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Episode 23: A Bicycle Co-Op Helps Its Founder Get Back on 2 Wheels

October 25, 2011, 3:49 pm

By Jennifer Gonzalez

“I really hadn’t given a bike a thought for a long time until I got to college.”

Ashton Cortright

Baldwin-Wallace College

In this episode, we hear from Ashton Cortright, a student at Baldwin-Wallace College, who lost her front teeth in a high-school bike accident. Starting a bike co-op on campus helped her overcome her fear of riding, she says.

About this series: Say Something collects stories from college students about what they’re up to and why. Check for new episodes every three weeks. View more episodes.

Photo: Baldwin-Wallace College. Music: Theme courtesy of John Gravois

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  • electronicmuse

    Good advice. The same might apply to the many endeavors that betray the fingerprints of “Mac-a-caca,” a chronic disorder caused by the näive belief that the computer has made you an expert at everything.

    Expertise in any number of enterprises has not been subsumed by “software.” One need only look at the fugly (use your imagination) graphic design of so many home-brewed websites to confirm this. Unfortunately, there are many other examples of fugly stuff due to this disorder . . .

  • dank48

    Bless you, Carol Saller. If only more authors could read this. Years ago, at a publishing seminar, the discussion leader remarked, “Desktop publishing has given millions of Americans the opportunity to demonstrate their complete lack of typographic taste.” And it’s gotten worse. Why on earth people think it’s helpful to tart up their mss with a psychodelic jumble of faces, sizes, leadings, spacings, styles, and God only knows what else, I do not understand.

    On the other hand, it keeps me off the street and more or less out of trouble.

  • mligare

    I suggest not using a word processor at all.  Using a markup language like LaTeX and a standard template puts the design issues in the hands of professionals, and makes the work of an editor much easier.  

  • sand6432

    Add to your rules that authors should not use color for their maps, charts, and figures. They are under the illusion that if you can do it on the computer, it can be printed that way in a book. Wrong! Not unless the author is prepared to have the book come out at a very high price, which reflects the cost of four-color printing.—Sandy Thatcher

  • bobpaver

    @mligare  I totally agree with what you are saying. Having come up on markup based text processing, I like and count-on it’s flexibility and the relative ease of transforming it into another format, even MS Weird. However, teaching LaTex to your typical WYSIWYG user is no small task. I was only half thrilled when trying to help someone acquire even minimal skills with LaTex. Pure TeX is out of the question.

    I read a 20+ page document about list numbering in Word. It was mind numbing. The only thought that I could generate was “Who the hell came up with this approach?” List styles carry information about other styles and one’s document can get so screwed up that the only solution is to strip all of the formatting and start over again. Unbelievable.

  • dank48

    “Strip out all the formatting” should be on a Post-It note stuck to the screen of every author.

  • bd5223

    The problem with high schools today is that teachers don’t prepare students to “Learn how to learn” nor to “learn to express themselves in a manner others can understand” Too many pre-collegett students are just taught enough to pass a test, and not to think deeper or apply themselves.

    As a HS Physics Teacher I am at war with consumer attitudes. The only true drive of a consumer is their own comfort. Those that live on the edge are the movers of a community.

    I continually challenge students to organize their thoughts and apply themselves. Only a few of my AP Physics B and AP Physics C students get it. Even when I challenge them by revealing what is being taught to students at their level in Germany and India.

  • richardtaborgreene

    1) nearly all young people go to schools from 5 to 18 years old
    2) schools are removed from work, money, the world—you sit and sit and sit and make stuff that is instantly throw away—trash generators THAT is what schools are
    3) you memorize verbal formulas about a world you are kept away from—except of course token “guest” speakers ha ha ha

    WHAT is the CURRICULUM??????
    SITTING
    TRASH MAKING
    MISSING COMMON WORLD AND COMMON SENSE.

    OK you put young human monkeys FIRST in life through 13 years of THE ABOVE—-
    and and and
    you get little or no creativity out of them

    DUH DUH DUH DUH DUH

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1371597074 Carol Yeager

    What are all the ways we can learn to be creative?

