I was traveling and somehow marked it as read without actually processing its content. BUT. Welcome to the Sengunatics, @Os Trigonum. We accept your letter of application.
here's where I draw the line: I love Sengun . . . but Sengunatics for the most part can go to hell. with love, of course. and present company excepted.
link should work for everyone Why Americans Have Lost Faith in the Value of College Three generations of ‘college for all’ in the U.S. has left most families looking for alternatives. https://www.wsj.com/us-news/educati...8s6l1caumqa&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink excerpt: The political turmoil that rocked universities over the past three months and sparked the resignations of two Ivy League presidents has landed like an unwelcome thud on institutions already struggling to maintain the trust of the American public. For three generations, the national aspiration to “college for all” shaped America’s economy and culture, as most high-school graduates took it for granted that they would earn a degree. That consensus is now collapsing in the face of massive student debt, underemployed degree-holders and political intolerance on campus. In the past decade, the percentage of Americans who expressed a lot of confidence in higher education fell from 57% to 36%, according to Gallup. A decline in undergraduate enrollment since 2011 has translated into 3 million fewer students on campus. Nearly half of parents say they would prefer not to send their children to a four-year college after high school, even if there were no obstacles, financial or otherwise. Two-thirds of high-school students think they will be just fine without a college degree. The pandemic drove home a sobering realization for a lot of middle-class American families: “College for all” is broken for most. Arthur Levine, president emeritus of Columbia Teachers College and author of “The Great Upheaval: Higher Education’s Past, Present and Uncertain Future,” compares this moment in post-secondary education to the seismic change that followed the Industrial Revolution. That 19th-century wave of disruption washed over schools designed to meet the needs of a sectarian, agricultural society and transformed higher education into a sprawling system of community colleges, land-grant universities and graduate schools. The dilemma faced by today’s high-school students is that while a similarly massive economic disruption has arrived, new educational alternatives have not. “Whatever comes next,” Levine says of Generation Z, “It’s not going to come soon enough for them.” So how did one of the crown jewels of American society squander so much confidence so quickly? If the pandemic marked the moment the “college for all” model finally cracked, 1965 marked its birth. As the baby boomers came of age, the federal government made loans available to any college-bound 18-year-old with a high-school diploma, in order to maintain the most educated workforce in the world. High schools scrapped vocational education programs in favor of college preparatory classes. Cash and prestige saturated college campuses while alternatives like vocational and technical schools withered. Between 1965 and 2011, university enrollment increased nearly fourfold to 21 million as the earning differential between high school and college graduates expanded. But embedded in the infrastructure of universities were hairline fractures and misaligned incentives that have led the system to buckle. University governance was designed for an analog era. Decisions are sifted through a slow, deliberative process until faculty, administrators and trustees reach consensus. The genius of the system is that it avoids the strictures of top-down control and protects academic freedom against political interference. The weakness is that it’s a recipe for stagnation. The digital revolution demanded a nimble realignment of the academy so that students could learn a quickly emerging set of skills to meet changing labor-market demands. Instead of adapting, campus interest groups protected their turf. Decisions reached by consensus usually meant the adoption of modest reforms that were the least objectionable to the greatest number of people, said Brian Rosenberg, former president of Macalester College and author of “‘Whatever It Is, I’m Against It’: Resistance to Change in Higher Education.” As students abandoned the humanities and flooded fields like computer science, big data and engineering, schools failed to respond. The result was undersubscribed history and English departments and waiting lists for classes that led to well-paying jobs. New programs in emerging fields did not start because schools could not free up the resources. more at the link
Cornell course instructor cancels class in solidarity with anti-Israel activists The Ithaca school was already facing criticism for a series of incidents related to the Israel-Hamas war during the fall semester https://jewishinsider.com/2024/01/cornell-university-alyiah-gonzales-global-strike-for-palestine/ Cornell University Instructor Cancels Class for 'Global Strike for Palestine' English graduate student Alyiah Gonzales said Israelis should 'rot in the deepest darkest pits of hell' https://freebeacon.com/campus/corne...ancels-class-for-global-strike-for-palestine/
I like this thread, very much, even though it's a little depressing to me. But the Israel/Palestine thing? eh, I call "wrong thread," or maybe your favorite: IDIOT! (especially for Cornell )
In other news, the Cal State system seems to have averted a real strike of profs given a tenative deal between the faculty union and the state system. It looks to me like the faculty basically caved and accepted the admins' last offer, and I think that's probably wise. The system really doesn't have a lot of money to offer them, and public opinion isn't exactly feeling sorry for professors these days. Ahem.
