Comments for The Ticker

Comment on Louisiana Regents Eliminate 109 Degree Programs by Gary

Gary — Mon, 28 May 2012 18:59:00 +0000

>>And “clamor by many?” How many is that exactly who are clamoring for “ideological conformity?”<<

At this site alone, 6500.

Comment on Louisiana Regents Eliminate 109 Degree Programs by Gary

Gary — Mon, 28 May 2012 18:55:00 +0000

Had Riley used the same evidence – or lack thereof in your mind – to reach the opposite conclusion about Black Studies and proclaim it the best thing since the discovery of fire, you know damn well the electronic lynch mob would have stayed quiet.

Comment on Ousted Penn State President Sues for Access to Messages on Sex-Abuse Scandal by jandam

jandam — Mon, 28 May 2012 18:47:00 +0000

Boiler:

Are you defending Spanier when he oversaw a disgraceful period in Penn State’s history? Has the new matra in academia become, “stay irresponsible, blame others”?

There is no demonization here. The fact of the matter is that Spanier was the head of Penn State at one point, he had direct and unfettered access to the very same e-mails he is suing to retrieve at that time, he saw the ship sinking and rudderless, and yet, he failed to retrieve the very same e-mails he might need for his potential defense.

When an individual with an advanced degree is incapable of exhibiting “real world” intelligence most of the time, then we all have to wonder, and wonder, and then start doubting. Thus, the reason why current administration at Penn State must assume, on the basis of sound administration of public resources, that Spanier cannot be trusted since the severance of the employee-employer relationship with Penn State. I bet Spanier is a product of the public school or Ivy League system, right?

Comment on Modern Language Association Adds Office of Scholarly Communication by bscmath78

bscmath78 — Mon, 28 May 2012 18:01:00 +0000

chuckkle, looking at one of the 2011 NSSE reports http://nsse.iub.edu/2011_Institutional_Report/pdf/freqs/FY%20Freq%20by%20Carn.pdf
I see on page 10 that for the Carnegie Classification of Baccalaureate Colleges – Arts & Sciences only 2% of First Year students are working 30+ hours a week off campus (question 9c) and 2% on campus (9b). The highest off campus percentage is 10% for DRU. The highest percentage of part time students was 12% for the Master’s M category. It was only 2% for Baccalaureate Colleges – Arts & Sciences the same number as for working off campus 30+ hours, as one might expect.

This illustrates that your case is NOT typical of the NSSE data.

Comment on Modern Language Association Adds Office of Scholarly Communication by bscmath78

bscmath78 — Mon, 28 May 2012 17:39:00 +0000

chuckkle, you have taught at 2 or more universities, yet still you asked in your first comment:

“Do these studies of how many hours students are studying account for the other hours?”

Didn’t your universities participate in the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE)? Or were you never interested in what your students were doing?

The article even includes a link to NSSE. With a little work I get to
http://nsse.iub.edu/2011_Institutional_Report/pdf/freqs/FY%20Freq%20by%20Carn.pdf

Which as has questions 9a-9g which ask a number of questions including 9f “Providing care for dependents living with you (parents, children, spouse, etc.)”

Yet you seem to be unaware of all this easily obtained information.

A while back in http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/the-revolution-of-rising-expectations/28804 Professor Vedder references a study http://ftp.iza.org/dp4666.pdf
that he uses to make negative claims about college students. Except the study is about High School students NOT college students.

The study is entitled “Time to Work or Time to Play: The Effect of
Student Employment on Homework, Sleep, and Screen Time” and the
abstract tells us it is a study about high school students and how they
spend their time. Table 2 seems to show on school days, high school students spend
more time on paid work than on homework, if they worked that day (which
was 1/6th of the observations). More time on Screen than working. Partying does
not appear as a category, though maybe it is part of Extracurricular.
Looking at the Total column it appears that Homework averages about 52
minutes, Extracurricular 8 minutes, Sports 40 minutes, Screen Time 122
minutes, Games 22 minutes, Paid Work 32 minutes and Sleep 515 minutes.

I made a number of comments critiquing aspects of Professor Vedder’s article.

Comment on U. of Missouri Press to Close by Ned Stuckey-French

Ned Stuckey-French — Mon, 28 May 2012 17:34:00 +0000

My father grew up on a small farm in northwest Missouri. After serving in the Army Air Corps during WWII, he was able to use the GI Bill to complete his bachelor’s degree at the University of Missouri, stay on to get a master’s degree, and eventually become a professor of Agricultural Economics.

I wish he had been alive last year when the University of Missouri Press published my first book, The American Essay in the American Century. He would have been proud.

Today, however, he would be outraged to hear his alma mater is shutting down its press. He published with university presses and knew how essential their work is to scholars, teachers and students. He also knew how important the Press’s many books on Missouri writers, culture, landscape, and heritage are to his home state.  Dad was a lifelong Mizzou football fan, but I know he would question the priorities of a university system that shuts down its press to save (according to the University’s press release) a $400,000 annual subsidy, while paying its head football coach $2.7 million each year.