  • readyforchange

    I and those who know me well consider me a very creative thinker. I continue to “create” in spite of an education system that has for the last 50 years tried to squash every ounce of creativity I have. Except for my Communication Studies, in which I had the most brilliant and supportive faculty, I’ve always been told, “Sit down, be quiet, no, we can’t, . . . ” In my current PhD program the squash has become a royal beating. I’m now ABD and am so tired of the fight with a faculty that continually beat me with the “mundane, anti-productive, irrelevant” club that I am bored out of my mind. My program has taught me little and when I attempt to go out on a limb to seek the challenges and relevant knowledge I need, they beat me harder. I’m not alone and many of my fellow students have had the same experience with this particular program. I mourn the loss of the freedom to explore and challenge myself that I had in my MA program. In that program I was able to produce some truly exciting and excellent research. It was the total opposite of my current program.

    Given the opportunity to start over I would choose a different program. It’s all my fault for assuming that all faculty actually care about facilitating a true education. Some do and are wonderful. Then there are those like the faculty in my program who, by there actions, show a complete disdain for students and treat them like the plague. Why are they there?!!! I can only surmise that they like having their summers free and the occasional paid sabbatical, or that they are sadists. If only I had chosen my program better . . .

    Does anyone want a very creative, out-of-the-box thinker, who sees the role of faculty as partners/ facilitators of student excellence, in their program? Send me an application!

    Oh, and P.S. Bless all the fantastic faculty that I have had in the past whose memory still inspires and gives me hope. You are gods amongst the demons.

  • proudparent

    I’m all for bashing schools and blaming our problems on them. I think there is a lot that could be done on that side of things, but I am amazed how little is written here of the actual parents responsibility in a child’s education. We know that the most important years a child has for development pass before they enter school. They learn most of the foundational qualities that will form them as adults before they enter a classroom. That’s how it should be anyway.

    Too many parents toss their children into day cares where they are given little attention. We pretend that we are sending them to the best day cares and preschools because we’ve looked into it a little or asked around, but the fact is a child needs a parent to be home with them and give them the attention that is necessary to form a young mind. This rarely happens these days where people are more concerned with investing in iPhones, cars and houses instead of investing in their families. Keep a child at home with a parent until they are ready to go to school (at age five) and see the difference.

    I understand there are cases where both parents have to work to keep their family fed, but this should be the exception and not the rule.

  • lucero

    This year I have more and more college students asking “Is it on the test?” “What’s on the test?” “If it’s not on the test why are we learning this?” Years ago those questions were never asked in my experience. You just assumed EVERYTHING might be on the test and you learned and studied it all.  Each time a student asks me this I give them the “long” answer of how it relates to what they are studying. 

  • Gregory_Sadler

    Sure, students flunk out due to sheer academic failure — usually by not attending, not turning in work, turning in some work but not according to standards — and that is after providing them with resources, clear and step-by-step assignments, employing engaging pedagogy, even meeting with them and talking one on one.  I’ve seen it, as have many others of my peers.

    Certainly, some of the students who fail are overwhelmed with problems, either personal or financial — some, definitely not all. 

  • pcncarolina

    Radical indeed! But is the current state of affairs with college-level education the fault of institutions or the so-called national accreditation agencies that force schools to include non-core courses in their curriculum? I wish someone could explain why a student who wants to be a world class chef has to take English Lit, Algebra, etc. I’m sure I’ll receive the usual puffy response of “they need a well-rounded education” but that line is wearing thin with our youth who are strapped with ever increasing education costs. It would have been cheaper for my daughter to have lived in France, Italy, or Spain to study Culinary Management than to have done so in the US.

  • jlbarcelona

    Thanks very much for this article. I have posted a link on my Google+ and linked in pages as I think it will be of great interest to my Europe-based colleagues and translation clients who work in development and education.

  • http://twitter.com/cindaleigh Cinda

    Badges…the Scout’s approach to education credentials. Makes a lot of sense to me, when more expensive time-consuming options are just not feasible. Learning objects > badges > certificates > degrees…the new order for global education?

