t run.) Some projects are actually bumping up against each other, which creates issues when the funding streams can’t be crossed.
Meanwhile, other academic disciplines -- nearly everything outside of STEM -- are largely on their own.
So for any philanthropists or politicians out there who’d like to do some good, here’s an idea:
Give open-ended grants to hire full-time faculty to teach classes.
That’s the one expense category I’m expressly forbidden to apply to any of the grants we have. And it’s the one I most desperately need.
A time period of just a few years won’t do it. When you have a tenure system, each year gets closer to a lifetime commitment. The funding needs to be sustained over time.
In research universities, positions like these are usually called “endowed chairs.” But that’s more high-falutin’ (higher falutin’?) than I need. I’d settle for endowed assistant professorships.
In an attempt not to hollow out the instructional core any more than it already is, my college handled the last few budget cuts largely with cuts to the administrative side. That means that we just don’t have any more fat there to cut. If anything, in some areas we’re running so lean that the opportunity cost of things we just can’t do are starting to mount. And the costs for IT, regulatory compliance, and benefits just keep climbing. State funding isn’t in free fall anymore, but it’s nowhere near where it was even five years ago. And there are political and moral limits to how much faster to increase tuition and fees.
So if we’re to maintain the level of day-to-day instruction, a new paradigm in grants could not come at a better time.
The dollars come with a time limit, and they require management. Each has its own reporting requirements. For the ones that work directly on academic issues, one or more full-time faculty have some time bought out by the grant so they can work on the grant project. (Put differently: with every new grant, either we increase our adjunct percentage, or we decrease our course offerings.) Each requires a liaison to somewhere else, and several of them require a full-time project director.
For certain academic disciplines -- STEM, mostly -- so many projects are brewing that simply covering classes is becoming a challenge. (Last week someone from Student Affairs practically begged me to open up more sections of math, since they were having an awful time finding slots for students. I explained that I can’t just conjure up faculty on short notice. But with available adjuncts finite, every course release for yet another project is yet another section we can’t run.) Some projects are actually bumping up against each other, which creates issues when the funding streams can’t be crossed.
Meanwhile, other academic disciplines -- nearly everything outside of STEM -- are largely on their own.
So for any philanthropists or politicians out there who’d like to do some good, here’s an idea:
Give open-ended grants to hire full-time faculty to teach classes.
That’s the one expense category I’m expressly forbidden to apply to any of the grants we have. And it’s the one I most desperately need.
A time period of just a few years won’t do it. When you have a tenure system, each year gets closer to a lifetime commitment. The funding needs to be sustained over time.
In research universities, positions like these are usually called “endowed chairs.” But that’s more high-falutin’ (higher falutin’?) than I need. I’d settle for endowed assistant professorships.
In an attempt not to hollow out the instructional core any more than it already is, my college handled the last few budget cuts largely with cuts to the administrative side. That means that we just don’t have any more fat there to cut. If anything, in some areas we’re running so lean that the opportunity cost of things we just can’t do are starting to mount. And the costs for IT, regulatory compliance, and benefits just keep climbing. State funding isn’t in free fall anymore, but it’s nowhere near where it was even five years ago. And there are political and moral limits to how much faster to increase tuition and fees.
So if we’re to maintain the level of day-to-day instruction, a new paradigm in grants could not come at a better time.
Monday, August 20, 2012
Adjunct Materials
This one is particularly for the experienced adjuncts, especially those who frequently teach in multiple settings.
What materials do you find the most useful, when you get a class at a new department?
(Yes, I know, some would just appreciate a full-time paycheck, medical insurance, etc. I know. Let’s just stipulate that and move on.)
I’m asking because some of the departments here are taking a fresh look at some of what they provide, and I’d like to make the handouts as useful as possible.
Are sample assignments useful? Sample student work? Suggested reading lists?
In my own adjuncting days, I wasn’t given much: in one memorable case, all I got was the one-paragraph course description from the catalog. While the freedom was nice, I couldn’t help but wonder how closely what I did actually matched what the course was supposed to achieve. There was really no way of knowing.
What would you find useful?
What materials do you find the most useful, when you get a class at a new department?
(Yes, I know, some would just appreciate a full-time paycheck, medical insurance, etc. I know. Let’s just stipulate that and move on.)
I’m asking because some of the departments here are taking a fresh look at some of what they provide, and I’d like to make the handouts as useful as possible.
Are sample assignments useful? Sample student work? Suggested reading lists?
In my own adjuncting days, I wasn’t given much: in one memorable case, all I got was the one-paragraph course description from the catalog. While the freedom was nice, I couldn’t help but wonder how closely what I did actually matched what the course was supposed to achieve. There was really no way of knowing.
What would you find useful?
Sunday, August 19, 2012
Ask the Administrator: What Does “College Ready” Mean?
A new correspondent writes:
I’m reminded of the exchange between Homer and the pawnshop guy on an early episode of The Simpsons, when Homer tried to pawn his tv. “Is it cable ready?” “Ready as it’ll ever be...”
Ready is a relative term. And some level of skepticism is warranted, since every generation inevitably finds its successors lacking in something. Kids today don’t even know who Tabitha Soren was! Unthinkable.
That said, I think there are two “default” assumptions about “college readiness” that have general currency.
The first is the student who places immediately into college-level courses, who has the finances, transportation, and books all arranged, and who has a clear goal in mind. This student is optimally prepared to succeed in college, and it would be glorious if more students arrived like this. Students who know what they want are likelier to attain it, and students who have their various ducks in a row at the outset are well-situated to succeed. That’s no guarantee, of course, but the odds are far better. (There’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg question with students like this. Do they succeed because they’re prepared, or are they prepared because they’re the type that tend to succeed? I’d guess it’s some of each.)
