College goes down the shitter, survey says

[+ WilliamM]

The Civil Rights Act and other domestic legislation of the 60s could not have passed without Republican votes wrangled by Everett Dirksen behind the scenes. (In other words the Republicans still remembered their Civil War era roots and weren't white supremacists' party of choice back then.) Richard Nixon, may he rest in peace -- bright but neurotic guy who demanded his underlings put protecting him above their offices, which was his undoing -- was a lefty on domestic policy by comparison to Republicans these days. Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan served in an important policy position under Nixon. The EPA and the Legal Services Corporation were founded during the Nixon Administration. He may have made changes along the margins that favored business more than had been the case under LBJ, and his propensity for dirty tricks and seeing enemies around every corner led the FBI and CIA to even greater violations of civil liberties than before, but his administration and that of Gerald Ford largely continued LBJ's domestic policies.

 

Bless the GOP for their votes in the 1960s, especially of civil rights. Perhaps if Pres. Kennedy had lived and won reelection in 1964, he would have matched Pres. Johnson efforts in convincing Sen. Dirkson and other Republican to remember their civil rights roots.

 

LBJ also started the student loan program.

Edited June 13, 2015 by WilliamM

[ZhenXBear]

As partisan as things always have been -- and in some ways the rhetoric, if nothing else, was worse in the 19th century, when personal invective was considered par for the course, than it is now-- there was a time in my lifetime when there was more bipartisanship, especially on foreign policy, and less polarization. From what I understand, this might have been a leftover from WWII, when the country was mostly united. Nothing unites us as easily as a common enemy.

 

The Civil Rights Act and other domestic legislation of the 60s could not have passed without Republican votes wrangled by Everett Dirksen behind the scenes. (In other words the Republicans still remembered their Civil War era roots and weren't white supremacists' party of choice back then.) Richard Nixon, may he rest in peace -- bright but neurotic guy who demanded his underlings put protecting him above their offices, which was his undoing -- was a lefty on domestic policy by comparison to Republicans these days. Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan served in an important policy position under Nixon. The EPA and the Legal Services Corporation were founded during the Nixon Administration. He may have made changes along the margins that favored business more than had been the case under LBJ, and his propensity for dirty tricks and seeing enemies around every corner led the FBI and CIA to even greater violations of civil liberties than before, but his administration and that of Gerald Ford largely continued LBJ's domestic policies.

 

This unity remained even under Ronald Reagan, whose administration I still mostly despise but for whom I don't have the hatred I used to have. (George W. Bush's administration and reading excerpts from Reagan's diaries cured me.) Reagan and Speaker Tip O'Neill had a cordial working relationship even though they differed over policy, and O'Neill let his Democrats vote on bills instead of blocking them unless a majority of his party members supported them, as the House Republicans now do.

 

It seems as though things went south starting with the Clinton administration, mostly because the Republicans decided that bipartisanship and putting the interests of the people as a whole first, as opposed to the people who could get them nominated, was no longer in their interests.

 

I don't have any solutions to offer other than to suggest that we get the government we deserve. People complain about negative ads, but they work. They complain about sensationalism in media, but it gets clicks and attention. As Pogo said, "We have met the enemy, and he is us."

 

I completely agree. While I wasn't old enough to vote during the Reagan administration, I did have a political sense of "awareness" and very much enjoyed the polite discourse between Reagan and O'Neil. It's so disheartening to see today's fools in politics down in the mud, rolling around, pulling hair and biting at each other like rabid dogs. I would also agree that with G.H.W. Bush, the last vestiges of cooperation pretty much evaporated between the D's and R's. All we're left with now, is this sorry lot.