  • chelita007

    This is very true. As a profesor of law in Mexico I see an urgent need for a series of new competencies in law student to help them confront recent changes to the judicial system. Curriculum reform is so politially charged that to up date legal education to the current state of affairs will take ten years. Courses offered by goverment institutions and lawyer organizations are mostly unaccesible to students because priority is given to key goverment actors and are also costly. Badge centered online education might just what law studeent need in order to obtain a law degree and learn what they actually need to know to be useful under the current state of the legal system.

  • harbitk

    In some ways badges and certificates might be a path to a degree. A young person with little money and not wanting to go thousands of dollars in debt could get a free or low-cost badge or certificate that leads to a good job. After a few years of saving money this person could start a degree program in a Community College then transfer to a University. … That’s how I did it and paid for it myself without the debt.

    In this present economy many employers would rather employ a certificate holder at a lower wage than a person with a 4-year degree at a higher wage. 

  • 3rdtyrant

    After idiotic assertions like “the tyranny of the diploma,” it hardly surprises me that there are people who are ready to dive in wholesale to this trend.  I have to agree with Marcuse that “an economic system that encourages its young men and women to tailor their educations to the needs of the marketplace, irrespective of their hopes and ambitions, is an economic system that should be roundly condemned.  A nation that discourages the study of Art, Music, and the Humanities is a nation that will inevitably find itself populated by unthinking dolts and automatons.”  So, we move from the so-called tyranny of the diploma (from that crazy BYU guy in the last article about this topic) to the tyranny of a bunch of people who are behaving like human robots–trained to do a specific job and not to think outside of the narrow requirements of that one cog-area of the great machine.  Are we really ready to surrender to people who don’t see that a good mind in a good citizen, regardless of that person’s employability (because a problem solver will find a way to make a living), is always superior to the bleak picture painted by Kurt Vonnegut in his “Harrison Bergeron.”

    I am not unsympathetic toward the plight of the Rwandans, where something is better than nothing, information and knowledge-wise, but are we relegated to this kind of thinking in the US?  Must an open society rely on better cogs in the machine of commerce, or has all the virility of this once imaginative, inventive, and productive culture been spent on celebrity worship, mediocrity, and crippling debt? 

    The answer isn’t to create human robots, the answer is to find what worked in the past and use it.  Old ideas are not bad because they are old,but because they are misunderstood, often abandoned, or just not tried, they are therefore branded by dolts who misunderstand them as failed ideas.  A good idea misunderstood and misapplied is an indictment of the understander and applyer, not of the idea, and these badge-cheerleaders need to assess the long-term quality of their imagined “solution.”

  • ftuer

    I strongly agree with the comment that a “path” towards education would serve many people (young students, lower-income students, working students) a whole lot better than the current systems in the USA (where I teach now) and in Canada (where I taught before).  Over 10 years I have seen a lot of students who would have done better, been more engaged, and stayed in school longer  if they had started out on a more gradual path, and this applies to those who were great students in highschool. The way it works at present makes students feel like failures if they don’t go to a 4 year school or if they have to leave prematurely. There are multiple benefits in terms of finances and psychological adjustment. My daughter is a National Honor Society student aiming to be a veterinarian but she will still be 17 when she enters university this fall. Part of me would really prefer her to do a vet tech program first and work in a vet office to see if she really wants to go for that profession, but she would never consider it because of the stigma associated with 2 year education, especially in Canada.
    On the other hand, I often think we are in danger of becoming too narrow and becoming “training” centers. As an HR prof. Iknow there are much cheaper and effective ways to provide training than 4 year university. I believe that part of the solution to ensuring that we don’t produce students with a narrow mindset is to work more collaboratively with the other disciplines in curriculum design. For instance, how are work and workers portrayed in art, in music, and in literature. The book “Remains of the Day” is a great source for looking at Job Characteristics Theory and discussing why occupations that appear to be subservient labor are a great source of job  satisfaction to those who choose those occupations. I’m covering Management History this week and we’ll be talking about the management issues involved in building the pyramids, the great cathedrals, and the Great Wall of China; management history does not start with F.W. Taylor and Principles of Scientific Management (although when we get there, we’ll be talking about the world as it was in 1911 when he was doing his research and writing this seminal work). The implications of changiing to such an approach are that instead of having separate Gen Ed. classes, liberal arts becomes integrated into each course. What that means is that there has to be a new balance between covering the discipline content and adding in broader context. There also have to be rewards for integrating the liberal arts into your course.

