Ohio State U. Receives $100-Million Gift

kpq6mil

Go “bucks”.

11211250

The University is being renamed The Limited University. Wexner owned and operated the University long before he made this gift. He has a puppet regime in place that does exactly what they are told. The University is being made into a branch of The Limited Brand and as such employs all the cut throat business practices that has made The Limited so notorious. But really, no surprise here; he owns Columbus, Ohio, as well as the Governor.

ignoramus

Call received!

Seriously, if anyone needs a philosopher of education at their institution, I’m happy to oblige:

Here’s my homepage: http://www.samrocha.com

Cheers,

S. Rocha

landrumkelly

Sam, if I owned a university, I would give you a job myself.

Landrum Kelly
http://www.philosophicalquestions.org

Gregory_Sadler

There’s many of us out there already contributing as philosophers of education. When we can actually get a place at the discussion table, and we
understand the positions and perspectives of our interlocutors well
enough, philosophers can greatly improve collaborative thinking about
education, improvements, assessment, accountability, etc.

I’ve been doing this sort of work as a philosopher for some time, hopefully with some good and lasting contributions. I’ve written a bit about this — focused on the projects I’ve been involved with:

http://gbsadler.blogspot.com/2011/04/infusing-critical-thinking-through.html

http://gbsadler.blogspot.com/2011/03/lessons-from-ebep-workshop-part-1-of-2.html

After engaging in such collaborative involvements bearing on education for some time in a number of settings and institutions, I recently started a consulting company, ReasonIO

tappat

There are plenty of philosophers, and outside philosophy departments — art historians are usually great philosophers, for instance — and they are still all around. The real issue is that people, including philosophers, need to heed the philosophers, which means, in good part, feeling that questions such as justice and fairness are central and that questions of efficiency and equity are properly subjected to philosophical, historical, and even aesthetic, ethical, and perhaps even moral critique and reform. Too many people feel that this, however, is just too much for us when things are perceived to be flush, much less when they are felt to be in crisis.

3rdtyrant

Sadly, at least in these conversations I’ve attended (both formally and informally), the philosophical voice is present, but disparaged or ignored. Because the humanist perspective accounts for (allows for, really) the almost infinite variability of human nature and potential, it is by definition inefficient and often inequable. As philosophy tries to explain this, efficiency experts are easily confused and get lost in the complexity of the problem. Thus, they dismiss the philosophical issues at stake as non-issues and raise efficiency or equality to the level of being the only ideal, rather than one ideal to work in tandem with a group of others that circulate around academic rigor, access, time-to–degree, and space issues.

11122741

There is not one word in this article or apparently at this conference about the very large number of foreign students who are being admitted to US institution at the undergraduate levels and particularly at the elites where they often represent 50% of this group most of whom also are very wealthy and keep those EEOG reports looking good as well and the fairness and justice of this practice relative to US working class students and then repeat this point with graduate enrollments.

althea4127

what is learning? when assessment is the goal, we deny any access to this basic question forcing calculative thinking to the fore, and drawing any other way of thinking onto the margins–assessment: just because its practically assailable, does not mean it should guide or ground or teaching! philosophers are needed to upset well-instilled, stagnant thinking–administration, however, seems to hold the mic, and administration is virtually impossible without predetermined (regardless of how questionable) goals

http://twitter.com/ERozycki Edward G. Rozycki

Kahlenberg does not seem interested in getting a frank answer. Many frank answers, even well-considered and honest ones, are not “reassuring” to someone or other. He seems to be hoping for responses that — as a dean at an institution I was once involved with put it – are “sensitive to administrative intent.”

althea4127

Answers! let’s rethink the question!

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midevilprof

I don’t know about other institutions, but here at my SLAC, we rent out campus space during the summers to various youth/high school groups and programs. We host sports camps for young athletes plus Free Enterprise Week (three one-week sessions) for high school students, and then a Home Show for various home-improvement contractors to set up booths to hawk their wares. That’s how our campus makes a little money while most students are away. Vedder’s notion of more efficient use of space does not apply here. Of course, we are a private college that receives far less state support than even the “state-supported” schools; maybe that makes a difference. But I also have to agree that many students seek internships or paying jobs during the summers. Not agriculture, but retail or something similar to put money in their pockets to spend during the school year. That’s what I did when I was their age!

