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AAUP to Investigate Decision to Close Programs at SUNY-Albany

February 16, 2011, 1:52 pm

The American Association of University Professors announced today that it was appointing a committee to investigate the decision by administrators at the State University of New York at Albany to suspend admissions to five degree programs—in classics, French, Italian, Russian, and theater—as the campus deals with budget cuts. The AAUP said the decision to close the programs, and to notify 14 tenured faculty members that their appointments would be terminated within two years, raised concerns about academic freedom, tenure, and governance.

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  • http://sarahwerner.net Sarah Werner

    I’ve played with Standalone a bit. Once I quit Firefox, my Zotero habits dropped to zilch, so I’m excited about getting them back into play. My obstacle is that I used to enter items into Zotero primarily by clicking on the handy icon, but so far the Chrome plug-in isn’t as sensitive as the Firefox, so I’ve been missing items because I’m lazy, I guess. To tell you the truth, and this is a potentially embarrassing place to admit this, I’ve never become quite as adept with Zotero as I would like. So I’m hoping Zotero standalone will help me get my mastery up, though I’d welcome tips and guides…

  • http://www.samplereality.com Mark Sample

    Looking over the Zotero forums just now, I see that other people have had problems with Chrome as well. This is why it’s alpha, though. When it comes to tips and guides, do you want tips on Zotero Standalone, or on Zotero more generally?

  • http://sarahwerner.net Sarah Werner

    Alpha is as alpha does, so I’ve not been too bothered by the Chrome glitches; it will get better. For tips, I’m looking more for generally using Zotero, not Standalone specifically. I’ve seen their video, and it gives me a sense of its capabilities, but hasn’t translated for me into an actual sense of when and why I’d choose to use it (even though its example is research on staging Hamlet!). Maybe because I don’t normally use bibliographic management software? I’m not sure what it is I’m finding opaque. (Part of my problem is that much of my research is focused on pre-1700 books and manuscripts, and those don’t translate easily to Zotero’s built-in options, but that’s something I haven’t gotten around to passing to the Zotero folks themselves.)

  • teachercontinue

    I see that other people have had problems with Chrome as well. I teach a continuing education class
    for teachers. It is an Independent Travel Study-Actual or Virtual Via the Computer and it works better with Firefox.

  • kimpetorin

    I teach Zotero to students in my library sessions, and after getting them excited about it, the Mac users are always disappointed that the can’t use it with Safari. I hope this alpha version becomes ‘real’ sometime soon.

  • windfix

    Zotero for FireFox is incredible. I have taught workshops on it to faculty at my institution, and the response is nearly universal – “Wow, I wish I’d known about this sooner”. Let’s hear if for Free/Open-Source folks, EndNote is dead.

  • windfix

    FireFox runs great on Macs, and Safari mangles a lot of websites like Sakai. Time to quit the Apple habit.

  • jffoster

    Read the AAUP’s letter I have. What would happen if the University, i.e. SUNY Albany, simply replied “No.”? Or are they bound by some clause in their collective bargaining agreement with the AAUP to allow and cooperate with this “investigating” committee?

  • rightwingprofessor

    Oh for God sake the state has slashed the SUNY budget for several years while not allowing a tuition increase, Albany is doing the responsible thing and once again the union is up in a huff about it. Unions will soak the taxpayers of every last nickel they can until the city/state/country is bankrupt.

  • majorjh

    While actions such as those being taken at SUNY-Albany are often necessary, it is still important that the decision process involves all of the stakeholders affected. As the president of a university union I often hear responses such as the one offered by rightwingprofessor until one of them is caught up in the problem. Then they want help and they want someone to step in for them One key to avoiding that situation is to ensure that meaningful input is revceived from all sectors prior to the decision being made. Not all unions are involved in “soaking” their institutions and many work collaborately with the administration and Boards of Directors to do what is best for the institution.

  • heathermwhitney

    I’ve tried the alpha version and am still not really happy with Zotero. I’m willing to hack a lot of things, but when it comes to an asset such as a source database, I don’t have the time or patience to deal with something that doesn’t work immediately.

    That’s not to say that I don’t appreciate the work that’s going into the program – I admire it very much. But I just need something that works and doesn’t leave me waiting for additional features.

  • adam3smith

    I’m not clear what the alternatives are, though? Not using any bibliographical software? Surely that can’t be the answer. Mendeley has got at least as many issues. Endnote is very, very clumsy and has other types of issues, many of them unresolved for years. I think Refworks is declining. Sente is Mac only and also seems to have a number of limitations, e.g. with citation styles.

