Are too many students going to college?

The Chronicle of Higher Education posts this discussion.

It seem particularly relevant for us, with our highest enrollment ever and a failure rate of first year students approaching 20%.

With the growing burden of college costs, is there any surprise that students are struggling?  How many students are forced down the college path without ever confronting the reality of debt and failure?

Obscene Pay for University Presidents

You may have seen this story, as it seems to be showing up everywhere today. 23 college and university presidents make over $1 MILLION dollars a year.

It is phenomenal that this continues to get worse. These institutions take their students' money and throw it at their administrators. If the president makes this kind of money, how much do the lower ranking bureaucrats make?

This will, of course, trickle down to public institutions, as the consultants all claim that we have to be "competitive" with such a ridiculous waste of money.

I bet they didn't have to take any "furlough" pay-cuts!

Are student loans like indentured servitude?

I found this interesting article in Dissent.  Jeffery Williams argues that the nature of student debt binds students for years afterward.    He argues that the debt reinforces class discrimination, and counteracts the notion that the U.S. can be a meritocracy.

Although Dissent is very left-wing venue, I think that Williams raises some very interesting points.

If Rupert is against it, it must be a good idea!

The Wall Street Journal weighs in on the unionization of the faculty here in Wisconsin. Can you guess what they think?

It is a discussion that we should be having on campus, but this is not really the place to start. You can read about how unions have destroyed higher education in the United States--oh wait, that hasn't happened even though a quite substantial percentage of faculty is already unionized!

It is worth a weekend read.

America shouldn't be firing teachers

Paul Krugman writes about the cuts to education that are coming because of the economic decline we currently face. 143,000 teachers have been fired in the last 5 months. He argues that these kinds of cuts foreshadow big trouble in the future, because education is what used to set us apart from the rest of the world.

It is a sad story for Friday afternoon, but worth pondering. . .

New Nutty Northwestern Criticism of Academia

Yesterday, the Northwestern ran an editorial that is a tongue-in-cheek criticism of a UWMadison business professor who bought DVDs to show in his class.

The jocular nature of the commentary--ha-ha Seinfeld would be better--covers another slam of our profession.

They have no idea about what the prof. teaches, but only see fit to cast aspersions. As you can see from the few comments here is that you get outrage that professors waste "our" money like this.

It is a far cry from equating professors to Jeffrey Dahmer, but it continues their theme of anti-intellectualism.

Edit: Link is now fixed! Thanks to the commenter who noticed!

Another Problem with Standardized Tests

I loved this article. Todd Farley writes about the grading of standardized tests in an op-ed piece in the New York Times yesterday.

He points out the arbitrary nature of how writing samples are graded for standardized tests.

When I was a graduate student, I spent a couple of months grading MCAT essays. It was a horrible experience. (I imagine I signed a non-disclosure agreement. I hope it has expired!) What I discovered was just what Farley is talking about--scoring was, it seemed to me, completely arbitrary. I spent my summer trying to guess what score (1-6) the bosses would give the essays I was reading.

I could never discern exactly how to interpret their criteria. I usually could get close, but much of my summer was taken up by conferences trying to figure out why my scores were so far out of whack with others. I wonder if my students today would say that about my classes?

I suppose you could chalk it up to me being a 22 year old graduate student who didn't know what good writing was. You could also blame it on poor training by my supervisors. I don't know why I couldn't understand the rules, but I stuck it out because it paid pretty well.

It also gave me an immense amount of skepticism when it comes to looking at test scores. It made doubt their ability to tell us much about a person's competence.