The second is the student who has identifiable risk factors, but who can still get it together. This is the more common type of student; it sounds like you were one yourself. This is the student with some academic gaps, some economic or family challenges, and, sometimes, some old, unhelpful habits that tend to die hard.
The exclusive colleges like to outsource the second type of student to colleges like mine. That way, they can spend their vastly greater resources on students who are nearly guaranteed to thrive. That would be fine, if people who should know better didn’t go around crowing about differences in graduation rates, and drawing unfounded conclusions based on flawed measures.
But I digress.
The challenge for faculty at colleges who take more of the second type of student -- and, yes, sometimes the third type, the ones who just aren’t ready -- is in focusing on the goal, rather than the gaps. The gaps can be easy enough to see -- sometimes they hit you squarely in the face --
and sometimes they make a painful impression. That’s especially true for folks who teach the introductory and developmental courses year after year. Whatever progress you make with a given set of students in a semester, you have to hit “reset” and start over again the next semester. Over years and even decades, the strain of that sometimes gets the better of some people. They start to complain about “kids today,” and how they just don’t measure up, and how too much (fill in the blank -- comic book reading, television watching, web surfing, social networking...) has reduced their brains to mush, not like the Good Old Days When They Were Young...
It’s called “burnout,” and I’ve seen good people fall prey to it.
If we put aside the bitterness and selective memory of “golden age” appeals, though, it’s increasingly clear that there are a few things people can do to help prospective students, and new students, succeed at greater rates than they otherwise would.
One, simply enough, is to convey to students an expectation that they will succeed. This is why burnouts are so toxic; their fatalism is self-fulfilling. Students have been known to rise, or fall, to the expectations set.
Another is to help students identify goals early on. We often make the mistake of foregrounding the gaps instead. “You aren’t at the college level for math or writing, so you’ll need to spend a year retaking courses you hated the first time before you take anything that counts.” Students tend to find that demoralizing. It’s one thing to endure a long, hard slog when there’s a clear purpose behind it; it’s quite another when the whole enterprise just seems like an expensive quagmire.
On my own campus, for example, I’ve been heartened to see a shift in career advising from the last semester to the first semester. Instead of waiting for students to be nearly done before talking about career goals, we get them as they walk in. The idea is to help students figure out what they actually want. Once the goal is in mind, it’s much easier to have discussions about pathways and strategies.
(Before the flaming, let me clarify that frequently the goal involves transfer and moving on to higher degrees. It’s not at all antithetical to the liberal arts. Besides, if memory serves, a fair number of students at snooty liberal arts colleges have career goals when they arrive.)
Yes, it would be great if the high schools did a better job. But at the college, we can’t control that. What we can do -- and are starting to make progress toward doing -- is to treat students as potential successes, and as people to be taken seriously. Have the epistemological humility to admit that anyone who declares with absolute certainty who will and won’t make it is either lying or toxic. Some folks with impressive early promise fizzle, and some who don’t look like much when they get here catch fire. The job of the folks on the front lines is to create the conditions under which actual students -- not the idealized versions dimly recalled from undergrad days at selective places - can find their way.
One guy’s definition, anyway. Wise and worldly readers, how would you define college ready?
Have a question? Ask the Administrator at deandad (at) gmail (dot) com.
I'm curious as to your definition of "college ready."
I teach first-year writing at a community college, and I genuinely love it. I love teaching writing, and I love teaching at a community college. One of the things I love most about CCs is the wide range of students who enroll; not only do we get the fresh-out-of-high-school students, but we gets students who have been working longer and developing professionally since the time I was in middle school, or longer. (I'm in my mid-30s.) I recently heard a colleague bemoan that students today weren't "college-ready," although I have to admit I didn't get the chance to ask her what she meant by that - her comment was made in context of her dislike of teaching that first level of writing because students weren't "college-ready." (I had to take a non-credit math class in college before I was permitted to take the lowest level of math class that would be permitted for my major. I had also been out of school for almost 10 years. Not college ready?)
I find such an attitude dismissive towards students who may, in fact, have been strong students, academically speaking, when they were in high school, but may need a refresher, or need an instructor who can finally make sense of any writing and reading issues they faced while enrolled in school previously. There are skills skills that need to be taught; one of the reasons one attends college to begin with is so that one can be taught those skills. There are always learning curves, both academically and in terms of attitude.
Does it mean that the students who come to college shouldn't need first year English? Should their writing skills be such that they shouldn't need to take writing courses at all? Do we tell students who are in their 40s and 50s, who have spent decades developing professionally without having gone to college, that they're not college ready simply because they might never have been strong writers? (Especially if they've been out of school for a few decades.) I wonder if she meant that students' attitudes and expectations were not what they should be, or what we would like them to be.In any case, I'm curious as to how you define "college ready," and if you think students come to college really ready or if there are other thing that we could do in the trenches to help them.
I’m reminded of the exchange between Homer and the pawnshop guy on an early episode of The Simpsons, when Homer tried to pawn his tv. “Is it cable ready?” “Ready as it’ll ever be...”
Ready is a relative term. And some level of skepticism is warranted, since every generation inevitably finds its successors lacking in something. Kids today don’t even know who Tabitha Soren was! Unthinkable.
That said, I think there are two “default” assumptions about “college readiness” that have general currency.
