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[polly_mer]

Merely_Polly says:

"However, logical check, Cecelia_MG, I have 21000+ posts because I do tend to latch onto a discussion and keep responding until I have argued my opponent into submission or been convinced that I was eventually wrong (it does happen on occasion).  We've got math.  We've got logical arguments fails in a big way.  I'm not going anywhere until this is resolved."

So what. For every moment you're posting here you're not working at a job.

<chuckle>

You really don't get the academic life, do you?  According to my job description, my duties include things like education of the general public in appropriate venues.  Thus, when I post here on a serious thread* to disseminate information and engage in public dialog about things in my area of expertise, yes, technically, I am doing my job.

For example, in the category of professional development for my annual activities report, public discussions, private ongoing discussions with colleagues at other institutions, and similar activities count as part of my job.  In the category of service, outreach to the community to educate on the mission of the university and to provide information not otherwise easily available count as part of my job.

Because I'm not a grade-grubbing checkboxer, I don't put my fora activities on my annual report.  However, I do get regular, positive feedback on my contributions here from people who are qualified to judge and who know that the academic "job" is not limited to punching a clock on the campus and that public education and service to the community are expected parts of the academic "job".

Oh, and for the record, I also finished a technical review yesterday, graded a stack of papers, responded to student emails, wrote papers for posting to my CMS to provide extra feedback for my students, wrote on a draft of a research paper, and did a bit of research even though my university officially closed at 6 am for all day due to ice.

Also for the record, I am not required to spend 24 hours a day working at any job.  My fora activities take up the time that other people might spend drinking their coffee, reading a newspaper, walking the dog, going to a bar with friends, jogging, or other leisure activities.  It just so happens that I believe so much in the mission of the university and education that I spend most of my time talking about it, thinking about it, and writing about it, which is why I became an academic.

How much do you love your job, Cecilia?  Are you getting paid to come here and spout ignorant drivel?

*a serious thread is in contrast to a game thread like Free Ass.

[conjugate]

This Polly_mere:
You can discover how I arrived at the number of $50,000 as a starting salary by reading the August 2006 issue of The Quarterly Journal of Economics.  The article's title is, Pay, reference points, and police performance by Alexandre Mas. Is my source.

The accessibility to that article is your concern, not mine. I'm not interested in engaging in any form of digital diarrhea with you.

Why do you think P_M can't access the article?  That wasn't her point. 

I am impressed at the level of self-awareness you show in describing your posts as "digital diarrhea," however. 

[cecelia_mg]

Prytania3:

"And honestly, I can't believe that some of you expect most students to go to college for any reason other than to get a better job. When I went to Penn, it cost $7500/year including room and board and meal plan. Now it cost 50K a year. Even the cc where I teach is nearly 5K/year. College has gotten way too expensive to fool around trying to find yourself and taking classes just to see what they're like. Tuition inflation is about 5 times as high as the inflation of health care. It's freaking ridiculous.

And the reality is that jobs demand you have a college degree, and usually for no good reason."

Agreed. The academy will never run out of sophists.

[polly_mer]

Prytania3:

"And honestly, I can't believe that some of you expect most students to go to college for any reason other than to get a better job. When I went to Penn, it cost $7500/year including room and board and meal plan. Now it cost 50K a year. Even the cc where I teach is nearly 5K/year. College has gotten way too expensive to fool around trying to find yourself and taking classes just to see what they're like. Tuition inflation is about 5 times as high as the inflation of health care. It's freaking ridiculous.

And the reality is that jobs demand you have a college degree, and usually for no good reason."

Agreed. The academy will never run out of sophists.

Jobs demand that you have a college degree.  Hmm.

Interesting.

Just off the top of my head:

Police officer
Computer programmer
Computer hardware maintainer
Restaurant manager
Mechanic
Plumber
Electrician
Over-the-road truck driver

All of these jobs pay well above minimum wage and the people who are qualified and live in the right places will make more than that magical $50K figure.

A solid case involves evidence, not opinions stated as though they were fact.

[prytania3]

Prytania3:

"And honestly, I can't believe that some of you expect most students to go to college for any reason other than to get a better job. When I went to Penn, it cost $7500/year including room and board and meal plan. Now it cost 50K a year. Even the cc where I teach is nearly 5K/year. College has gotten way too expensive to fool around trying to find yourself and taking classes just to see what they're like. Tuition inflation is about 5 times as high as the inflation of health care. It's freaking ridiculous.

And the reality is that jobs demand you have a college degree, and usually for no good reason."

Agreed. The academy will never run out of sophists.

Jobs demand that you have a college degree.  Hmm.

Interesting.

Just off the top of my head:

Police officer
Computer programmer
Computer hardware maintainer
Restaurant manager
Mechanic
Plumber
Electrician
Over-the-road truck driver

All of these jobs pay well above minimum wage and the people who are qualified and live in the right places will make more than that magical $50K figure.