[+ quoththeraven]

To go back and add to the original discussion: A NYT blog post an academic I respect specializing in media and sociology tweeted recently with this tagline: "Compelling evidence that attaining a 4-yr college degree leads to 22% higher wages for 'marginal' students":

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/26/upshot/college-for-the-masses.html?_r=0&abt=0002&abg=0

 

As to a point made above about political correctness on campus: Some professors feel under siege from their students. I don't get it. (Notice he doesn't include any examples, something that tends to undermine one's argument.) Here's a good rebuttal:

 

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/122010/professors-do-live-fear-not-liberal-students

 

Excerpts:

 

Schlosser suggests that the campus left has become more controlling and censorious over the past six years, but is that really credible? The highest profile, most striking case of academic censorship on campuses in the last few years doesn't fit into Schlosser's narrative at all. Steven Salaita had his offer of employment rescinded by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign after he tweeted vehemently in opposition to Israeli violence against Palestinians. The impetus for the dismissal did not come from sensitive students, but from donors. It was top-down enforcement of a conservative party line, in other words, not a bottom-up enforcement of a liberal one.

 

....

It's no different than any other sector," said Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania. "The same thing could happen to you in corporate America if you say or do something that is considered unacceptable."

 

Thomas isn't saying that teacher's [sic] should be fired if they do something the administration deems unacceptable, but that the pressures and realities of the university and the corporate world are not wildly anomalous. And white men in the university [such as Schlosser], as in corporate America, are not wildly disadvantaged.... As David Perry, a white man, says, "We still dominate the ranks of the professoriate, the higher echelons of administration, and basically the rest of the country."

Here's an even more direct response from a former adjunct professor who makes the point I made on Twitter in response to the earlier article that his problem was with the administration, not the students:

 

http://www.vox.com/2015/6/5/8736591/liberal-professor-identity

 

Excerpts:

 

I was a liberal adjunct professor at a large university until 2013, and my liberal students never scared me at all.

 

I covered sensitive topics in my courses, including rape, capital punishment, female genital mutilation, and disputed accounts of mass atrocities. Our classroom debates were contentious, and forced students to examine their own biases. I kept an "on-call" list that pressured students to participate actively in those discussions. I did not use trigger warnings.

 

I never had any complaints.

 

I bring up my own experiences as a reminder that if the plural of anecdote isn't data, the singular of it sure as hell isn't, either. The fact that I enjoyed my time teaching doesn't tell you anything about the state of education in America — and neither does the fact that the pseudonymous author of this Vox article is a liberal professor who is terrified of his liberal students.

 

....

 

In this case, that truthy conclusion is that the rise of identity politics is doing real harm — that this new kind of discourse, whether you call it "identity politics" or "call-out culture" or "political correctness," is not just annoying or upsetting to the people it targets, but a danger to academic freedom and therefore an actual substantive problem to be addressed.

You're a professor. Why are you scared of students?

In fact, a closer read of the article shows that the actual problem the professor faces isn't the rise of a scary new breed of students. Students, after all, have been complaining about their professors and just about everything else since time immemorial.

 

Rather, if university faculty are feeling disempowered in their classrooms, that's because they do, in fact, have less power at work:the shrinking pool of tenure-track jobs and the corresponding rise in the numbers of poorly paid adjuncts means many university teachers are in a precarious position right now.

 

....

 

In that context, it's hardly surprising that non-tenured university lecturers would take an extremely conservative approach to any perceived threat to their job security. As the "liberal professor" wrote, "In this type of environment, boat-rocking isn't just dangerous, it's suicidal, and so teachers limit their lessons to things they know won't upset anybody."

 

That is a real issue, with real implications for education, and for academic freedom. But pinning the blame on students' embrace of identity politics is a mistake. If adjuncts and junior faculty members feel insecure enough to censor their teaching or work, then that's a problem in their relationship with their universities, not in their relationships with their students.

 

Indeed, in that academic environment, it wouldn't matter if liberal identity politics disappeared tomorrow. Some students will always be unhappy about something, and if faculty are this nervous, that will influence their teaching. Indeed, the article notes that the only actual complaint the professor ever received was from a conservative student angry at his "communistical" tendencies because he refused to blame poor black homeowners for the 2008 financial crisis.

 

The problem isn't the substance of student complaints — the problem is that university lecturers are so terrified of the effect student complaints could have. That's a problem to be solved by universities having faculty members' backs, not by somehow silencing the debate over identity politics.

....