    Last but not least, I attended a workshop on Adaptive Design in education last fall, on how postsecondary educations (and organizations in general) can make changes and the big takeway was that instead of thinking about how to accomodate specific disabilities, work on changes that will remove the barrier not only for persons with that disability but also for a whole range of other people e.g.  those big buttons for opening doors don’t just work for folks in wheelchairs, they also work for those of us with our hands full or who have less strength than we used to.  I’m suggesting a similar approach: rather than developing specific educational solutions for developing nations we should ask the same question – how can changes in education that might arise out of specific situation benefit a wider population.

  • mtyler

    I see dual higher education tracks here; the executive track with a broader based education, and a specialty or emphasis based education for the professional.  I believe colleges and universities are currently equipped to adjust to these dual-tracks.  It will be a matter of curriculum adjustment as well as faculty assignment based on Research-Qualified or Professional-Qualified.

  • dcoffice10

    So in favor of just taking the required field of study courses, students should skip the basics? To think a puffy response of “they need a well-rounded education” only confirms your lack of understanding of the big picture. And if your daughter really wanted a culinary management degree, CIA, Johnson and Wales and other like programs might have been more appropriate than a 4 year institution. Blaming non-core course work is lame and will not change the cost of a 4 year degree from an accredited institution. 

  • dcoffice10

    Excellent points, may I borrow them in my advocacy efforts for the humanities?

  • dwheelermd

    I appreciate the thoughtful comments and also it’s good to know I am reaching readers outside of the United States–that is one of my goals. — David L. Wheeler

  • savetheacademe

    Thank God you posted, after reading pcncarolina…..

    YES,  a chef too should be exposed to literature and learn mathematics!   

    Last night my son who is in HS told me that a good portion of the kids in his honor’s bio class have “made up” their data for their science fair project…..they didn’t see why you actually had to  “do the experiment” when they can probably find details about the experiment on line.  When we cut down everything to utilitarian, pragmatic uses……..why bother?

    Its a sad place we are in right now…….so much information, so little knowledge and wisdom…..

  • paulderb

    It just costs too much for a degree that might be useful. This will become an economic issue very quickly. Just as universities pay adjuncts to teach and full professors to research, badges may fill an economic gap for people who–like the universities themselves–can’t afford it all.

    Real middle-class income is dropping too fast to prevent a market solution from stepping in, and markets overseas are both appealing to universities and demanding of a palpable return on the education investment.

    The badges will probably start out with a discount-store brand image until resentment builds up among a burgeoning population of un- or under-employed degree-holders trained to be managers with refined sensibilities. The first MIT or Stanford-issued badge will probably release the floodgates and start to transform the current educational model, especially beyond our shores.

    The well-read chef is the mark of a society that values reading…not one that charges a lot of money for a degree. And that society is rooted at home and in middle and high school, not in college.

  • bcbailey64

    As a staunch internationalist and as an educator, I LOVED this article and what it stands for! I had no idea of open educational reources until I started my MA 18 months ago – I would have been for this idea in 1994 when I first discovered how the Internet could be used in education…if I’d known about it. Never too late to jump on the bandwagon. This article offers compelling reasons to be supporting open educational resources and alternative approaches to higher education credentialing. Nothing less than then the future of the world depends upon it. No, I’m not exaggerating in the least!

  • rp1953retired

    How about the fact that oftentimes the impetus for international projects come not from the studied, well-reasoned arguments of those with experience and credentials in the field of international education but from the sojourns of high ranking administrators (presidents are the worst offenders)?  I once served under a Provost whose first trip abroad turned him into an expert on matters of international exchange.   Another supervisor was only interested in facilitating the visits of scholars from the former Soviet Union (his area of expertise) – he didn’t feel comfortable communicating with foreigners whose language he couldn’t speak. 

  • goodeyes

    We sign many agreements with international universities, but these are mainly just paper to make us look like we are doing something.  I feel sorry for our students that we do not properly educate them about the world because we are not willing to make the real effort. 