  • mbelvadi

    Why do you think RefWorks is declining? It’s very popular at my site (we have a campus-wide license) even with undergraduates. I have tried Zotero in FF on my Mac several times but I find whenever I have it on, I start to have lots of odd stability problems that go away when I disable it. It has never been anything I could troubleshoot methodically enough to report properly but a definite pattern. I’m looking forward to a standalone Zotero if that means I can use it with my non-primary web browser (e.g. Chrome) and leave my all-important FF instance alone, since only a very tiny portion of my FF use ever has anything to do with collecting citations – I can always just do that stuff in Chrome.

  • mbelvadi

    Sounds like you’re not at all the right audience for an alpha release. Or even beta. Some people are, some aren’t. Walk away from it for now and try it again when it goes into full production release.

  • adam3smith

    What I said about RefWorks is just an impression – with Zotero and Mendeley becoming increasingly sophisticated and able to deal with more sites, RefWorks is just looking weaker and weaker. I rarely see people say enthusiastic things about RefWorks – and it seems incredibly vulnerable to Universities canceling their subscriptions. Endnote seems to have more of a loyal following, is able to deal with some more elaborate things (journal abbreviations, multiple bibliographies etc.) and at least people without an institutional subscription don’t have to pay a recurring fee – I still think it’s bad software, but I wouldn’t want to predict its demise. With RefWorks I’d be surprised if it’s still around as a major player in 10 years.

  • kosboot

    The problem with Zotero is that is created to be tied to a specific piece of software – Firefox. In line with the Web 2.0 world, Zotero should have been software and platform agnostic. I think that agnosticism should be the primary goal of the development team (which I sense is only a staff of 1 or 2), because it still doesn’t work optimally on any other platform beyond Firefox (which, because of its constant memory leaks, I detest even more than Internet Explorer).

  • adam3smith

    kosbot – that’s an odd comment to add to a post about a version of Zotero that’s not tied to Firefox… the whole point of the standalone and the “Everywhere” idea is to broaden the appeal. And yes, the alpha version isn’t completely there yet, but there is no reason to think that it won’t get there.

    There were many good reasons to tie Zotero to Firefox initially – Chrome didn’t exist, Safari didn’t have extensions, neither did IE etc… and now that that situation has changed – and the mozilla based technical tools like xulrunner have made the standalone possible without a prohibitive amount of development time – the project has reacted.

    And there are also good reasons _not_ to be entirely agnostic about software and platform. There is a trade-off involved. The more generic a piece of software is, the less tightly it integrates with any given piece of software: The only way to get high-quality citations into documents, for example, is to interface directly with the respective word processors.

  • d_fevens

    “Users will be able to access 2.2 million volumes of HathiTrust material in the public domain and their library’s own digital collection directly from the Summon page. For any texts available only in print, users will be told how to obtain them.”

    It is unclear from this, if this project contains the unauthorized copies of the in-copyright works that the universities obtained from Google, and passed on to the HathiTrust.

    “As noted previously, the work Google did scanning texts has already contributed to the HathiTrust’s digital collection.”

    I think that it is great that the HathiTrust is freely sharing their copies of public domain works, however I do have a problem with their use of unauthorized copies of in-copyright works- copies that are perhaps pirated copies. As Pamela Samuelson noted, “The settlement would grant Google about five different licenses …. a license to give “library digital copies” of the books scanned from library collections back to those libraries and allow the libraries to make certain kinds of uses of the works.”

    Douglas Fevens,
    Halifax, Nova Scotia
    The University of Wisconsin, Google, & Me

  • sand6432

    I don’t know of any publisher that would be worried if snippets were used in this HathiTrust project, but I understand the caution that the group is taking in light of the uncertainty surrounding the now-in-limbo Google Settlement.—Sandy Thatcher

  • http://twitter.com/lauradeal Laura Deal

    @d_fevens From the Hathi Trust website: “All objects in the archive are either in the public domain, have the necessary permissions to support the level of access afforded, or are simply archived in such a way as to ensure an enduring copy of the content. HathiTrust only provides reading access to those publications where permitted by law or by the rights holder.”
    http://www.hathitrust.org/copyright

  • d_fevens

    It is my understanding of the agreements ( October 12, 2006 and July 9, 2009) between Google and their fully participating libraries that the libraries (in my case the University of Wisconsin) receive only one digital copy of the work from Google. The University of Wisconsin gave their copy to the HathiTrust. I feel that all the unauthorized copies (the one kept by Google and the one given to the university) of my book created by Google were pirated works.

