“Heavens to Murgatroyd!” as Snagglepuss used to say. (You have to be of a certain age to get that one.) You don’t mean to tell me that there are Canadian professors who were critical of George W. Bush? Can that be possible? Whatever in the world can we do about it?

umm… aren’t all universities pretty much anti-establishment when it comes to anything?

Um.. yeah. They have JUST realised that? What about the flood of US academics looking for jobs in Canadian institutions during the Vietnam War era? I’m anti-American Empire and proud of it (and my dissertation deals with resistance against the US), but that doesn’t mean I’m against the American people. I have many very good friends (and a son) who are American citizens. It is just their government and policies I’m against. As a critical scholar, I’m also against the Conservative Party in Canada, but again that is normal. I had a student ask me once why there were so few Conservatives teaching in the university system and I suggested he thinks about some of the common values of Conservatives and whether they really fit with teachers wanting their students to think critically and find ways to improve the world.

At what point does moving on make sense?  I’m at that point now.  I have been actively searching for a decent librarian and/or archivist position for several years after my museum art librarian position was downsized, never to return.  Nada.  Nada.  Landed one school librarian job after that which was like being incarcerated in Leavenworth and critically understaffed and underpaid.  The competition for these jobs (or, I should say, what is left of these jobs) is fierce.  It’s not that I have no experience in the field – have 15 years, but still no takers.  I’ve come close in a few interviews where it’s down to two people, but when you have 300 people going for one job, “close” is still not enough.  So, after much thinking, I am leaving the profession for good and returning to the administrative field – that’s right – clerical and secretarial jobs.  This is all I can find in this abysmal economy and, even then, competition is tight.  I am very afraid for our future when I see the state of the economy and its lack of good jobs.  Most that I see are $10 – 15/hr with no benefits.  Who can realistically live on that for any length of time, let alone support a family?  Middle manager jobs have been almost totally eliminated – and that is what most librarians and archivists are.  So, now I’m off to an interview for a part-time job as an administrative assistant to a local scientist.  This is all I can find and I’m grateful for even this.  Just sign me – No Longer a Librarian.  Yes, I’ve moved on.

I’m old enough to know a great many people who have moved on and are now over forty, and by now I don’t think any one of them regrets it.  Humans are wonderfully adaptive.

I can see there being some issues associated with this exceedingly common exaggeration of students’ abilities in letters of recommendation.  I applied for a national fellowship this year and my advisor told me that I would be better off looking elsewhere for letters of recommendation because she cannot bring herself to exaggerate at the level that the review committee will expect of successful applicants.  Let’s hope they don’t think it odd that my advisor, whom I write about in my proposal, did not write me a letter.

Reminds me of the Wall of Gaylord, and the ninth-place ribbon:

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/an-Sm5Nbt4ttht7u/meet_the_fockers_2004_gaylords_hall_of_fame/ 

Maybe we are on the cusp of a new age: modesty.

Let’s put it together in the admissions context.  Students and families believe getting into a selective college secures the future.  Selective colleges are increasingly selective.  Pressure is placed on schools to “get students in” and on teachers to ease grading.  Students, deprived of an environment that allows them to fail, learn, regroup, and progress, learn ways to grub grades but not how to think.  This is the extreme case, but it is frighteningly generalizable these days.  College faculty members complain about it regularly.

Meanwhile, there are movements in the common core standards and in changes being made in AP, the IB, and in the Cambridge Assessments that infuse greater process skills and higher standards. Hybrid courses may emerge.  Whether these changes are accepted by parents and schools, especially in the cases of the latter three programs, will likely be determined by how well they are viewed in admission offices.  College admission officers know that 17 and 18 year olds are not fully developed humans, but the measures used to describe the first year class are inadequate to describe its true characteristics and to emphasize learning.  The latter needs to be the message of our system of admissions.

One of my better students decided to try to switch universities. He came to me for a recommendation. One of the questions on the forms was something like, “Does this student respect his/her teachers?” That question was relevant, and the answer could not be better answered by looking at his transcripts. The quality of the evaluation depends on the perspicacity and the objectivity of the teacher. Not many questions of recommendation forms pick out characteristics that could be the basis for point-on-point comparisons with other students.

The questions that frustrate me the most are those that ask how some characteristic of the student compares with all the other students I have taught over a good many decades. If I had anticipated having to answer these questions I suppose I might have created an evaluation card with numerical scores for several dozen characteristics and kept a card for each student, a running average for each characteristic, etc. Even with that information, an objective answer would still be difficult because I have tried to get students who are not adequately prepared to drop a course rather than rack up a D or an F. The best students are generally the ones who ask for recommendations, and the differences among their performances may have more to do with turbulence in their environments (death of a parent, for instance) than their real capacities. 

Maybe the admissions officer that Eric Hoover tells us about would have a more informative set of recommendations to work through if numerical rankings were left to transcripts, standard tests, etc., and questions were asked that might pick up the teachers’ reactions to overall characteristics that could be revealed in classroom situations, in the writing of papers, etc. (Pick the five characteristics listed below that differentiate the candidate most clearly from his/her classmates and describe the candidate in terms of them: (1) Respect for teachers (2) Respect for classmates (3) Intellectual curiosity (4) …..)

It would be interesting to see lists of characteristics that various institutions sought to have evaluated.

I have worked in public university admissions for 20 years, and although I can’t say that this phenomenon is new, I can say that it makes me more than a little bonkers. What distresses me most is watching the process a student goes through when, for example, they get ACT/SAT scores back which are mediocre. “But I’m a 3.5 GPA student!” What I want to say is: “Well, maybe not. Maybe you have been led along for years because you’re a nice kid and your teachers like you. You follow rules well (which is what K-12 is all about) and ingratiate yourself to adults. I recommend using this opportunity to do some self reflection about your strengths and areas to improve.” However, what usually happens is not reflection, but dismissal…”well, I just don’t test well. It’s just one opinion.” Yes, let’s not have any facts interrupt the main narrative of your life.

Just yesterday, I had an applicant from a small parochial high school who was last in his class and had a 3.0 GPA. REALLY???!

 I sound crabby. I don’t want their egos shredded. Rather, I am disappointed with their parents and our social/educational system that have done these individuals a huge disservice.

I went grad school to pursue a doctorate at the age of 36.  Its good to find someone similar.  Its not easy being the old guy in the lab/classroom.

I plead guilty. As a parent– and now grandparent– I issue praise all the time. Maybe too much. But I also plead some special circumstances. I am African American.  Minority kids don’t always bask in the glory of a world that loves them. There are studies that even show that their parents, more concerned with survival, don’t praise as much as those more privileged by ethnicity or affluence. So while as a dean and administrator I also have concerns about students who come to college with attitudes of great entitlement they feel is due them. I also think that we have to take cases individually and that maybe some students need more affirmation than others. At The Eagle Academy Schools for Boys in New York City where I chair the advisory board, one of the strategies helping these minority young men beat the odds and graduate is that they are in a culture where finally they feel valued. Some ego strength is needed for survival, too much becomes arrogance and is unacceptable. Finding the balance is key.
Marcia Y. Cantarella, PhD Author, I CAN Finish College: The Overcome Any Obstacle and Get Your Degree Guide

The University of California, San Diego was built top-down around an existing research institute.  The idea was to develop academic excellence from the beginning.  Universities that start as a teaching institution have problems recruiting research-oriented faculty and end filling the gaps with teaching-oriented faculty who will not necessarily adapt very well when the university starts adding graduate and doctoral programs.