actually I think the Israel/Palestine/writing instructor thing is generally reflective of the state of graduate education in many fields right now--my own included. There is a dogmatism with incoming students, and it's been there for quite some time now. And much less of a sense that it's important to "agree to disagree." There's much more of a climate of "my way or the highway" among graduate students. That's what's depressing to me.
Interesting. I may be partially insulated in the sciences right now where people arrive less full of agenda and just want to see what they can learn. But I can sense what you're talking about in the humanities and social sciences... and yikes. Very depressing. Carry on, my not-wayward (but in fact escaping) son.
Oh, here's a good one! UC Berkeley considering a ban on faculty posting political opinions on official university platforms. https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/uc-ban-faculty-publishing-political-statements-18638302.php Heh. (grabs popcorn) I mean, I think the admins have every right to do this, but the devil will live in both the details and also, the crazy minds of professors from the social sciences. snap!
not sure if this link works for everyone or is paywalled, but I'll excerpt the main storyline After Learning Her TA Would Be Paid More Than She Was, This Lecturer Quit https://www.chronicle.com/article/a...ould-be-paid-more-than-her-this-lecturer-quit excerpt: Last spring the University of California at Santa Cruz hired Amanda Reiterman to teach two 120-student lecture classes on classical texts and Greek history. Soon after, an administrator from the history department asked Reiterman if she had any suggestions for teaching assistants. As the instructor for both classes, Reiterman would be responsible for designing the course content, lecturing, and creating lessons plans for discussion sections, while her TAs would provide support by helping with grading or leading discussion sections, for example. Reiterman, who holds a Ph.D. and has taught as a part-time lecturer at the university since 2020, recommended a former student of hers who had just graduated with a bachelor’s degree and would be pursuing a master’s in education. But when administrators started the hiring process and copied Reiterman on the emails, she was shocked to learn that the teaching assistant would earn $3,236 per month — about $300 over Reiterman’s own monthly pay. “I wrote back to my administrator and said there’s some kind of mistake,” Reiterman said. There was no mistake, though. That’s because after 48,000 graduate students, postdocs, and researchers in the University of California system went on strike in 2022 and won pay increases and expanded benefits, some TAs are now earning more than the instructors in their own classes. The minimum academic-year salary for first-year teaching assistants, for example, will increase from the $25,000 they got in the spring of 2023 to $36,000 this fall. For Reiterman, learning she would earn less than the one of the TAs she would be supervising — who was her undergraduate student just months before — was a gut punch. “It made me sick to my stomach,” she said. Unionization and strikes have upended colleges’ compensation schedules, resulting in some professors getting paid less than people with far less experience. The University Council-American Federation of Teachers, the union that represents UC-system librarians and non-tenure-track lecturers, including Reiterman, recently kicked off an effort, including an online letter-writing campaign and a couple of town halls, to persuade the system to confront what they’re calling a pay inversion. The union’s existing contract ends June 30, 2026, but union leaders are urging administrators to pay lecturers more immediately. The union doesn’t know how many lecturers are earning less than their teaching assistants, said Katie Rodger, president of the union and a lecturer at UC-Davis. While such scenarios occurred occasionally prior to the TAs’ pay increase, she said, they appear to be more common now. According to the union, lecturers teach 30 to 40 percent of credit hours across the UC system. Rodger said UC administrators have an obligation to rectify the situation. “The fact that they would allow any faculty, of any rank, to be paid less than a graduate student is something that I think that people who attend this university should be aware of as a practice and I think that all of us, as instructional faculty, should be fighting and pushing back on,” she said. Asked about the pay disparity, Heather Hansen, a system spokesperson, said in an emailed statement: “The University of California recognizes lecturers’ valuable contributions to fulfilling our teaching mission across the university system. We strive to provide competitive compensation for these