A solid case involves evidence, not opinions stated as though they were fact.

In CT, cops have to have at least an associate's degree, and they are moving toward the BA--which is so freaking ridiculous. All you need to be a cop is a gun and a bad attitude.

[polly_mer]

Prytania3:

"And honestly, I can't believe that some of you expect most students to go to college for any reason other than to get a better job. When I went to Penn, it cost $7500/year including room and board and meal plan. Now it cost 50K a year. Even the cc where I teach is nearly 5K/year. College has gotten way too expensive to fool around trying to find yourself and taking classes just to see what they're like. Tuition inflation is about 5 times as high as the inflation of health care. It's freaking ridiculous.

And the reality is that jobs demand you have a college degree, and usually for no good reason."

Agreed. The academy will never run out of sophists.

Jobs demand that you have a college degree.  Hmm.

Interesting.

Just off the top of my head:

Police officer
Computer programmer
Computer hardware maintainer
Restaurant manager
Mechanic
Plumber
Electrician
Over-the-road truck driver

All of these jobs pay well above minimum wage and the people who are qualified and live in the right places will make more than that magical $50K figure.

A solid case involves evidence, not opinions stated as though they were fact.

In CT, cops have to have at least an associate's degree, and they are moving toward the BA--which is so freaking ridiculous. All you need to be a cop is a gun and a bad attitude.

In the states around here, police have to go to academy for a few weeks for specialized training in the laws of the state, but they don't need any college work.  A GED is sufficient.

[cecelia_mg]

Prytania3 wrote:

"In CT, cops have to have at least an associate's degree, and they are moving toward the BA--which is so freaking ridiculous. All you need to be a cop is a gun and a bad attitude."

Mass. has the Quinn bill. The bill contributes money to police graduates of criminal justice and related fields. These police officers have union contracts that obligate cities and towns to regular salary increases based on the level of the degree earned. The largest community college in the state has a criminal justice program that attracts so many students the campus looks like a police academy.

In the past year the state reduced its' contribution to the Quinn Bill by $15 million leaving cities and towns to fund their contractual obligations entirely on their own. Towns refusing to pay are being sued by police unions.

[spork]

Just curious -- is anyone at a campus where Academically Adrift has stimulated actual changes in curriculum, teaching, assessment?

[mad_doctor]

In CT, cops have to have at least an associate's degree, and they are moving toward the BA--which is so freaking ridiculous. All you need to be a cop is a gun and a bad attitude.

True, but now that college is the new high school, it's ok for cops to go to college, pry.  They have standards, you know...

[mended_drum]

Just curious -- is anyone at a campus where Academically Adrift has stimulated actual changes in curriculum, teaching, assessment?

My SLAC is participating in the CLA, and we have had meetings to discuss Academically Adrift.  I'm only halfway through the book, but my colleagues have expressed the most concern about what the study says about minority success, particularly of African Americans. 

I don't know that there have been substantial changes in curriculum, except for a new emphasis on freshman writing.   Personally, if asked, I intend to emphasize the book's criticism of depending heavily on student evaluations for measuring teaching effectiveness.

Additionally, I think that the book bolsters those who work at SLACs like mine, since many of the problems identified in it don't apply (no grad students, very few adjuncts, lots of contact with students outside of class, emphasis on the traditional liberal arts, etc, are fundamental to this type of institution).  I suspect that the book, along with CLA and NSSE results, will help market my institution, but that's a bit outside my area. 

On the other hand, reading the book complicates feelings about not serving a broader student population, at least for me and several of my colleagues.

[mad_doctor]

I thought this "damning indictment of the American higher-education system" might interest a number of forumites.  The findings of the study itself are depressing, but probably don't come as much of a surprise to any of us. 

One quote from the article:

Among the most troubling findings from the postgraduate survey, Mr. Arum says, is that 30 percent of the recent graduates said that they read a newspaper "monthly or never," even online.

"How do you sustain a democratic society," Mr. Arum said, "when large numbers of the most educationally elite sector of your population are not seeing it as a normal part of their everyday experience to keep up with the world around them? We need higher education to take the institutional responsibility for educating people broadly to see this as a basic part of civic life."

That notion of institutional culture, Ms. Heiland says, is the basic lesson that the public should take from the book. "I don't want people to walk away blaming people," she said. "You can say, Oh, the problem is with the students because they don't study enough. The problem is with the faculty because their priorities are elsewhere. There's truth in all that. But for me, what's really powerful about the book is that it talks about the culture of higher education and talks about how the work of one player is related to the work of everyone else. We need to talk about higher education as a system."

Thoughts?

I totally missed this one, canuckois... thanks!  