Bottom line: sure, a three-year degree could work, and in fact is possible at many institutions already, but it faces difficulties in implementation beyond simple faculty reluctance.

aliceleebrown

As Perplexed indicated, summer courses are almost always available for college students, if not on their own campuses on others where they can take courses and transfer them to their main program. I finished college in 3 years in 1963 without even thinking much about doing so. One summer I stayed on campus and another summer I went home and took courses at a college nearby. Perhaps faculty and administrators need to promote the advantages of finishing college in three years and getting jobs or internships after graduation to make up for losing the chance to gain work experience (or fun time) during the summers. I will say, however, that when offered a teaching assistantship my final semester, I turned it down because I was tired of being a student. Being a student (or a teacher) for 12 months a year is not easy.

betterschool

This particular “innovation” is analogous to making aircraft designed in the 1930′s fly faster by strapping on bigger engines instead of opting for sleeker designs. Most “four year” degrees can be delivered in a three year agrarian calendar by employing the findings of modern learning and evaluation sciences in designing curriculum and instructional methods. Bringing college classrooms into the 21st century confers an additional benefit of improving the quality of learning outcomes. The same “four year” degree can be delivered in two years if an institution chooses the year round calendar proposed here.

Why does Mr. Vedder advocate only crudest change strategies while remaining silent on the treason of professors who ignore, to the disservice of their students, the very sciences that some of them teach.

proftowanda

At my huge campus, many more of us want to teach in summers than is justified by enrollments. Students work summers and/or want summers off more than we-the-faculty do. Many of us also would wish to take advantage of our state system’s flexibility in having us teach a summer semester instead of fall or spring semesters, but again, enrollments do not allow that. The economics of many of our locales do not allow that, as the tourism industry and others rely on our students. Do your research to see that this is a systemic situation far larger than our higher education systems.

So why not talk about a truly three-year degree, as is offered at many fine campuses across the world? I am familiar, for example, with the programs at Monash University and with the fine quality of its graduates. We could achieve the three-year degree, with work done primarily in fall and spring semesters, if our colleges and universities only had to teach college and university-level courses.

Too many of our courses must be remedial high-school work. And this is not so just now; it was so when I was a college student decades ago, required to spend much of my freshman year on courses that allowed many of my classmates to catch up. They were less fortunate than I was, as I had an excellent high school education.

Have the high schools offer those courses to their graduates who still are not ready for college work, then send them to us when they’re ready for college, and we will graduate them in three years — with time for them to spend summers working and saving for only three years of college. Imagine the reduction for them in financial aid debt as well, when not having to come up with college-level tuition for high school courses. I look forward to your next article on a truly three-year degree.

22266017

What bothers me in all of this talk about three-year degrees is that everyone ignores the outside-of-the-classroom development that occurs during this period in a person’s life. By rushing students through, we eliminate opportunities for exposure to an environment engineered to enhance their skills and their maturity in ways that book knowledge and classroom time simply cannot. It also reinforces what occurs in the classroom in real-world interpersonal situations. I’m always a little saddened when students take either tons of dual enrollment courses or overload with 20 or more credits each semester in an effort to graduate in three years. Why rush this valuable learning experience? Slow down and take advantage of all the opportunities available to you, many of which will never be offered again.

betterschool

“. . . the outside-of-the-classroom development that occurs during this period in a person’s life. ”

This is true. The period of 17 through the mid-20′s is often looked back upon as halcyon days. Additionally, I think we all see students whom we would advise to “slow down” if we thought they would (or could) listen to us.

However, it is self-centered of us to assume that being engaged in college courses at a leisurely pace — or even being in college classrooms at all — is a necessary condition to this phase of growing up.

Additionally, you and most who have an interest in this topic ignore the highly relevant fact that half of the nation’s college students are adults. Most of these people work and have families. So far as we have evidence in any direction, these adult students are no better or worse citizens in the aggregate than is the professoriate.

