On Hiatus

Here’s a view from the other side of the street. I was a Squaw participant this summer, and had two opportunities to get feedback on my work. 

One opportunity was through the group workshops that took place every morning. The quality of the writers in my group was high —  in their own writing and their ability to judge others’ work on its merits, and their ability to deliver thoughtful, supportive criticism that might be tough but was not nasty. One thing that Squaw does that I found particularly helpful was to rotate the workshop leaders — we had the same group members but a different writer/agent/editor leading us each day, so we were exposed to a variety of teaching styles and approaches to writing. 

The other opportunity was through a one-to-one critique session with a faculty member assigned by the conference. Elise was mine! She was terrific — careful reader, good suggestions, very encouraging. 

I’m one of those folks who has been writing my whole adult life (newspapers, non-fiction etc.) but never was in an MFA program. I learned a LOT about craft in one week at Squaw! Highly recommended. 

I did a blog post with some of my personal takeaways on craft at http://midlifebatmitzvah.wordpress.com/2011/08/13/random-writing-tips-from-squaw/

I think that you will find that the annual Key West Writer’s seminar is quite an exception. It attracts a serious roster of guest authors as well as participants. Check out their website.

Ha! Fooled me. From the headline I thought this guy was WARNING students about the ridiculously HIGH COSTS of his school, and the potential for a very poor VALUE in terms of return on investment. Hahahahahahaha.

Yeah, we cost a lot, even a lot compared to other private colleges, but boy do we deliver a great value!

Hey, everyone, here’s the real story, the story every high school advisor and every parent should be telling: go to community college for the first two years.  It is criminal that they can charge $50k per year for lower division classes that are worth about $3k per year.

 mxb22 – as I understand it, a “public good” is one that not only benefits the individual but which benefits society as a whole as well. So, recognizing education as a public good is a perspective that understands that an educated individual in our society contributes to the overall well-being of society by earning a living and paying taxes on income that the individual earns.  So, the individual benefits and so does society.  It is not an entitlement nor is it a situation in which somebody else is paying the cost for the student’s education.  It is more in line with a social contract where the individual and society share the cost and the ultimate benefits (now there’s a concept that has not been much talked about lately despite the fact that our founding as a nation was highly influenced by this idea.)  While I will grant that vacation is not likely to be a public good, I would argue that health care and retirement could well fall within this category since citizens in good health are more likely to be productive contributors to society and those who know that their work/contribution to society will insure they are not impoverished in old age will also tend to help both the individual and society.

That said, I have to agree that we need to take a hard look at what is driving the high cost of college education.  And I am not thinking about the superficial arguments about amenities (eliminating them will not do much to lower the cost of education.)  There are more fundamental questions about what it costs to recruit and retain highly capable faculty and staff, what it costs to equip classrooms and labs with the appropriate tools to facilitate learning, what size classes are more conducive to educational success, etc.  Too often, when I hear complaints made about the cost of education, colleges in particular but also at the pre-college level, they fail to account for the substantial cost drivers (personnel and equipment) and they also ignore the benefits of an educated citizenry because that cannot be measured on a quarterly basis using simple accounting metrics.

I don’t know what the answer needs to be but I do know we must think carefully about how to properly finance education, and that includes thinking carefully about what is required to provide a worthwhile education (and I count as worthwhile, helping citizens understand better their world and the ways in which they can contribute to making it better, in addition to being better prepared to earn a living.)  Our current system does not seem sustainable when the cost of education far exceeds the income of those supporting students in college (primarily parents since states and the federal government really provide far less support than most people realize.)