The first is the student who places immediately into college-level courses, who has the finances, transportation, and books all arranged, and who has a clear goal in mind. This student is optimally prepared to succeed in college, and it would be glorious if more students arrived like this. Students who know what they want are likelier to attain it, and students who have their various ducks in a row at the outset are well-situated to succeed. That’s no guarantee, of course, but the odds are far better. (There’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg question with students like this. Do they succeed because they’re prepared, or are they prepared because they’re the type that tend to succeed? I’d guess it’s some of each.)
The second is the student who has identifiable risk factors, but who can still get it together. This is the more common type of student; it sounds like you were one yourself. This is the student with some academic gaps, some economic or family challenges, and, sometimes, some old, unhelpful habits that tend to die hard.
The exclusive colleges like to outsource the second type of student to colleges like mine. That way, they can spend their vastly greater resources on students who are nearly guaranteed to thrive. That would be fine, if people who should know better didn’t go around crowing about differences in graduation rates, and drawing unfounded conclusions based on flawed measures.
But I digress.
The challenge for faculty at colleges who take more of the second type of student -- and, yes, sometimes the third type, the ones who just aren’t ready -- is in focusing on the goal, rather than the gaps. The gaps can be easy enough to see -- sometimes they hit you squarely in the face --
and sometimes they make a painful impression. That’s especially true for folks who teach the introductory and developmental courses year after year. Whatever progress you make with a given set of students in a semester, you have to hit “reset” and start over again the next semester. Over years and even decades, the strain of that sometimes gets the better of some people. They start to complain about “kids today,” and how they just don’t measure up, and how too much (fill in the blank -- comic book reading, television watching, web surfing, social networking...) has reduced their brains to mush, not like the Good Old Days When They Were Young...
It’s called “burnout,” and I’ve seen good people fall prey to it.
If we put aside the bitterness and selective memory of “golden age” appeals, though, it’s increasingly clear that there are a few things people can do to help prospective students, and new students, succeed at greater rates than they otherwise would.
One, simply enough, is to convey to students an expectation that they will succeed. This is why burnouts are so toxic; their fatalism is self-fulfilling. Students have been known to rise, or fall, to the expectations set.
Another is to help students identify goals early on. We often make the mistake of foregrounding the gaps instead. “You aren’t at the college level for math or writing, so you’ll need to spend a year retaking courses you hated the first time before you take anything that counts.” Students tend to find that demoralizing. It’s one thing to endure a long, hard slog when there’s a clear purpose behind it; it’s quite another when the whole enterprise just seems like an expensive quagmire.
On my own campus, for example, I’ve been heartened to see a shift in career advising from the last semester to the first semester. Instead of waiting for students to be nearly done before talking about career goals, we get them as they walk in. The idea is to help students figure out what they actually want. Once the goal is in mind, it’s much easier to have discussions about pathways and strategies.
(Before the flaming, let me clarify that frequently the goal involves transfer and moving on to higher degrees. It’s not at all antithetical to the liberal arts. Besides, if memory serves, a fair number of students at snooty liberal arts colleges have career goals when they arrive.)
Yes, it would be great if the high schools did a better job. But at the college, we can’t control that. What we can do -- and are starting to make progress toward doing -- is to treat students as potential successes, and as people to be taken seriously. Have the epistemological humility to admit that anyone who declares with absolute certainty who will and won’t make it is either lying or toxic. Some folks with impressive early promise fizzle, and some who don’t look like much when they get here catch fire. The job of the folks on the front lines is to create the conditions under which actual students -- not the idealized versions dimly recalled from undergrad days at selective places - can find their way.
One guy’s definition, anyway. Wise and worldly readers, how would you define college ready?
Have a question? Ask the Administrator at deandad (at) gmail (dot) com.
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Where Do You Write?
Where do you write?
People who write freehand have long had plenty of choices, but those of us who compose at the keyboard were long tied to wherever the computer (or typewriter) was. They were appliances, far too cumbersome (and fragile, and expensive) to carry around. In college, I wrote in the campus computer center; in grad school, I wrote in my bedroom. Even into the 2000’s, I wrote in the basement, because that was where the computer was.
Cheaper and lighter laptops, and now tablets, have given us keyboard composers some of the geographic mobility of our pen and paper colleagues. Which means, among other things, that we have to make choices that used to be made for us.
Picking a writing spot is partly a function of life circumstances. As a Dad, I need to be home a lot, so just schlepping off to a local cafe every day isn’t an option. (In grad school, it would have been.) Even closing myself off in some isolated room of the house doesn’t fly for long. So I’ve learned to make peace with interruptions, and to do what can be done at the kitchen table.
(Learning to work with interruptions is where parenting and administration are remarkably similar. In both cases, interruptions simply come with the territory.)
Laundromats make surprisingly good writing spots, since the white noise of the dryers is just enough to keep me focused. The waiting room at the music place where TB and TG take lessons works really well, even though the wifi is spotty; the muffled sounds from the practice rooms provide good background noise, and the limited time and lack of other things to do provide a nice deadline effect. I’ve even found a few cheap lunch spots near campus where I can get good wifi and a start on a blog post during my lunch break. As an introvert, the occasional writing lunch keeps me sane.
Location also varies depending on the kind of writing. For blog posts or other short pieces, I have a lot more flexibility than I do with, say, a book manuscript. If I need several pieces of paper surrounding the keyboard, for various reasons, then the laundromat or takeout place just won’t do. Proofreading long pieces on the screen doesn’t work for me; when I’m in Rewrite Hell, I need to be close to a printer. And coffee. And a music source. And no sharp objects.