[T]he article garnered so much attention because it seems like it's raising new evidence that identity politics is a bad thing — not just a kind of discourse that some people dislike — by identifying real harm. In January, liberal writer Jonathan Chait took a stab at doing something similar in New York Magazine, critiquing political correctness by claiming it was an attempt to "expand freedom for the oppressed by eliminating it for their enemies," and that such efforts were doomed to undermine the freedom they sought to protect. And now the Vox article seems to suggest that the harm is to academic freedom: even the professors are scared! These kids today with their identity politics are threatening the academy!

 

It's not surprising that people are eager to grasp at such conclusions, because without some kind of real harm to point to, critiques of identity politics collapse in on themselves. As Matt Yglesias wrote in January, the term "identity politics" is generally used to refer to feminist or anti-racist critiques, but that assumes that traditionally marginalized groups are the only people with an "identity."

 

"The implication of this usage," Yglesias wrote, "is that somehow an identity is something only women or African Americans or perhaps LGBT people have. White men just have ideas about politics that spring from a realm of pure reason, with concerns that are by definition universal."

 

Citing the supposed threat to the academy is another way to claim that arguments against identity politics are rooted in pure reason and are trying to protect universal concerns, rather than silence specific concerns raised by marginalized people that we'd rather not listen to. (After all, if you're going to dismiss campus identity politics as a debate "in which the feelings of individuals are the primary or even exclusive means through which social issues are understood and discussed," as the anonymous professor does, then you need to come up with something beyond your own feelings to explain why that's a problem.)

 

But "identity politics are bad" is the wrong lesson to take from the experiences of the professor who wrote for Vox. If adjuncts and tenure-track professors are disempowered in relation to their students, the solution isn't to attack students, as the professor did, sneering at undergraduates with too many feelings or an unsuspecting woman who had the misfortune of tweeting about the biases of scientific research and discourse.

 

Rather, it's to focus on a university system that treats students as customers and faculty as the interchangeable means of production. If you care about academic freedom, care about that.

[+ stevenkesslar]

a high percentage of the undergraduate teaching at the public colleges is done by part-time faculty who eke out a living by teaching several courses at a time at different schools. I have known plenty of these "adjunct instructors," who are lucky to make $30,000/year. The large increases in the cost of a college education are often driven by the proliferation of administrative non-teaching employees, and the obscene salaries and benefits paid to the top officers at many schools and education systems, like the three tiers of the state higher education apparatus in California. The excuse used for paying so much for the presidents, deans, CFOs, etc., is that it is necessary to attract "qualified" people to run things, as though their main qualification is the desire to make as much money as possible.

 

+1.

 

That's why I think the best political solution is tie more taxpayer support - meaning reducing the amount of debt students have to take on - to some kind of pay freeze, especially at the top end. They are essentially in the same boat as the CEO's across corporate America who think they can't possibly be paid what they are worth, even as they bemoan how increasing the minimum wage makes no sense.

[+ WilliamM]

That's why I think the best political solution is tie more taxpayer support - meaning reducing the amount of debt students have to take on - to some kind of pay freeze, especially at the top end. They are essentially in the same boat as the CEO's across corporate America who think they can't possibly be paid what they are worth, even as they bemoan how increasing the minimum wage makes no sense.

 

This fall, tuition & room and board at Ivy League universities is at least $65,000 a year. That is just too much money!!

[gallahadesquire]

I am "retired" (out on disability). I apologize for not having read all the posts. I just want to share my own history.

 

I went to MIT with 12 semester hours of advanced placement, which came in handy when I had to drop out for a term, due to mononucleosis.

My college adviser, who is nationally very well known, chose three colleges for me: MIT; Tufts [i was waitlisted]; and RPI [they accepted me mid-Feburary]. I had spent a summer at Carnegie-Mellon, on an NSF scholarship, and they said we just needed to let them know if we wanted to go there.

 

As for MIT: I had no idea what my major would be. I knew it would be Chemistry; Physics; or Mathematics. I soon realized that Higher Level Math confused the hell out of me. Physics, at least beyond third semester, was also clear as mud. Chemistry, on the other hand, seemed to be my forte.

 

But my point is: I knew "STEM" was going to be my field. COnsolodated buggywhips, advanced basketweaving, and a Doctorate in Music Performance on the Kazoo didn't seem to be real advanced for actually having a living.