  • elsieboy

    It can’t be a coincidence that you chose a language example can it? Where the intended learning outcome is to be proficient with a certain skill (speak a language, do a medical procedure, write a paper) I do agree that it’s supremely important to practise that skill. Now, when it comes to speaking a foreign language, obviously in many cases that practice is best had in foreign countries.

    I was thinking more about cases where people claim that study abroad is purely valuable for its own sake, or when people say things like “I’d read about the British parliament in books, but I actually got to see it!”. I’m extremely sceptical about the value and rigour of this sort of experiential learning.

    Not that colleges shouldn’t help students to be independent and worldly and whatnot, but I don’t think that this is a core mission, compared to subject-specific knowledge.

  • gavin_moodie

    Surely a far ‘stronger’ argument against internationalisation is that it would require us to change.

  • Socratease2

    Why would you offer these reasons as “tongue in cheek?” Either they are worthy of consideration or you should have written an article about your favorite TV show. At least it would have a point. None of those reasons rise to any level of significance. What institutional goals don’t require time and money, long term thinking, and institutional commitment? As for national competiveness, duh, that is one of the very reasons to promote international education opportunities at home and abroad. Wow, let’s not cooperate with other higher education institutions, let’s say FU to the world and just keep all all knowledge within our borders. Nonsense on stilts. Should have known this would be a useless article from the completely meaningless question that starts it. Either write with purpose or don’t write.

  • Socratease2

    I thought this was a joke but after seeing your other post…oh, boy. And, BTW, subject-specific knowledge is not the point of most higher education at the undergraduate level in this country. You need to distinguish between a “learning” or “growth” experience and a “rigorous” academic experience. Both are needed for 18-21 year olds and when done correctly they can both be accomplished at once. I don’t think you have a good grasp on what the mission of higher education is. It is very, very shortsighted to say that learning is not useful if it is for “the sake of learning.” Come again? I studied abroad and it was not tourism disguised as study, it was rigorous and I learned subject content and much, much more. It really helped me become “more worldly and whatnot.” The point is, you don’t know what knowledge or experience is going to be formative and crucial to a person’s future life and career. You think just knowing random facts is going to get you through this world? The world is full of people and understanding how to interact with them is helpful, you never know what knowledge will open up a new door or will be useful at some point in future. Your perspective is very limited and your example of the British parliament proving anything about the worth of foreign study is juvenile. I take it you never studied or lived abroad, call it a wild hunch.

  • dwheelermd

    The purpose of this post is to flush out even stronger arguments against internationalization than I might be able to come up with. Which in turn might sharpen the arguments for internationalization. In short, the purpose is to raise the level of discussion. You are welcome to contribute to that debate.–David L. Wheeler

  • elsieboy

    First, learn to use paragraphs. Reading what you wrote is very hard.

    > And, BTW, subject-specific knowledge is not the point of most higher education at the undergraduate level in this country.

    And I would agree that that is one of the main problems with undergraduate education in this country. But I also mentioned the development of critical-thinking skills. Why didn’t you mention that bit?

    > It is very, very shortsighted to say that learning is not useful if it is for “the sake of learning.” Come again?

    You put that phrase in quotes but I didn’t write that. In fact I said nothing like that.

    > Your perspective is very limited and your example of the British parliament proving anything about the worth of foreign study is juvenile. I take it you never studied or lived abroad, call it a wild hunch.

    First, that parliament example is not mine. I actually heard it from a recently returned study abroad tourist who was droning on about how much she had learnt.

    Second, you should never make assumptions about people just because they disagree with you. I’ve lived in three countries (yes, actually lived, not ‘studied abroad’) and I’ve been in the country where I now live for five years. I won’t call it a wild hunch, I’ll call it ‘arrogant, defensive nonsense’. But nice try.

  • Socratease2

    Well, sorry for the tone, but I think I did contribute. The world is increasingly “glocal” so these kind of nationalist versus internationalist arguments don’t seem very meaningful to me. Yes, there are budget priorities to be made and international programs need to be thought through with planning and purpose if they are going to be a positive for higher education in this country. I mean, I understand the rhetorical strategy of “innoculation” where you offer up front the perspective you ultimately want to discredit and if that was your purpose, fine. I just didn’t get that sense from what I read. Anyway, if your goal was to find ways to further the positive discussion of internationalization, I think there might have been more direct ways to do that or there might be better “anti-internationalization” points to offer up to create debate. The ones you used are just too general in my opinion. Hey, at least I care about the topic.