The University says it plans to institute a “new business model” of “scholarly communication” in which “[m]uch editorial work would be done by students.” I direct a publishing and editing program at Florida State University and know how important publishing internships are to our students, but I believe a model based on unpaid student interns is an insult the ten professional staff members who yesterday were given their notice.

Comment on Modern Language Association Adds Office of Scholarly Communication by bscmath78

bscmath78 — Mon, 28 May 2012 16:52:00 +0000

chuckkle, your wrote, “you are absurdly presumptuous.” Please explain how asking you to provide the context for your comments is “absurdly presumptuous.” What little info you provided fitted a certain set of profiles which I laid out. I asked, “How close am I?” which enables you to explain where I am wrong.

How is it “in an annoying pedantic way” to seek to find out if how your “fact” relates. I didn’t object to your personal observations or your questioning the article. Though your question really misses the point that if students now have even MORE time for shopping, sleeping or exercising maybe college is too easy.

Comment on 3 Catholic Universities Join Lawsuit to Block Mandate on Contraceptive Insurance by dzenmar

dzenmar — Mon, 28 May 2012 16:26:00 +0000

Every time I read about the supposed “right” to free birth control I think of my own situation. I have an 18 year old son with Type 1 diabetes who will die (within a week) if he is denied access to insulin. His medical supplies cost 1300. per month- and that does not include his pump supplies. I am an uninsured adjunct, ironically employed by the state of Massachusetts- but that’s another story. My son, whose insurance is running out- has no right to insulin! He will die- and die quickly- without insulin and, yet, he has no right to it! I really can’t deal with this entitlement to birth control while I, who work for the Massachusetts state university system, have no insurance and my diabetic son (who has taken perfect care of his health with access to health insurance) will now have to- do what? treat himself minimally and be subject to blindness, amputation, heart disease, kidney failure? or just die now? If I denied him insulin I would be rightly charged with murder. But there really is no entitlement to insulin despite quick death without- that’s just how it is. So I have some issue with concern over entitlement to birth control. Not to mention that the sympto-thermal method is free, easy to use, without side effects, increases knowledge and is highly reliable when used properly (as with all birth control methods) even for women with highly irregular cycles.

Comment on Modern Language Association Adds Office of Scholarly Communication by bscmath78

bscmath78 — Mon, 28 May 2012 16:14:00 +0000

Even STEM certificates/degrees are highly suspect as illustrated by the general misuse of statistics in many fields and the abysmal results obtained by a group of Statistics TAs, even when many have previously marked the final exam, they were only slightly better (72 vs. 65) on average than their own students when they take the same exam later! Even with “the blind leading the blind,” the undergrads did remarkable well compared to their TAs, probably because they were 1976 Berkeley undergrads. But how much did they remember a month or 6 months after the exam? This was long before the CAOS test.

For more details and the source, please see:

http://chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/everyone-should-learn-statistics/46353#comment-516819032

For some comments on the issue of credentials:

http://chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/stanfords-credential-problem/46851#comment-529524438

Comment on Modern Language Association Adds Office of Scholarly Communication by bscmath78

bscmath78 — Mon, 28 May 2012 16:12:00 +0000

As various reports/studies/books (“Academically Adrift” etc.) have noted, academic achievement is of little interest to many college students. However, obtaining by hook or by crook, a credential is of great interest. The academic enterprise would be greatly improved by eliminating credentials and degrees, then only those who were interested in academics would show up for class, thus improving class for those who were interested.

A recent example illustrating the lack of interest in academics is “The Consumption Value of Postsecondary Education” by Brian Jacob, Brian McCall and Kevin Stange.
http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/www/external/labor/seminars/adp/pdfs/2011/stange.pdf

The abstract states, “. . . increases in instructional spending will attract high achieving students, but may deter enrollment from a broader student body.” But Figure 5 on page 44 shows that increasing instructional spending clearly decreases Willingness-to-Pay (WTP) among all except High Math (75th percentile or better) combined with High SES (75th percentile or better). Further the only group that is really WTP is Male, High Math, High SES. The chart doesn’t provide any info on majors, but one might suspect that there might be a high correlation with having a STEM major. This study just provides further evidence that most students go to college to have a good time and get a credential, not to learn anything academic.

Back in the days when universities restricted themselves to the rich sons of the elite, who had attended the right elite prep schools, only about 5-10% were interested in academics. Jerome Karabel’s “The Chosen” and Gerald Graff’s “Professing Literature” document this situation 100 or more years ago. It appears that not much has changed. If one assumes independent, random distribution amongst the Math, SES and Sex categories in the 2012 Consumption Value study, (1/4)*(1/4)*(1/2) = 1/32 = 3.1% are in the Male, High Math, High SES combination, which is the sole combination showing a real Willingness-to-Pay for instruction (dubious assumptions, I know).