Writing in the office is hit-and-miss. I don’t write blog posts there -- kind of a church/state thing -- but there’s a surprising amount of “daily business” writing that has to happen. The office has a quick printer, which is a plus, but the pace doesn’t usually lend itself.
I’ve heard from many faculty that they don’t usually write in their offices, either, and for similar reasons. The location is too public; you’re sort of on call, and the interruptions can be serious.
Wise and worldly readers, where do you write? Is there a particular spot that works consistently, or do you have to mix it up? I’m especially curious about folks with youngish kids. How do you balance focus with accessibility?
People who write freehand have long had plenty of choices, but those of us who compose at the keyboard were long tied to wherever the computer (or typewriter) was. They were appliances, far too cumbersome (and fragile, and expensive) to carry around. In college, I wrote in the campus computer center; in grad school, I wrote in my bedroom. Even into the 2000’s, I wrote in the basement, because that was where the computer was.
Cheaper and lighter laptops, and now tablets, have given us keyboard composers some of the geographic mobility of our pen and paper colleagues. Which means, among other things, that we have to make choices that used to be made for us.
Picking a writing spot is partly a function of life circumstances. As a Dad, I need to be home a lot, so just schlepping off to a local cafe every day isn’t an option. (In grad school, it would have been.) Even closing myself off in some isolated room of the house doesn’t fly for long. So I’ve learned to make peace with interruptions, and to do what can be done at the kitchen table.
(Learning to work with interruptions is where parenting and administration are remarkably similar. In both cases, interruptions simply come with the territory.)
Laundromats make surprisingly good writing spots, since the white noise of the dryers is just enough to keep me focused. The waiting room at the music place where TB and TG take lessons works really well, even though the wifi is spotty; the muffled sounds from the practice rooms provide good background noise, and the limited time and lack of other things to do provide a nice deadline effect. I’ve even found a few cheap lunch spots near campus where I can get good wifi and a start on a blog post during my lunch break. As an introvert, the occasional writing lunch keeps me sane.
Location also varies depending on the kind of writing. For blog posts or other short pieces, I have a lot more flexibility than I do with, say, a book manuscript. If I need several pieces of paper surrounding the keyboard, for various reasons, then the laundromat or takeout place just won’t do. Proofreading long pieces on the screen doesn’t work for me; when I’m in Rewrite Hell, I need to be close to a printer. And coffee. And a music source. And no sharp objects.
Writing in the office is hit-and-miss. I don’t write blog posts there -- kind of a church/state thing -- but there’s a surprising amount of “daily business” writing that has to happen. The office has a quick printer, which is a plus, but the pace doesn’t usually lend itself.
I’ve heard from many faculty that they don’t usually write in their offices, either, and for similar reasons. The location is too public; you’re sort of on call, and the interruptions can be serious.
Wise and worldly readers, where do you write? Is there a particular spot that works consistently, or do you have to mix it up? I’m especially curious about folks with youngish kids. How do you balance focus with accessibility?
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Fear Week
My Twitter account got hacked yesterday, so if you follow my feed and got a sketchy-seeming DM from “me,” ignore it. In retrospect, I should have picked a less obvious password than “PaulRyanLooksLikeEddieMunster12.” Live and learn.
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Shark Week has brought the classic parental dilemma: the kids want to see the shows, but get scared to death while they watch. The Girl is suddenly scared of sharks in the shower. Part of me wants to shield them from the shows, but part of me thinks that learning to manage fear is an important part of growing up, as long as it isn’t much fear, and it isn’t well-founded. I remember being the same way about UFO’s as a kid. I’d watch some program on them -- In Search Of was a particular favorite -- and then be all jumpy for the rest of the night.
I hate to see them spooked, but I also remember kind of enjoying the idea of UFO’s.
So we’re rationing the viewing, and sometimes accompanying them while they watch. And appreciating the fact that it’s only a week. Shark documentaries just aren’t nearly as engrossing as Leonard Nimoy talking about spaceships.
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I heard today that a key rule changed this summer. Apparently, part-time enrollment will now be enough for students to be on their parents’ health insurance. (Until now, they needed full-time status.) Not surprisingly, we’re seeing a sudden change in the ratio of part-time to full-time students, with the former growing and the latter shrinking.
If the usual trends hold, this will result in lower “on-time” graduation rates, but I’ll take it anyway. I just hope the folks who like to punish us for graduation rates don’t take this as ammunition, but something tells me they will.
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Slate magazine is pretty hit-and-miss, as a rule, but its series this week on “progressive rock” is a hoot. I grew up in a cultural wasteland that was years behind the rest of the country, so the backwash of the prog rock movement was the soundtrack to every school bus ride for years. Burnouts with boomboxes would blast Rush from the back of the bus while the rest of us wished we were someplace else.
Seeing prog rock placed in some sort of musical context feels like solving a puzzle. I had heard many of the pieces over the years, but couldn’t make sense of them. Apparently, some of its early proponents were quite self-aware about building rock on European -- as opposed to African-American -- music. That’s why they were all about “trilogies,” and “codas,” and umlauts, and all the rest of it. (It also helps me appreciate This Is Spinal Tap even more; the druids/stonehenge sequence was pure prog rock.) It was both angry and intensely theatrical (“welcome back my friends, to the show that never ends...”), which is probably why I found it unlistenable. It’s just awful. It’s preposterous, yet entirely without humor. It manages to be technically complex, yet basically simpleminded.