  • Socratease2

    “I’ve been in the country where I now live for five years.”

    Then you should know better.

    1. paragraphs: Don’t see how mine are any different than most others in these blogs but something to think about

    2. use of quotes: “for the sake of learning” is somewhat of a cliche so I used quotes, was not saying you wrote it, though it doesn’t differ much from what you would likely critique.

    3. that example is still irrelevant and I know what a tourist is and I know what study abroad is, not sure what you mean by combining them. Well, I do, but no sense going further.

    4. Well I have studied abroad and lived abroad as well, 2 years in Europe and 5 years in Japan, not sure what that proves.

    Anyway, hope you enjoyed the easy-to-read format.

  • elsieboy

    > 1. paragraphs: Don’t see how mine are any different than most others in these blogs but something to think about

    I suspect this is the Dunning-Kruger effect at work (wikipedia it – basically, your written English ability is so bad that you can’t see the difference between your own writing and that of others). Most of the stuff you write is barely comprehensible.

    > 2. use of quotes: “for the sake of learning” is somewhat of a cliche so I used quotes, was not saying you wrote it, though it doesn’t differ much from what you would likely critique.

    OK. But when you are responding to someone, quotes are typically used for direct speech. What you did was very misleading – someone who read your response but not my original comment might think you were quoting me.

    And you are absolutely wrong about my views. I think basically the only function of universities should be to teach academic subjects for the sake of learning/knowledge, perhaps a little tailored to what employers want.

    If study abroad were directly useful for teaching students academic skills and knowledge, I would support it. But except in a few subjects, it isn’t.

    > 4. Well I have studied abroad and lived abroad as well, 2 years in Europe and 5 years in Japan, not sure what that proves.

    That doesn’t prove anything, as you pointed out. The only reason I mention my own ‘international experience’ is that you suggested that the only way I could possibly hold the views I do is if I were a hick.

    > Anyway, hope you enjoyed the easy-to-read format.

    I did! Seriously, much better.

  • 609zr

    The Case Against Internationalization
    1) Diversity seldom works.  We enjoy the company of those with whom we have something in common–fellow countrymen.
    2) A night out with host faculty is fun, but at the end of the evening everyone will return to their country specific clicks.
    3) What is learned is boring to most others who have not been there or done that.
    4)  After years of employment at a MNC, a student *may* be promoted to manage an international office.  The corporation will teach that employee what they need to know and it will not include drinking beer with fellow college students 20 +/- years ago.
    5) Memorandums of understanding look nice on the web page, but seldom result in any real enrollment numbers.

    The best case scenario is that the student will have a wonderful time and maybe learn a few things.  Some learning will be valuable and long lasting.  Most learning will be useless  experiences that will not impress any MNC.

    The worst case scenario is the now countless bar brawls,  incarceration, torture, and death.The case is decidedly against internationalization.

    The following is an incomplete and infinitesimally small list of fatalities resulting from the push for internationalization.  If the life of  your students is worth making your president look good, by all means send your students to any war zone you wish.  I assure you almost every country  in the world including the U.S. is involved in one level of war or another.