  • http://twitter.com/lauradeal Laura Deal

    Maybe you should contact them then.

  • profpjay

     Simple Question: I’ve downloaded the stand alone and the Chrome plug-in but see nothing on my Chrome browser that I can click to save a web page in Zotero. In Firefox you’ve got the work “Zotero” in the bottom right-hand corner, you click on it, Zotero opens and you save the page. How do you do this from Chrome???

  • http://jodischneider.com/ Jodi Schneider

    You need the Chrome Connector; see http://www.zotero.org/support/standalone

  • v8573254

    For me, every thing about it was fun.  

  • New_Kid

    I don’t understand why you keep referring to getting a PhD as about career advancement. It’s not advancement; it’s entree, the threshold requirement for a huge number of academic jobs. And in a lot of fields, almost the only way to get to research, write, or teach in your area is to get a job as a professor. (There are not a lot of non-academic positions for someone who wants to spend their life researching and teaching about, say, the Middle Ages.) The job isn’t the end; it’s the means to an end, which is getting to pursue your love of learning and the subject matter without starving to death.

  • http://www.facebook.com/walt.lessun Walt Lessun

     And, for me, when the pursuit stopped being fun, I chose another direction.

  • kilpikonna

    I’m surprised no one’s thus far mentioned this gem by William James: http://www.des.emory.edu/mfp/octopus.html

    I think you’re both wrong and not-wrong: not-wrong morally, but wrong practically. Whether or not an M.D. “should” be a barrier to practicing medicine is somewhat immaterial; the world we live in has such gatekeepers. The professorial gate isn’t as scrupulously kept, so to speak, but it is a reality, and sadly the Ph.D. represents an expensive and necessary-but-not-sufficient prerequisite to it at many colleges.  I say sadly not because I think the degree is worthless (I don’t) but because I dislike expensive lottery tickets.

  • joelcairo

    Mr. Sweeney, for what it’s worth, I have always agreed with the assumptions you made in your original article and I am sorry to see you back down from them because of the misguided comments of the many.  I am reminded of something the philosopher and mathematician Betrand Russell once said:  “The fact that an opinion is widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.”  

    The fact is that obtaining a PhD as a career move is a fairly recent phenomenon, and it can be traced to the ratcheting up of credentials that accompanied the baby boomer generation coming of age.  This statement is not true, of course, for other terminal degrees such as an MD or a JD, but those degrees are very vocation-specific and should not be confused with a doctorate of philosophy – the root of which means “the love of knowledge.”  Perhaps, if we had more people mindful of their original reasons for pursuing a PhD (which is usually something akin to their love of a particular subject), there would be less reason to for them to rationalize their pursuit of the degree with arguments of career moves. 

  • http://twitter.com/IsaacSweeney IsaacSweeney

    Wow. Thanks for this. I didn’t actually change my view on why one should get a PhD, but I was “wrong” to generalize and assume people would agree with me.

  • arrive2__net

    You could make the argument that a job is the only reason to get a doctorate, unless you feel you cannot foster your education on your own and you absolutely need the university stamp to proceed.  You can learn a lot on your own, pursuing knowledge, but if you need the proof that you learned it you still need the degree.  No one wants to be the most educated person in the homeless shelter, or in the welfare line..( unless you are Epicurus)  the connection between education and prosperity may sometimes seem subtle but it is actually very strong. 

    Bart Schuster
    OnlineGraduateSchool.tripod.com/doc.htm
    Twitter.com/arrive2_net

  • macielti

    Well, it may sound flaky, but I think you need both kinds of motivation — internal and external — to pursue and actually complete a terminal degree.  As much as I loved the field, the incredible learning experience with such inspiring classmates in my doctoral cohort, the promise of a career in higher education, one in which I could support my family,  justified the decision.

  • cust0s

    Hah! Well, I love knowledge, but I often find myself giving others the very same advice that my own professors gave to me when I told them I was considering the PhD after the masters, “You’re a good person, and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, not even my enemies!” :)

  • willardhall

    I have to agree with JoelCairo. I’m sorry you’ve backed down. Shame. Ignore the bullies and blowhards who sometimes dominate the conversation on this blog. Stick to your guns Mr. Sweeney.