[interestingly, I spent most of my spare time singing, in the Tanglewood Festival Chorus and the Framingham Choral SOciety.]

 

I think my sister's advice to her #1 son makes the most sense: Whatever you do, ALSO get a degree in something that will actually provide you with a job. His degree was in journalism, at which he's very good and (of course) unemployed. Subsequent studies, thanks to his inheritance, have included getting licensed as a realtor, and he is working on becoming a paralegal.

 

When I got into medical school, I wanted to be a Primary Care Physician. What was I thinking? [No flaming allowed. PM's okay]. I became an anesthesiologist, and had a really good time at it. How? My Mentor had his Ph.D. in Inorganic Chemistry and was a baritone and a cook. I had my BS in Chemistry, was a Tenor, and a cook.

 

My bottom line on all of this:

1. Good guidance. I knew my good bits, and I was lucky they were STEM. [Maybe not so much the "M", and the "E" was untested.] I knew I'd always be employable, somewhere.
   
2. Making the curriculum appropriate. After four years of math, english, and german; three years of history; two years of chemistry and physics; and a year of biology, I was pretty much ready for anything.
   
3. I whole-heartedly support the European [perhaps predominantly German?] system, where one is chosen into Academics or Technical fields around the age of 16. My plumber is fantastic: Amazingly smart; understands the science behind what he is doing; and enjoys the hell out of it. How would he have been as an English Major? Lord only knows.
   

My real bottom line is this:

 

We need to remove the stigma from the "technical" fields of pluming, electricity, a/c and the like. Frankly, I think they're generally overpaid; but they do work that needs to be done, and I, for one, am NOT about to re-charge my AC central unit.

 

We need to de-emphasize the importance of ANY degree in the non-STEM fields. I don't know how to do this: Perhaps significant intervention by the current professors of English, French, Philosophy, Religion etc. need to figure out how to limit their fields. Is there a way to evaluate an academe's ability, prior to the >$100,000 spent to create an Instructor [Assistant Professor at any other college, other than Harvard]? I do consider these fields essential, but it would help if success were guaranteed prior to matriculation. A large pill to take, but a useful one.

 

My housemate, ex-escort, is an English major cum massage therapist. He recognizes the lack of usefulness of his college degree, but we both agree that, were money and time no object, he'd make a great academe; he is FABULOUS as a massage therapist, but has trouble getting into the appropriate setting.

 

If anyone wants to get me goaded, send a PM on Medicine and its foibles. Boy, does IT need a re-vamping.

[Epigonos]

As I see it Ivy League Schools are not the major problem. Many, if not most, of those school have huge endowments, some even into the billions of dollars, and thus many of their students have some form of student aid. Ivy League Schools aren't dependent of state and federal dollars even though some of their programs receive federal research grants. The real problem is the state universities and colleges. Schools in the California State University system and the University of California system are collapsing under the weight of administrators. The number of non-teaching deans at these school is overwhelming. I taught high for over thirty years and my teaching load required me to teach five classes a day five days a week for a total of twenty five hours. My nephew just took a tenure tack position at one of the California State University Schools. His starting salary will be $65,000.00, he will received a subsidized, on campus, one bedroom apartment. He will be required to teach nine hours a week, spend three hours a week sitting in his office supposedly available to students and six hours a week doing research for a total of eighteen hours total. He is unhappy with the amount of time he will be required to teach because, to his way of thinking, it takes time away from his research time. He is a member of a science department so research is an important part of his job but what amount of research is required for professors in the social sciences -- not a lot and they have the same teaching load and the same starting salary.

[tyro]

Odd Girl Out again........

 

I have three degrees, two of which I don't "use." The English one has helped me make a living; the music ones have helped me make a life. Granted, my undergrad was almost totally paid for with merit-based scholarships (my parents got money back after room, board, and books my freshman year.) I also got an assistantship for graduate school. Thus, I did not have the crippling debt kids face today, thank all deities. But there's a different mindset between "going to college to learn something" and "going to college to get a job." Many of those who choose the latter end up jobless anyway.

 

Cheryl Richardson, a moderately woo-woo self-help/motivational guru whom I like a lot, suggested that people delay college until their 30th birthday. They should graduate from high school and then give themselves a chance to try a little bit of everything before they shell out years of life and scads of money on a gamble. Makes sense to me.