    “Some of the deadliest mass shootings around world
    By The Associated Press
     
    Some of world’s worst mass shootings:
    — April 30, 2009: Farda Gadyrov, 29, enters the prestigious Azerbaijan State Oil Academy in the capital, Baku, armed with an automatic pistol and clips. He kills 12 people before killing himself as police close in.
    — Sept. 23, 2008: Matti Saari, 22, walks into a vocational college in Kauhajoki, Finland, and opens fire, killing 10 people and burning their bodies with firebombs before shooting himself fatally in the head.
    — Nov. 7, 2007: After revealing plans for his attack in YouTube postings, 18-year-old Pekka-Eric Auvinen fires kills eight people at his high school in Tuusula, Finland.
    — April 16, 2007: Seung-Hui Cho, 23, kills 32 people and himself on Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Va.
    — April 26, 2002: Robert Steinhaeuser, 19, who had been expelled from school in Erfurt, Germany, kills 13 teachers, two former classmates and policeman, before committing suicide.
    — April 20, 1999: Students Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, opened fire at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., killing 12 classmates and a teacher and wounding 26 others before killing themselves in the school’s library.
    — March 13, 1996: Thomas Hamilton, 43, kills 16 kindergarten children and their teacher in elementary school in Dunblane, Scotland, and then kills himself.
    — Dec. 6, 1989: Marc Lepine, 25, bursts into Montreal’s Ecole Polytechnique college, shooting at women he encounters, killing nine and then himself.
    — July 12, 1976: Edward Charles Allaway, a custodian in the library of California State University, Fullerton, fatally shot seven fellow employees and wounded two others.
    —    Aug. 1, 1966: Charles Whitman opened fire from the clock tower at the University of Texas at Austin, killing 16 people and wounding 31.”

    **I deleted those listing which did not involve students or faculty.

  • raymond_j_ritchie

    It is very hard to say you are against motherhood and babies but population control and world food problems are about just that.  You have to be very careful what you say and where and how you say it.
    Internationalisation is like that. From my experience in Australia, Point #1 is the biggest problem.  The prospect of large numbers of full-fee paying international students drive admins mad with greed.  Trying to explain how much it costs to run an international program is simply not understood.  The costs in time, labour, salaries, oversight, travel and sometime political problems are enormous. The visions of enormous profits are a mirage.
    The law of unexpected consequences applies. Internationalisation does not necessary mean “diversity” in your classes. On a typical campus in Australia about 15 to 25% of students on the books are full-fee paying international students.  You would think your classes would be full of such students but that is not necessarily the case.  Undergraduate programs in Australia are not based on the American liberal arts model: you have Bachelors of Arts, B Science, B Economics, B Commerce, B Law etc.  Full fee paying students are concentrated in only a few faculties such as Law, Ecomonics, Commerce etc.  I am a biologist.  In teaching biology classes in Australia over about 30 years I did regularly encounter a few international exchange students in undergraduate classes but I never encountered even one international full-fee paying student in a class I taught.

  • tardigrade

    Has anyone discussed how internationalization could eat up tenure-track job openings, graduate student slots, etc…?

    I really don’t know if/how these are issues.  I don’t know how many US citizens, for example, gain positions oversees.  But if fewer US citizens gain positions oversees than oversees citizens gain positions in the US, that means extra selective pressure on US citizens seeking higher credentials and job experience.

    Ultimately this could lead to fewer highly capable US citizens (due to fewer opportunities to gain those capabilities). It could also lead to a tiered class system (both in the US and abroad***) – the equivalent of what went on in medieval to early modern Europe, warring states China, Mongol Empire, etc… when foreign sovereigns and nobles who took title in a new nation would import retainers from their native countries – retainers who would have power over the less fortunate natives. (I can mention the Aryan invasion of the Indus valley and consequent varna system that grew out of that too, but that’s quite a bit more extreme than would likely happen with HE internationalization.)

    *** – If the rich and upper middle class scions come to the US for an education, this diminishes their incentive to develop high quality tertiary and professional educational systems in their nations. I’m sure most readers can imagine some potential consequences to a society of this (hell, we can see it now in some of those states, and as has happened historically).

  • kesupriya

    kesupriya holds a doctorate in communication with particular focus on intercultural/international/global communication.

  • tardigrade

    Off of your point #4: I have a friend who really only started studying Spanish after receiving a post-doc in a Spanish speaking country.

  • jmodeste

    Ha! Yes.. good one.

  • jmodeste

    The task it to have knowledge of foreign affairs integrated into US educational systems from k upward. US students know so little about the world beyond US shores (India/Peru… wow). The consequences of being in a privileged economic position for so long include severe myopia. With the US economy continuing to contract (yes, despite to allege drop in the unemployment rate), arguments against international education are sure to be strong, in favor of a focus on domestic affairs. The short-sightedness of this view does not recognize that in a global economy, deeper integration is necessary to remain competitive. 

  • EllenHunt

    Internationalization is easy in Europe. Just take the train almost anywhere. Or go shopping. 

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