Finally, building upon your concern for pace, I think the gains are even better for students who “drop in and out” of college, perhaps completing their degree in their early 30′s (close to the median age of college students today). Taking a degree in this fashion facilitates a greater appreciation of knowledge and a closer relationship between learning and application — in work and in life at-large.

However much fun it was way back when, we need to climb out of the “old box” in which college students were 17 years old and needed our help to become enlightened citizens. This model is increasingly inappropriate even for today’s 17 year-olds.

22266017

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frankschmidt

This proposal is collateral damage from the economy.

The two most important experiences of my undergraduate career involved “fallow summers.” The first was in an industrial job – hot, boring work. Unfortunately, that’s not feasible these days, since there is so little industry.

The second was an undergraduate research program 1000 miles from home. I liked that one better, and not just because it had longer workdays. My university does the same thing with some hundreds of students per summer, and the faculty who take them into their labs do so without any increase in compensation. As many have pointed out, the fields are not really fallow in the summers.

All changes have tradeoffs – Vedder’s proposal is fine for “gas-station education” – fill the tank and send them on their way. Since the economy of the future will require people who can think and figure out stuff, we may lose important aspects of a small-l liberal undergraduate education if we adopt this model willy-nilly, and the consequences could be dire.

22280998

Summer is not a fallow season for faculty. Yes, we do take vacations. We also conduct research — writing papers, writing grants, and carrying out the bulk of actually doing the research. Oh, in light of our recent class experiences and keeping up with the literature, we also revise courses for the coming year.

sand6432

McPherson and Gutmann, of course, have the advantage of experience as college presidents and their expertise as philosophers. McPherson co-founded the journal Economics and Philosophy, and Gutmann is a well-known political philosopher, whose book Democratic education I had the privilege of publishing at Princeton University Press. We are fortunate to have serious thinkers like these engaged with the challenging issues facing higher education.—Sandy Thatcher

betterschool

Indirectly, your point aligns with one I make frequently. We speak of higher education as if it had specific denotative meaning or at least a cluster of closely related denotations. In fact, it is a family resemblance construct with the full range of implications attached thereto. The Chronicle creates or at least facilitates this confusion in many of its headlines and narratives.

Separately, to your comment:

“Vedder’s proposal is fine for “gas-station education” – fill the tank and send them on their way. Since the economy of the future will require people who can think and figure out stuff, we may lose important aspects of a small-l liberal undergraduate education if we adopt this model willy-nilly, and the consequences could be dire.”

You imply two empirically unsupportable claims. There is no evidence that a liberal arts education (I had one myself and enjoyed it) is a necessary condition to the development of critical thinking skills (your “think and figure out stuff”). Likewise, there is no evidence to support your idea that a compressed educational program, especially one that exploits modern learning and evaluation sciences, will produce inferior results in the area of critical thinking.

First, the entire area of critical thinking is scientifically murky. Current evidence suggests that the small part of it that can be taught is likely to be context dependent. Additionally, the application of modern learning theory suggests that the most robust learning occurs in the direction practice to theory and not other way around as generally believed and chanted by some in the professoriate since the time of Dewey. If so, applied programs that extend over time and application have, assuming the right content, the best chance of developing highly generalizable knowledge and, as you say, the ability to figure out stuff. The general approach implied by your comments works best only for high IQ learners who, by the way, can figure out how to learn no matter how badly or inefficiently we teach.

mhayden

I, too, would be happy to answer that call. It seems that we need to do better at entering these discussions, and find ways to encourage others to accept our input in good faith. Economists have been generally dismissive, and psychologists grudgingly accommodating. We’ll have no chance with policy makers without the support of those other two.

Erica_Blair

I’ve worked with many students who could graduate in three years even without attending in the summers, thanks to AP credit and college credit earned in high school. More frequently than not, they opt to stay for an extra year, sometimes adding another major, because they feel college is supposed to be four years. They rarely find the argument that they could enter the workforce or move on with their academic plans earlier more compelling than staying on campus.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=509757809 David Wilkins

There’s another issue not addressed here, and that is the 33% increase in faculty contract time (taking into consideration that most permanent faculty are on 9 month contracts). How will that be funded? Also missing is a discussion how faculty research will be impacted. Faculty don’t get summers “off” as portrayed here, but instead are not compensated by the institution during those months. For faculty in the sciences, that’s when we have the opportunity to earn supplemental funding that supports our research efforts. If we go 12 months, year round academic year, when are faculty supposed to work and get paid from their grants?