To this day, I can’t hear “New World Man” or “Mr. Roboto” without wanting to leave the room immediately, and, preferably, take a shower (without sharks).
So it’s helpful to see that this wasn’t just some sort of beer belch from the gods of music. It was actually trying something. The thing in question was misguided, racist, and stupid, but in its time and place, you can sort of see how they got there. And knowing that it was still in the air years later, where I was subjected to it incessantly, tells you everything you need to know about growing up in a cultural afterthought. There’s nothing quite like revisiting the sounds of the school bus to feel better about life today.
---------
Shark Week has brought the classic parental dilemma: the kids want to see the shows, but get scared to death while they watch. The Girl is suddenly scared of sharks in the shower. Part of me wants to shield them from the shows, but part of me thinks that learning to manage fear is an important part of growing up, as long as it isn’t much fear, and it isn’t well-founded. I remember being the same way about UFO’s as a kid. I’d watch some program on them -- In Search Of was a particular favorite -- and then be all jumpy for the rest of the night.
I hate to see them spooked, but I also remember kind of enjoying the idea of UFO’s.
So we’re rationing the viewing, and sometimes accompanying them while they watch. And appreciating the fact that it’s only a week. Shark documentaries just aren’t nearly as engrossing as Leonard Nimoy talking about spaceships.
----------
I heard today that a key rule changed this summer. Apparently, part-time enrollment will now be enough for students to be on their parents’ health insurance. (Until now, they needed full-time status.) Not surprisingly, we’re seeing a sudden change in the ratio of part-time to full-time students, with the former growing and the latter shrinking.
If the usual trends hold, this will result in lower “on-time” graduation rates, but I’ll take it anyway. I just hope the folks who like to punish us for graduation rates don’t take this as ammunition, but something tells me they will.
----------
Slate magazine is pretty hit-and-miss, as a rule, but its series this week on “progressive rock” is a hoot. I grew up in a cultural wasteland that was years behind the rest of the country, so the backwash of the prog rock movement was the soundtrack to every school bus ride for years. Burnouts with boomboxes would blast Rush from the back of the bus while the rest of us wished we were someplace else.
Seeing prog rock placed in some sort of musical context feels like solving a puzzle. I had heard many of the pieces over the years, but couldn’t make sense of them. Apparently, some of its early proponents were quite self-aware about building rock on European -- as opposed to African-American -- music. That’s why they were all about “trilogies,” and “codas,” and umlauts, and all the rest of it. (It also helps me appreciate This Is Spinal Tap even more; the druids/stonehenge sequence was pure prog rock.) It was both angry and intensely theatrical (“welcome back my friends, to the show that never ends...”), which is probably why I found it unlistenable. It’s just awful. It’s preposterous, yet entirely without humor. It manages to be technically complex, yet basically simpleminded.
To this day, I can’t hear “New World Man” or “Mr. Roboto” without wanting to leave the room immediately, and, preferably, take a shower (without sharks).
So it’s helpful to see that this wasn’t just some sort of beer belch from the gods of music. It was actually trying something. The thing in question was misguided, racist, and stupid, but in its time and place, you can sort of see how they got there. And knowing that it was still in the air years later, where I was subjected to it incessantly, tells you everything you need to know about growing up in a cultural afterthought. There’s nothing quite like revisiting the sounds of the school bus to feel better about life today.
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
The Late Registration Two Step
Say the word “August” to any experienced administrator, and you’ll see an involuntary shudder. Sometimes it’s followed by a low, guttural moan, or sometimes by an abrupt curl into a fetal position. We’ve even been known to run for the nearest hills, crossing streams to hide the scent. August is the season of shoehorning students into remaining sections.
It’s an awful practice. Since students often make plans at (or slightly past) the last minute, we keep taking students until the last minute. But “taking students” can mean different things. The late registrants are allowed to enroll, but finding the classes they want -- especially at the times they want -- is another matter entirely. Daytime sections of the most popular classes -- developmental and introductory gen eds -- typically fill by mid-July or so. By early August, openings occur singly and randomly. Assembling a workable full-time schedule of popular classes in late August requires a planetary alignment.
And that’s just on the academic end. The late enrollee has less time to arrange financial aid, buy books, and get transportation and childcare arrangements aligned. So it’s not surprising that the numbers consistently show that the last students in are the first students out.
Internally, it would be worlds easier to close enrollment a month or two before the start of the semester. But doing that would lead to a significant enrollment drop. Given the degree to which our budgets have shifted away from appropriations and towards tuitions, the impact of that kind of drop would be devastating. We no longer have the margin for error to try it.
On the political side, while we’re being attacked for “high” attrition rates, we’re also expected to be there for displaced workers as soon as they need us. If we say to someone who was laid off in July “try again in January,” that doesn’t help anybody. So we’re caught between setting students up to fail, on the one side, or bending the world to our needs, on the other.
So I’m thinking of a late registration two-step, as a way of both addressing the academic need for student readiness and the political need for responsiveness. I’m hoping that my wise and worldly readers can provide helpful feedback before I start spending political capital on it locally.
What if...
we combined shorter terms with earlier registration cutoffs?
Concretely, it might look like this. Break both the Fall and Spring semesters into halves. (I’ll call them sessions A and B. So September and October could be Fall A, and November and December would be Fall B.) Run courses in 7 or 8 week formats, with twice as much class time per week as now. (Alternately, when appropriate, we could use hybrid formats.) Have students take fewer classes at a time, but spend more time on each class. And have enrollment deadlines, say, two weeks before the start of each session.