This book is saying college is the new high school.  I'm shocked!  SHOCKED!!!

I have several observations...

1) Yes, students complain when they're not challenged...  and then complain when they're challenged.  Of course, when they're challenged, the complaints take the form of blame-deflecting excuses, "the professor's boring", "the professor's unprepared", "the professor's rude and inconsiderate".  Most deans seem to be incapable of telling the difference between various kinds of complaints, and play the "I'm the messenger" role, and follow up with something along the lines of "this is an indication of a problem in your classes".  Professors respond the only way they can... dumb it down.

2) Dunno about the claim that "our institutions really aren't set up to make undergraduate education a priority".  Parts of our institutions are prioritized on undergraduate education, other parts are prioritized on making money, and other parts are prioritized on serving themselves and padding their lifestyle at the expense of taxpayers and students.  Incentives should be aligned so that all members of the university community are rewarded for positive educational outcomes, and penalized for negative ones.  If you're going to run the university like a business, as so many admins are fond of analogizing, then how about starting by making them accountable for educational outcomes rather than retention and enrollment?  I'm calling BS on that one.

3)  The issue of studying in groups probably depends.  There is a lot of literature on the work effectiveness of groups.  Group size, leadership structure, task, task structure, group composition, individual factors, and maybe a dozen more things are critical determinants of group performance.  My summary of the literature is that you are almost certain to fail if "group work" is simply an edict sent out for all faculty to comply with.  Not all classes, not all topics, and not all students are suitable for group work.  IMO, it is best to leave it to the faculty's discretion.

4) LMFAO @ "It might sound trite, Mr. Arum says, but those observations boil down to the lesson that colleges must find ways to build cultures of academic rigor."  Universities did just fine with rigor for 900 years before the advent of "enlightened" administrative and pedagogical practice in the last 40-50 years or so.  What colleges "must find" is a way to throw out all the pseudo-enlightened drivel being forced on faculties by their "enlightened" administrations.

5)  With regard to teamwork, ask anyone who plays team sports and they'll tell you that all members of a team hold all other members of the team accountable.  Even "captains" are held accountable by other team members.  There is no member of a team that is above discipline by their teammates.  Coaches, in case you want to use that analogy, are team members whose status is determined by the consent of the team, not by fiat or dictat.  When the players lose confidence in the coach, it's over... the coach must go.  I'm fine with running universities on a "team" model, but let's not simply appropriate the analogy for some members of the team and not others.

[zharkov]

Most deans seem to be incapable of telling the difference between various kinds of complaints, and play the "I'm the messenger" role, and follow up with something along the lines of "this is an indication of a problem in your classes".  Professors respond the only way they can... dumb it down.

Do you work at my school?

I worked at one school where we designed a freshman seminar for 20 students, tops.  Within a year, they had adjuncts teaching it with 35 in a class.  And then the dean complained it was poorly designed.

[spork]

At my institution (primarily undergraduate, graduate programs relegated to sideshow status, no TAs), the book is being held up by some administrators as support for assessment and a more holistic (university-wide rather than department-driven) view of the curriculum.

Newer faculty know that certain elder colleagues offer dumbed-down versions of the same courses that they teach, with the result that the newer faculty get complaints in student evaluations. So maybe the book will foment a revolution.

Not to change the subject of this thread, but Mark Taylor's Crisis on Campus is a good companion to Academically Adrift. Taylor gained notoriety on the fora starting in 2009 with his NY Times op-ed, "End the University as We Know It." The book is a follow-up to that column.

Though I've disparaged Taylor on some aspects of his writing on the fora and elsewhere, I think his conclusions jibe with those reached by the authors of Academically Adrift.

[oldfullprof]

I'd forgotten what a great thread this was, with Cecilia acting an ass etc.  My campus is so "above" Academically Adrift, they'd never bring it up in discussion.  ("Rigor" is perhaps best left to penises?)  So frosty New England snottiness probably does have some uses.  The touchy-feely "pedagogy" discourse does have some currency here, however. 

[polly_mer]

Just curious -- is anyone at a campus where Academically Adrift has stimulated actual changes in curriculum, teaching, assessment?

Not yet.  I've told this story elsewhere on these fora, but I'll tell it again here.

I was at a teaching workshop this summer and the idea was floated that we could have a book club starting in the fall to discuss various recent books related to teaching and higher education.  One person suggested, we wouldn't even have to read the books like Academically Adrift that are so long; we could just read a brief synopsis and discuss.

A just-finished-his-first-year science assistant professor stood up, banged the table, and shouted, "No!  You have to read the book!  Would you let your students not read the book before attending class?  No!  Read the book!"  That guy got a lot of applause for that reaction, since this was a voluntary workshop on our own time when we were under no contract to the university so most of us are motivated self-learners in this area (although apparently the one person was not).