Having the university open its doors for 12 months and achieve higher utilization of its facilities is something worth discussing, but don’t discuss it without being aware of the full impact to faculty and, accordingly, university research productivity. Given the precipitous decline in state support (I can’t imagine our state increasing its support – they’d simply push more off on the students), universities are increasing reliant on extramural funding brought in from non-tuition, non-appropriated sources.

R117532

Jason,

One can argue that this topic falls squarely in the area of professional responsibility for anyone accepting an obligation to teach. While not all or even most empirical studies focused on the relations between brain sciences, learning sciences, and teaching examine calendars, many of them do, and many more do so indirectly. I did a quick search, taking not too much more time than it took you to read and post your reply, and came up with what looks like thousands of research references, including several metaanalyses that subsume from dozens to hundreds of individual studies that have been filtered for certain kinds of methodological rigor. You can find them too. (Hint: begin with AERA; even ED published a metaanalysis subsuming hundreds of individuals studies focusing on asynchronous learning and learning outcomes.) Your question, while innocent enough on its face, is tantamount to asking a physician if there have ever been any studies on the improvement of surgeries and asking that he be willing to share two or three.

goxewu

Reiterated from above, for Prof. Wilkins’s benefit:

* Faculty would need extra compensation to teach year-round. (Yes they
would. And the details of compensation, whether
two-semesters-on-and-one-off is the outside limit of a full-time
workload, whether different “off” semesters could be worked smoothly
into the curriculum, etc., would have to be worked out. But if every
obviously preponderantly beneficial major change were rejected because
details had to be worked out, nothing would ever change for the better.)

* Faculty need summers off for research. (What’s so bad about a faculty
member doing his or her research during the fall or spring semester, and
teaching during the summer? What’s wrong with London being less
cloggged with literature professors and Florence less overrun by art
historians in the summer, and those cities being more populated with
scholars during other times of the year?)

Yes, there would be some negotiating. But it wouldn’t be all that difficult, if the two-semesters-on-one-semester-off were maintained, to have faculty off-campus doing their research during semesters other than the summer. It might, in fact, make for more interesting (for the faculty) teaching duties, e.g., that senior professor who monopolizes the course you’d like to teach might be gone one semester when you’re around, so you’d get to teach it.

As for faculty “not compensated by the institution during those [summer] months,” my experience–both direct and indirect–is that professors get paychecks year-’round (i.e., their salaries are divided up into monthly or biweekly checks over the entire year), and only receive compensation from September through May exclusively if they deliberately opt for that.

R117532

I think one of Mr. Gox’s points is that this isn’t all about us. Significant benefits would accrue to students, parents (if they are among the half that are not adults or are adults whose parents are footing the bill), the economy, and in some measure society at large. It would be one thing if making these changes (for which there is considerable empirical support in terms of benefits including, if done right, learning) were to be destructive of the professoriate as we know it. However, they have already been made in several reputable contexts, with benefits and acceptance all around. What we are seeing is hidebound conservatism. Ironically, the model that produced the methods that are being defended was itself a somewhat radical innovation. Innovators innovate and conservatives cling.

squacky

I was curious about whether there were in fact studies examining atypical academic calendars at colleges/universities and their relationship with student learning. Put simply, I was wondering about any specific studies that abby12 might have at her/his fingertips. Innocent question, yes, and it remains so. I wasn’t expecting a response, just hoping for one. Instead, I got yours. I’m not naive, nor am I a jerk. Your post is tantamount to calling me one, the other, or both. In the time it took you to compose your message, you could have done, well, any number of things. Lucky me.

Fat_Man

My kids attended a fancy expensive private university. I noticed that there were no 8:00 am classes, and many courses did not have Friday classes. The hours of operation seemed to be 9 to 4 Mon-Thur. They could easily expand the University by 60% if they were to adopt ordinary business hours.

tardigrade

I would seriously like to know why no psychologists have studied the bias in selective admissions based on personality type (especially at the graduate level, at which the parents’ personalities have less of an influence).

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