T

PS The aforementioned Ms. Richardson has no college degree and makes a FUCKTON more money than I do.

PPS I teach at one of the few comprehensive high schools left in the country. Our students' vocational programs are on-site, not at a separate facility. Those who find a viable career path in high school have a huge advantage over those who go to our local two-year college to "find themselves."

[+ purplekow]

I taught high for over thirty years and my teaching load required me to teach five classes a day five days a week for a total of twenty five hours. .

That is a lot of work when you are high all the time. Where did you find the energy? When I am high, I can barely move.

[tyro]

That is a lot of work when you are high all the time. Where did you find the energy. When I am high, I can barely move.

 

Hey, at some schools the contact buzz alone will do the trick!

T

[Epigonos]

It amazing how the meaning changes when you omit a word and then don't do a good job proof reading. Sorry about that it should have read "high school" as you well know purplekow

[+ purplekow]

It amazing how the meaning changes when you omit a word and then don't do a good job proof reading. Sorry about that it should have read "high school" as you well know purplekow

I was taught we say what we mean and mean what we say. Could it be your Freudian slip was showing?

And while I suspected you mean high school, one can never be too sure. The men (and women) on this board have surprised me more often then I would care to admit. And some of them, in a very good way. (Think 3AM tap on the back when both of his hands are massaging your shoulders.)

[+ quoththeraven]

As I see it Ivy League Schools are not the major problem. Many, if not most, of those school have huge endowments, some even into the billions of dollars, and thus many of their students have some form of student aid. Ivy League Schools aren't dependent of state and federal dollars even though some of their programs receive federal research grants. The real problem is the state universities and colleges. Schools in the California State University system and the University of California system are collapsing under the weight of administrators. The number of non-teaching deans at these school is overwhelming. I taught high for over thirty years and my teaching load required me to teach five classes a day five days a week for a total of twenty five hours. My nephew just took a tenure tack position at one of the California State University Schools. His starting salary will be $65,000.00, he will received a subsidized, on campus, one bedroom apartment. He will be required to teach nine hours a week, spend three hours a week sitting in his office supposedly available to students and six hours a week doing research for a total of eighteen hours total. He is unhappy with the amount of time he will be required to teach because, to his way of thinking, it takes time away from his research time. He is a member of a science department so research is an important part of his job but what amount of research is required for professors in the social sciences -- not a lot and they have the same teaching load and the same starting salary.

 

No one obtains tenure without research publications. Hence, the term "publish or perish." It's true that the lab time involved in science research may be more extensive or taxing than is the case for research in the social sciences, much of which involves polls, computers, and statistics, but it's also true that the actual lab work is done primarily, if not entirely, by graduate students and lab assistants.

 

Six hours a week doing research may be an expectation, but I would be surprised if it were enough to produce the amount and level of publications necessary to attain tenure unless California state universities are noticeably laxer than the private universities at which some friends of mine teach. I attended a state university on the East Coast, and one of my professors, although tenured and universally lauded for his teaching ability and service to the history department, was never promoted to full professor because of his lack of publications. He published his magnum opus after he retired.

[Epigonos]

In the California public universities there is a vast difference in the meaning of publish or perish between the University of California system and the California State University system. In the University of California system, “publish or perish” has a much tighter definition than it does in the California State University system. In the University of California system the time between required publications is much shorter than it is in the California State University system. Additionally where one publishes and what one publishes are defined very differently in the two systems. At the University of California one must publish “significant” articles in major publications or publish “major” books or textbooks. At the California State Universities one may publish articles in just about any journal or magazine available and at rather infrequent intervals. Up until about fifteen or twenty years ago the California State Universities were known as California State Colleges. The California State (Collages) Universities did not and generally still do not offer PhD programs. Their main emphasis was on teaching NOT research. Over the last few years this difference has blurred somewhat and the two systems have begun to work together on PhD programs. As is sometimes currently the case the hands on research is done at a specific California State University and the academic text work is done at a neighboring University of California which also grants the PhD in the name of the University of California.