integral employees: The current contract, ratified in 2022, provided wage increases totaling more than 20 percent through 2025. Additionally, lecturers are eligible for robust merit and promotion increases every one to three years, ranging from 3 percent to 9 percent or more.” “The university strives to provide fair, equitable, and consistent compensation across its employee groups and will consider these important issues as it enters negotiations with bargaining units in the coming months,” the statement continued. Reiterman was so upset at the thought of being paid less than her teaching assistant — and what that implied about her value to the university — that she resigned from teaching one of her two classes and accepted an offer from the history department to teach the other class with fewer students and no TA. “For the university to suggest that my work is less valuable, or I bring less to the table than a teaching assistant who just got a bachelor’s degree a couple of months ago and has no expertise in my field, is really insulting,” Reiterman said. more at the link
Great and surreal find. The UC system is really going to be plagued by that contract. Big time grant-winning programs (at say UC San Diego, UCSF, and maybe a few crumbs left at Berkely) are already bracing for the strain. Where you used to hire, say, 5 grads students and 2 postdocs for a big set of scientific lab experiments, the new salaries will mean about half that workforce, once you account for overhead rate on salaries. So profs (not the admins who signed the bargaining deal, mind you), will have to ask the federal granting agencies for the *same* amount of money for literally *half* the number of people working on a project. (I'm exaggerating the ratio for effect, but it's pretty damned dramatic.) I'd never thought about this UCSC case: that TA's will be making more than many of their instructors. LOL. Ah, how the mighty are plummeting. (He said, holding on desperately and depressively for another handful of years, maybe.)
link should work for everyone The Long View of Higher Ed’s Decline Harvey Mansfield arrived at Harvard in 1949. By the time he retired last year, he was practically the last conservative standing. https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-lo...khqp30f1cq2&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
How does Mr. Mansfield define the difference between a progressive and a liberal? A progressive has a “loathing for his country. It goes beyond embarrassment to real dislike of America, and in a way, therefore, of themselves, because after all they’re Americans.” Theirs is a kind of “fanatical penitentialism.” The liberal, by contrast, believes America is imperfect but remediable “or even worthy of pride—in the things, for example, that have been done contrary to white supremacy, as they see it.” Driven by his own loathing of progressives, Mr. Mansfield harbors some sympathy with America’s liberals. He believes that any solution to the ideological mess in American universities will likely come from “dismayed liberals.” And whereas there has been a great deal of successful conservative pushback in recent times—he cites Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023), the Supreme Court decision against racial preferences in admissions, along with the growing resistance to “diversity, equity and inclusion”—he doesn’t believe that people of his persuasion are up to fighting the academic culture wars on their own. “Conservatives believe in propriety,” he says. “We don’t demonstrate in the streets and occupy campuses. There are no conservative tantrums.” (For that reason, he says, “Donald Trump is not a conservative. Propriety is something he violates, or seeks to impress people by violating.”) Call me an exasperated liberal. His remarks about progressivism are becoming more accurate as the baton passes to a new generation. Our notion of trust is disjointed, where media feeds are given more of the benefit of the doubt than someone you directly communicate with. We all know where the troughs are coming from and have made our peace with it in order to consume. Having a uniform belief and interpretation of the ideas and values we hold dear is already difficult in a culturally homogeneous society let alone a melting pot such as ours. As the years pass, I'm reminded of the failings of past liberal and progressive politicians (as well as Cons) and there have been plenty of doozies we're doomed to repeat from the surety and hurbis of the next wave. Not to say that they should've been perfect, but the following justifications by partisans inevitably make any decision the best, most knowledgeable, and wise. I suppose it is all relative...the only certainty is that the era we live in is the best (or worst), which also happens to be the most knowledgeable and wise.