  • richarddeu

    Nice reference to Russell. The Ph.D. credential began generations before the “boomers” as was noted in Mr. Sweeney’s previous post. William James’ 1903 critique is still relevant: “Originally published in the Harvard Monthly in March 1903, ‘The Ph.D. Octopus’ by Harvard philosopher William James offers a powerful critique of the ‘tyrannical Machine’ of graduate education and the growing obsession with examinations, diplomas, and ‘decorative titles.’”   His article is easily found on-line.

  • isaacsweeney

    Thanks! I didn’t really back down. See my response to JoelCairo.

  • bermane

    Back in the 1970s when some of the baby boomers were ready to finish their graduate education, jobs were few and far between.  Most people don’t remember that it was a time when profs in the old eastern schools were staying on longer and opportunities were opening up in the boonies faster than in the Ivies–it’s how our provincial institutions became places to work without apology.  Remember those taxi drivers with the PhDs?  Many did get the doctorate but by the time things opened up at Harvard or Princeton, they were already 10,15 years down the road (literally and figuratively, and who wants a PhD who hasn’t done anything but make a living for a decade?  Not Harvard, not Princeton–newly minted PhD’s are much cheaper to hire.  So back then, many of us, seeing the roadblock ahead, jumped if something, anything opened up and we left our studies ABD never to return.

  • ksingh

    In terms of accessing the jobs, you don’t need a PhD to teach at most community colleges, yet more and more PhDs are getting jobs at community colleges because the tenure track market is so tough.  And a PhD, despite what most administrators say about the focus on teaching, brings a bit more prestige to the school.  I teach at a very large, fairly influential community college, and there are just as many PhDs as Masters level teachers. 
    I’m working on getting my doctorate because you need a terminal degree to achieve full professor rank, but I’m getting a DA in Community College Education instead of a PhD in my discipline.  I love my subject, but at the stage in my career where I am, the DA makes more sense than going back and entering a traditional PhD program. 

  • lenci5362

    I jumped through all the hoops, all the way to taking and passing the orals and writing several drafts of my thesis. My challenge was in the thesis advisors -2 – that had differing views and feedback, to the degree that I became disillusioned with the entire process. Dropping one of them was also not an alternative since they both carried weight within the department. As my career took a different path than teaching in academe, the need for a Ph.D. proved to be immaterial. The real world does not reward – either financially or in status – those with Ph.D.; it’s only in the academic Ivory Tower that this still matters.

  • elie_s_dad

    Whether you’ve backed down or not, your posts are very reflective and polite which is a nice change of pace :).

    Regarding the question, “Can we overproduce a degree?”, forgive me if this point was made in the other eighty comments from the other posting, but I think it is apparent that we are overproducing many degrees.

    You’re right that if no one went into degree programs with any expectations of wage increases, upward career mobility or stable wealth prospects, that is if everyone studied *just for the knowledge*, we really would not be in danger of overproducing degrees.  If knowledge were the only motive people considered legitimate for pursuing education, we’d also probably have a fraction of the amount of college students (at any level) that we do now.

    The point is, prior to going to undergraduate, associate’s degree, etc., almost everyone has the expectation that they are going to have to be making a reasonable wage for most of their lives.  When these people also love knowledge, they have to justify their pursuit of knowledge within the reality that they will have to, at some point, stop being students and make some money.

    The fact that a degree can no longer offer the justification of providing it’s eventual holder with the expectation of a living wage (whether or not the holder remains in the relevant field) means to me that we are overproducing that degree.

  • bbr123

    Thanks for writing the follow up article.

  • commserver

    I have been adjunct since 1987. I started with just BS. I soon realized that I needed to get a more advanced degree so I earned MS.

    Since I earned MS it seems that the trend, even in adjunct positions, is towards getting terminal degree.

    The number of doctors (doesn’t matter if PHD or Dxx) looking for teaching positions has created the situation where the institutions of higher education come to expect terminal degrees as criteria for consideration.

    I was in situation where I was told that I was being replaced. I later found out that my replacement has doctoral degree. That convinced me to pursue the doctoral degree.

     I have long had a desire, both professionally and personally, to doing so. I am now enrolled in doctoral program at the ripe old age of 61.

  • josa33

    Perhaps once upon a time you could teach at a university without a Ph.D., and do so for the love of the subject, but because of the over-production of Ph.D.s (particularly in the humanities) there is just too much competition to do so now. If there are 100-200 applicants for a tenure-track job (which is increasingly the case in the humanities), it only makes sense that those with Ph.D.s would get preference over those with only masters or bachelors degrees, even for jobs at teaching (as opposed to research) institutions.

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