[+ stevenkesslar]

As I see it Ivy League Schools are not the major problem. Many, if not most, of those school have huge endowments, some even into the billions of dollars, and thus many of their students have some form of student aid. Ivy League Schools aren't dependent of state and federal dollars even though some of their programs receive federal research grants. The real problem is the state universities and colleges.

 

Read this report and weep about the huge increases in college costs, and the shift in who pays from taxpayers to students.

 

http://trends.collegeboard.org/sites/default/files/college-pricing-2012-full-report_0.pdf

 

Page 14 gives a breakdown of price. As described in the report:

 

• Over the 30 years from 1982-83 to 2012-13, average published tuition and fees at private nonprofit four-year institutions rose by 167%, from $10,901 (in 2012 dollars) to $29,056. The average published price at public two-year colleges rose by 182%, from $1,111 (in 2012 dollars) to $3,131, while the increase for in-state students at public four-year institutions was 257%, from $2,423 to $8,655.

 

Epigonos is right. While the Ivy Leagues have higher price tags than this, they all have huge per-student endowments. They can afford to basically give anyone who meets the extremely high admission standards a free or heavily discounted ride if they don't come from a well-off family. I think the real problem is the costs incurred by "everybody else," meaning most of us, as documented above.

 

The large increases in the cost of a college education are often driven by the proliferation of administrative non-teaching employees, and the obscene salaries and benefits paid to the top officers at many schools and education systems, like the three tiers of the state higher education apparatus in California. The excuse used for paying so much for the presidents, deans, CFOs, etc., is that it is necessary to attract "qualified" people to run things, as though their main qualification is the desire to make as much money as possible.

 

Page 35 and 36 provide lots of interesting and, to me, surprising data on what kind of staff college tuition pays for.

 

The most interesting fact is that the percentage of FTE staff that are faculty is stable and surprisingly small: between 32 % and 36 % between 1976 and 2011, depending on whether it is public or private institutions.

 

Executive and management staff has grown, moreso at privates than publics, e.g. from 5 % of FTE staff in 1976 to 6 % of FTE staff in 2011 at publics. As Charlie states there are some ripe targets here to gripe about, like presidents and deans - the high hanging fruit - but as a percentage of the overall budget it is small and not growing by much.

 

The huge shift has been from "non-professional, non-instructional staff" to "other professionals," which grew from 11 % of FTE in 1976 to 25 % of FTE staff in 2011 at public institutions. As described in the report:

 

• The growing “other professionals” category includes student, academic, and institutional support functions that require a bachelor’s degree or comparable experience. Examples of the many job titles in this category include human resources specialists, accountants and auditors, computer specialists, counselors, librarians, and coaches.

 

I would argue there is a lot of low hanging fruit to go after as well, if the real goal is to make tuition as affordable as possible for students, and to help taxpayers feel like they are getting their money's worth if we try to shift some of the burden from students back to taxpayers.

[samhexum]

Congratulations — you’ve been rejected.

 

A Florida college sent 430 acceptance notices to students whose applications to the school had been rejected.The Admissions 101 blunder was committed by the University of South Florida St. Petersburg.

 

“Once again congratulations on your admission to USFSP!” read an email addressed to prospective students. “We are excited to welcome you to the university and very proud of all that you have accomplished so far.”

 

An hour later, according to the Tampa Bay Times, would-be students received a follow-up saying: “There was an error in the system. Please disregard the previous email.”

 

The school’s chancellor blamed the emails on “human error.” A school spokeswoman said a staff member mistook a list of applicants for a list of accepted candidates, and sent the email in error.

 

“We regret it,” the school’s chancellor said.

 

According to USFCP, 680 acceptance emails were sent out, but only 250 recipients had actually been accepted. The school has 3,691 undergraduates and a 47% acceptance rate. Only 32% of USFCP students graduate.

[Rudynate]

Plus the overwhelming student debt that is crushing students and families.

 

My first semester as an undergrad at the University of Colorado cost, I think $180.00. I just wrote a check for it.

 

When I started graduate school, I was going to apply for financial aid, but the line was too long at the financial aid office, so I decided to put it on a credit card instead. I put my entire master's degree on a credit card. Total cost? Around $5k. I paid it off in about two years.