That way, a student who showed up in the first week of September would be told she could register for the classes that start in late October. That would give a realistic window for financial aid and childcare arrangements, but wouldn’t force the student to wait until January. (It would also help the student who went great guns in the beginning of the semester, but whose life intervened in November. In this format, the student would have, say, six credits to show for it.) She wouldn’t be shoehorned into a sure-to-fail combination in September, but she would only have to wait a couple of months, and would actually be in a position to succeed.
We’ve found locally that the shorter the class, the higher the success rate. (Summer classes have higher rates than Fall or Spring, and January have the highest of all.) That’s consistent with the national research I’ve seen, too. So I’m thinking that breaking the semester into smaller chunks, and forcing students to register well in advance for whatever chunks they take, might be the best of both worlds.
I’ve been told that this could be a severe headache for financial aid, for technical reasons. But are there other reasons this wouldn’t work? Better yet, has anyone out there actually lived through a system like this? How did it work? Or is there something I’m not seeing?
It’s an awful practice. Since students often make plans at (or slightly past) the last minute, we keep taking students until the last minute. But “taking students” can mean different things. The late registrants are allowed to enroll, but finding the classes they want -- especially at the times they want -- is another matter entirely. Daytime sections of the most popular classes -- developmental and introductory gen eds -- typically fill by mid-July or so. By early August, openings occur singly and randomly. Assembling a workable full-time schedule of popular classes in late August requires a planetary alignment.
And that’s just on the academic end. The late enrollee has less time to arrange financial aid, buy books, and get transportation and childcare arrangements aligned. So it’s not surprising that the numbers consistently show that the last students in are the first students out.
Internally, it would be worlds easier to close enrollment a month or two before the start of the semester. But doing that would lead to a significant enrollment drop. Given the degree to which our budgets have shifted away from appropriations and towards tuitions, the impact of that kind of drop would be devastating. We no longer have the margin for error to try it.
On the political side, while we’re being attacked for “high” attrition rates, we’re also expected to be there for displaced workers as soon as they need us. If we say to someone who was laid off in July “try again in January,” that doesn’t help anybody. So we’re caught between setting students up to fail, on the one side, or bending the world to our needs, on the other.
So I’m thinking of a late registration two-step, as a way of both addressing the academic need for student readiness and the political need for responsiveness. I’m hoping that my wise and worldly readers can provide helpful feedback before I start spending political capital on it locally.
What if...
we combined shorter terms with earlier registration cutoffs?
Concretely, it might look like this. Break both the Fall and Spring semesters into halves. (I’ll call them sessions A and B. So September and October could be Fall A, and November and December would be Fall B.) Run courses in 7 or 8 week formats, with twice as much class time per week as now. (Alternately, when appropriate, we could use hybrid formats.) Have students take fewer classes at a time, but spend more time on each class. And have enrollment deadlines, say, two weeks before the start of each session.
That way, a student who showed up in the first week of September would be told she could register for the classes that start in late October. That would give a realistic window for financial aid and childcare arrangements, but wouldn’t force the student to wait until January. (It would also help the student who went great guns in the beginning of the semester, but whose life intervened in November. In this format, the student would have, say, six credits to show for it.) She wouldn’t be shoehorned into a sure-to-fail combination in September, but she would only have to wait a couple of months, and would actually be in a position to succeed.
We’ve found locally that the shorter the class, the higher the success rate. (Summer classes have higher rates than Fall or Spring, and January have the highest of all.) That’s consistent with the national research I’ve seen, too. So I’m thinking that breaking the semester into smaller chunks, and forcing students to register well in advance for whatever chunks they take, might be the best of both worlds.
I’ve been told that this could be a severe headache for financial aid, for technical reasons. But are there other reasons this wouldn’t work? Better yet, has anyone out there actually lived through a system like this? How did it work? Or is there something I’m not seeing?
Monday, August 13, 2012
Of Systems, Silos, and States
Cal State is refusing admission to graduate students from California; it’s only taking out-of-staters, citing the need for their sweet, sweet tuition surcharges.
It’s ridiculous, but it’s also sane. Cal State is being starved of funding, and it’s acting to protect itself. That’s what independent institutions do. If they can protect themselves while serving the public, they generally will, but if it comes down to “serve or survive,” they’ll choose to survive. In the absence of a coherent system, the silos will do what makes sense for them. Besides, if a silo took the ethical high road and chose suicide, it couldn’t serve in-state students, either; at least this way it can maintain its own programs, and maybe feed the local workforce a bit.
From a systems perspective, the issues California is facing are perfectly designed to rend public higher education asunder and turn it over to the for-profits. But the state isn’t thinking in systems, and it certainly isn’t building them. It has an old master plan -- a fairly intelligent one, actually -- but it prefers not to fund it. So it turns the local campuses loose, and they do what they have to do to protect themselves. In the meantime, students who can’t get classes have the option of continuing to work the drive-through window for a few more years while they wait, or of going online and signing up for a for-profit.
The irony, of course, is that a fiscally-driven “go your own way” policy actually winds up costing much more. Students who attend for-profits consume far more financial aid than students who attend publics -- especially at the two-year level -- and less educated workers are less productive, and therefore less helpful as a tax base. It’s a false economy.
(The issues at the City College of San Francisco are similar. There, the basic lack of central administration has allowed the departments to go their own way; now, the college is in serious trouble with its accreditor. A college that’s just a collection of silos isn’t viable.)