I think there's a good amount of evidence that this is starting to happen--the dismay part, anyway. Faculty are unhappy with the DEI stuff, as the article notes, and there is dissatisfaction with the current student protests and students' demands to police faculty's teaching in the classroom. I think many faculty in declining humanities disciplines such as English, anthropology, etc. are realizing that those fields are reaping what they sow, so to speak.
good essay. link should work for everyone The Sins of the Educated Class https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/06/...e_code=1.yE0.TG8g.WaWCWcFShxyY&smid=url-share excerpt: When I was young, I was a man on the left. In the early 1980s, I used to go to the library and read early-20th-century issues of left-wing magazines like The Masses and The New Republic. I was energized by stories of workers fighting for their rights against the elites — at Haymarket, at the 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain, on the railways where the Pullman sleeping car porters struggled for decent wages a few years after that. My heroes were all on the left: John Reed, Clifford Odets, Frances Perkins and Hubert Humphrey. But I got out of college and realized we didn’t live in the industrial age; we live in the information age. The center of progressive energy moved from the working class to the universities, and not just any universities, but the elite universities. By now we’re used to the fact that the elite universities are places that attract and produce progressives. Working-class voters now mostly support Donald Trump, but at Harvard, America’s richest university, 65 percent of students identify as progressive or very progressive, according to a May 2023 survey of the graduating class. Today we’re used to the fact that elite places are shifting further and further to the left. Writing for The Harvard Crimson, Julien Berman used A.I. to analyze opinion pieces in college newspapers for their ideological content. “Opinions of student writers at elite universities” in 2000, he found, “weren’t all that more progressive than those at nonelite ones.” But by 2023, opinions at The Crimson had grown about two and a half times more progressive than they were in 2001. More generally, Berman concluded, “Opinion sections at elite universities have gotten significantly more progressive, and they’ve outrun their nonelite counterparts.” Today, we’re used to the fact that students at elite universities have different interests and concerns from students at less privileged places. Marc Novicoff and Robert Kelchen in May published an investigative report in The Washington Monthly titled “Are Gaza Protests Happening Mostly at Elite Colleges?” They surveyed 1,421 public and private colleges and concluded, “The answer is a resounding yes.” A few schools with a large number of lower-income students, they found, had Gaza protests, “but in the vast majority of cases, campuses that educate students mostly from working-class backgrounds have not had any protest activity.” Among private schools, encampments and protests “have taken place almost exclusively at schools where poorer students are scarce and the listed tuitions and fees are exorbitantly high.” I went to an elite university and have taught at them. I find them wonderful in most ways and deeply screwed up in a few ways. But over the decades and especially recently, I’ve found the elite, educated-class progressivism a lot less attractive than the working-class progressivism of Frances Perkins that I read about when I was young. Like a lot of people, I’ve looked on with a kind of dismay as elite university dynamics have spread across national life and politics, making America worse in all sorts of ways. Let me try to be more specific about these dynamics. more at the link
At M.I.T., Black and Latino Enrollment Drops Sharply After Affirmative Action Ban Asian American students made up almost half of the 2028 class — the first admitted since the end of affirmative action. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/21/us/mit-black-latino-enrollment-affirmative-action.html
100% agreed. There will always be good ol boys, that hire from a point of preservation. But I think most in this country hire the best candidate. I have worked as a director of dining services or campus GM of dining services over the last ten years at the following universities through my company Sodexo. Rensselaer Polytechnical Institute. State University of New York at Albany The college of Saint Rose. I can tell you that maintaining a full staff is unheard of. My motto for lower end food service jobs is hire the SMILE. We can teach you the rest. Supervisors, chefs, catering staff, clerical staff are different, because they need certifications or years of job-related service. If I reject anyone from the job they applied for. They had a bad attitude during an interview or couldn't pass the background check. Now that I have transitioned to Senior dining before I ride off into the sunset. The #1 reason for not getting a job with my department is you can not produce a copy of your MMR vax. Or are unable to get a titer extraction.