Governor Brown seems to be trying, but he’s necessarily just putting out fires at this point, and even that isn’t a sure thing. If this Fall’s tax referendum doesn’t pass, the damage will get even worse.
There’s a dramatic leadership vacuum at the heart of the matter.
It’s clear that the state of California lacks the ability and/or willingness to restore the status quo ante. In the absence of a tremendous economic boom that makes everything okay, the best they can offer is to slow the decline. This is not inspiring, and it is not sustainable.
Instead, this is the time to build, and sell, a new, coherent vision. The late twentieth century model just isn’t cutting it anymore, and a generation of students can’t wait forever. Get shut out of classes enough times, and the University of Phoenix starts to look pretty good. It may be mercenary and it may be expensive, but it’s there. It will let you in. The only open port in a pretty bad storm can look awfully good, compared to the alternative.
Whatever else you want to say about the for-profits, they work as a system. They have centralized leadership, and they’re clear on what they’re trying to do. They’re significantly hampered by the need to serve two masters, but given the muddled perspective of most of the nonprofits at this point, serving only two masters doesn’t seem so bad.
The publics don’t need top-down control; they need a single animating vision. That vision can’t just be “restore the staffing levels of 1968.” It needs to acknowledge the realities of Baumol’s cost disease, the desire for online courses, and the failings of the traditional model. But more importantly, it needs to play offense. It needs to inspire, rather than defend. It can’t be indignant, backwards-looking, or apologetic. It needs to be palpably better -- in terms that resonate with regular people -- than the for-profit alternative.
CIrcling the wagons, like Cal State, may briefly slow the decline. But that’s not good enough. It’s mistaking the tool for the task, the silo for the system. It’s time for the next generation of leaders to step up.
It’s ridiculous, but it’s also sane. Cal State is being starved of funding, and it’s acting to protect itself. That’s what independent institutions do. If they can protect themselves while serving the public, they generally will, but if it comes down to “serve or survive,” they’ll choose to survive. In the absence of a coherent system, the silos will do what makes sense for them. Besides, if a silo took the ethical high road and chose suicide, it couldn’t serve in-state students, either; at least this way it can maintain its own programs, and maybe feed the local workforce a bit.
From a systems perspective, the issues California is facing are perfectly designed to rend public higher education asunder and turn it over to the for-profits. But the state isn’t thinking in systems, and it certainly isn’t building them. It has an old master plan -- a fairly intelligent one, actually -- but it prefers not to fund it. So it turns the local campuses loose, and they do what they have to do to protect themselves. In the meantime, students who can’t get classes have the option of continuing to work the drive-through window for a few more years while they wait, or of going online and signing up for a for-profit.
The irony, of course, is that a fiscally-driven “go your own way” policy actually winds up costing much more. Students who attend for-profits consume far more financial aid than students who attend publics -- especially at the two-year level -- and less educated workers are less productive, and therefore less helpful as a tax base. It’s a false economy.
(The issues at the City College of San Francisco are similar. There, the basic lack of central administration has allowed the departments to go their own way; now, the college is in serious trouble with its accreditor. A college that’s just a collection of silos isn’t viable.)
Governor Brown seems to be trying, but he’s necessarily just putting out fires at this point, and even that isn’t a sure thing. If this Fall’s tax referendum doesn’t pass, the damage will get even worse.
There’s a dramatic leadership vacuum at the heart of the matter.
It’s clear that the state of California lacks the ability and/or willingness to restore the status quo ante. In the absence of a tremendous economic boom that makes everything okay, the best they can offer is to slow the decline. This is not inspiring, and it is not sustainable.
Instead, this is the time to build, and sell, a new, coherent vision. The late twentieth century model just isn’t cutting it anymore, and a generation of students can’t wait forever. Get shut out of classes enough times, and the University of Phoenix starts to look pretty good. It may be mercenary and it may be expensive, but it’s there. It will let you in. The only open port in a pretty bad storm can look awfully good, compared to the alternative.
Whatever else you want to say about the for-profits, they work as a system. They have centralized leadership, and they’re clear on what they’re trying to do. They’re significantly hampered by the need to serve two masters, but given the muddled perspective of most of the nonprofits at this point, serving only two masters doesn’t seem so bad.
The publics don’t need top-down control; they need a single animating vision. That vision can’t just be “restore the staffing levels of 1968.” It needs to acknowledge the realities of Baumol’s cost disease, the desire for online courses, and the failings of the traditional model. But more importantly, it needs to play offense. It needs to inspire, rather than defend. It can’t be indignant, backwards-looking, or apologetic. It needs to be palpably better -- in terms that resonate with regular people -- than the for-profit alternative.
CIrcling the wagons, like Cal State, may briefly slow the decline. But that’s not good enough. It’s mistaking the tool for the task, the silo for the system. It’s time for the next generation of leaders to step up.
Sunday, August 12, 2012
Ask the Administrator: Humanities Grad School?
An Australian correspondent writes:
I’ve argued for years that anyone who can envision being happy in any other endeavor should avoid doctoral programs in liberal arts fields. The jobs for which those degrees prepare you are either adjunct or vanishingly rare, and if Paul Ryan’s plans get enacted, they’ll become even rarer than they already are. The entire institutional edifice of non-profit higher education is groaning, under both external attack and the weight of internal flaws that I may have mentioned once or twice over the years.
In other words, the best plan is to do something else.
That said, if you absolutely will not hear of anything else, my quick advice would be to limit yourself to the tippity-top programs in your field, and to avoid taking on debt. The opportunity cost of doctoral programs is herniating enough without adding debt payments. (If you graduate and can’t find a permanent job, those debt payments can be brutal.) The best programs sometimes offer highly desired candidates multi-year packages consisting of a combination of fellowships and teaching assistantships. If you can find a package like that at a well-respected program, and you can keep your living expenses down, you have the best chance of emerging relatively unscathed.
In terms of what doctoral programs in the humanities are looking for in prospective students, I’ll have to defer to those among my wise and worldly readers who work in those programs. That’s not my world.
There was a time, long ago, when the indentured servitude of graduate school made some degree of sense. For a brief period in the 1960’s, there were academic jobs aplenty. At that point, one could argue fairly that an early-career period of material sacrifice would pay off well over time. (That same argument worked for law school until about five years ago, and it still mostly works for medical school.) But that hasn’t been true for a long time. At this point, graduate programs exist mostly to generate teaching assistants and research assistants. When it comes time to try to make an adult living, you’re on your own.
The puzzler, to me, is that the system has survived as long as it has. I’ve seen references to the “forty-year job crisis,” which strike me as self-refuting. After forty years, it’s not a crisis; it’s the way it is. It’s normal. In fact, over the longer sweep of American history, the flush academic job market of the 60’s stands out as the aberration. The mistake academics keep making is to keep assuming that the exception was the new rule, and that two generations of regression to the mean are flukes. Yet smart people continue to pour into graduate school, convinced that they’ll be the exceptions.
Good luck. If you must do a doctoral program in the humanities, this route should at least offer the best chance for a happy outcome. But if the best offers you get are for nothing-special programs at which you’d have to borrow money for living expenses, don’t do it. Just don’t.
Wise and worldly readers, what do you think? Would you advise crossing the globe for a doctorate in an evergreen discipline?
Have a question? Ask the Administrator at deandad (at) gmail (dot) com.
I'm a current postgraduate student from Australia in my first year of a two year Master of Philosophy (Masters by research) degree in an evergreen humanities discipline. I'm interested in doing my PhD in the US for reasons that are long and not really logical (though I'm stubbornly set on it). I was wondering if you (or your readers) could assist me in figuring out how competitive PhD (tuition and stipend, preferably) scholarships are over there in the humanities? Or, if that's the length of a piece of string, what (aside from a strong academic record) are US graduate colleges and universities looking for?
I am teaching this semester and will teach again in at least one of the semesters next year. I have one minor academic pub and several non-academic but discipline-relevant pubs currently and will hopefully glean more from my thesis before I'd be applying. I've presented at one conference and have three more papers in the works/planned. I've also worked on a number of projects as a research assistant.
This would make me highly competitive at an Australian institution to receive funding but I'm also aware that our equivalent of tuition is government-paid, making all domestic scholarships stipend-only and therefore (I believe) less competitive. I'm currently juggling many things alongside my thesis/research and am slowly reaching the point where I'll need to say no to opportunities - loving and feeling insanely grateful for all of them, having a strategic reason for choosing one over another would be helpful.
I’ve argued for years that anyone who can envision being happy in any other endeavor should avoid doctoral programs in liberal arts fields. The jobs for which those degrees prepare you are either adjunct or vanishingly rare, and if Paul Ryan’s plans get enacted, they’ll become even rarer than they already are. The entire institutional edifice of non-profit higher education is groaning, under both external attack and the weight of internal flaws that I may have mentioned once or twice over the years.
In other words, the best plan is to do something else.
That said, if you absolutely will not hear of anything else, my quick advice would be to limit yourself to the tippity-top programs in your field, and to avoid taking on debt. The opportunity cost of doctoral programs is herniating enough without adding debt payments. (If you graduate and can’t find a permanent job, those debt payments can be brutal.) The best programs sometimes offer highly desired candidates multi-year packages consisting of a combination of fellowships and teaching assistantships. If you can find a package like that at a well-respected program, and you can keep your living expenses down, you have the best chance of emerging relatively unscathed.
In terms of what doctoral programs in the humanities are looking for in prospective students, I’ll have to defer to those among my wise and worldly readers who work in those programs. That’s not my world.
There was a time, long ago, when the indentured servitude of graduate school made some degree of sense. For a brief period in the 1960’s, there were academic jobs aplenty. At that point, one could argue fairly that an early-career period of material sacrifice would pay off well over time. (That same argument worked for law school until about five years ago, and it still mostly works for medical school.) But that hasn’t been true for a long time. At this point, graduate programs exist mostly to generate teaching assistants and research assistants. When it comes time to try to make an adult living, you’re on your own.
The puzzler, to me, is that the system has survived as long as it has. I’ve seen references to the “forty-year job crisis,” which strike me as self-refuting. After forty years, it’s not a crisis; it’s the way it is. It’s normal. In fact, over the longer sweep of American history, the flush academic job market of the 60’s stands out as the aberration. The mistake academics keep making is to keep assuming that the exception was the new rule, and that two generations of regression to the mean are flukes. Yet smart people continue to pour into graduate school, convinced that they’ll be the exceptions.
Good luck. If you must do a doctoral program in the humanities, this route should at least offer the best chance for a happy outcome. But if the best offers you get are for nothing-special programs at which you’d have to borrow money for living expenses, don’t do it. Just don’t.
Wise and worldly readers, what do you think? Would you advise crossing the globe for a doctorate in an evergreen discipline?
Have a question? Ask the Administrator at deandad (at) gmail (dot) com.
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