August 10th, 2010
Education News
Roundup
Articles posted by five reliably interesting sources of
news about higher education.
The New Improved CChat
Source: http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=53081
August 10th, 2010
I'm pleased to announce that everybody can now use my
backchannel system for their own presentations. The idea is,
at a live event, such as a conference presentation or speech,
people can send messages to each other and comment about
the presentation. Normally, this would happen in secret, but
it's more fun if you take the conversation and put it up on the
screen. CChat, my backchannel system, allows you to do that.
Stephen Downes, Half an Hour, August 9, 2010 3:58 p.m. [
Link ] [ Comment ]
With Friends Like These ...
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/10/rangel
August 10th, 2010
The House investigation of Rep. Charles Rangel has focused
in part on whether the congressman broke ethics rules while
raising funds for a public service center at the City College
of New York, but the panel’s recent report also suggests
college officials were working hand-in-glove with Rangel as
he solicited money from companies known to have business
interests before a committee he chaired. Indeed, the House
probe cites numerous instances where City College officials
were very much in the room as a fund-raising campaign that
investigators see as riddled with conflicts of interest unfolded.
By most anyone’s account, City College, of the City University
of New York, has been put in an awkward position. Rangel – a
New York Democrat and 20-term congressman – is a favored
son of Harlem, and his desire to establish a center there
that would steer more underrepresented minority students to
public life dovetails nicely with some of City College’s own
goals. But the manner in which money was raised for the
creation of the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service now
lies at the heart of Rangel’s headline-grabbing ordeal, which
could conclude in Rangel’s reprimand or – he would argue –
vindication.
At issue for an investigative subcommittee of the Committee
on Standards of Official Conduct are fund-raising overtures
Published by: philosophyandrew
Rangel made to several companies that were actively lobbying
Congress on tax issues that Rangel was positioned to influence
as chair of the powerful Committee on Ways and Means. One
such company was AIG, whose lobbyist and officials met with
Rangel and unnamed City College officials in April 2008, the
subcommittee reported. In preparation for the meeting, City
College officials prepared a memo stating that the objective
was to “close a $10M gift for the Rangel Center to create AIG
Hall.”
What’s notable about the meeting, as described in the House
report, is that it indicates AIG officials worried aloud – in the
presence of City College officials – about the appearance of
financially supporting the congressman’s favored cause.
“AIG raised concerns about a potential donation, including
the potential headline risk,” the report states. “[Rangel] asked
AIG, at least twice, what was necessary to get this done.”
In its list of alleged violations, the committee cites rules that
bar House members from soliciting anything of value from
those whose interests could be affected by a member’s official
duties, as well as rules that bar the direct solicitation of
registered lobbyists.
The report does not address whether City College officials
ever raised concerns about potential conflicts of interest tied
to Rangel’s fund-raising efforts, and a spokeswoman for the
college would not respond directly to that question. Gregory
Williams, who was president of the college during the fund-
raising push, also declined an interview request.
“This matter is before the U.S. House of Representatives
Committee on Standards of Public Conduct. It would not be
appropriate for me to make comments at this time,” Williams,
now president of the University of Cincinnati, wrote in an e-
mailed statement.
Photo: C-SPAN
Speaking to reporters March 3, Rep. Charles Rangel
announces that he'll temporarily step down as chair of
the powerful Ways & Means Committee amid an ethics
investigation.
1
August 10th, 2010
Rangel’s press office also did not respond to inquiries over
several days last week, but the congressman has offered
investigators a detailed defense.
While it’s unclear whether anyone at City College raised
concerns about Rangel’s efforts, they certainly should have,
said Paulette Maehara, president and chief executive officer of
the Association of Fundraising Professionals. AFP members,
who include higher education fund-raisers, are ethically
bound to disclose conflicts of interest, and they should also
ensure anyone working on their behalf is similarly free of
conflict – even if the conflict doesn't involve the college's
programs directly, she said.
“It is up to our member to say to the congressman, or to anyone
else frankly, that [relationship] could be a conflict of interest
and we need to discuss that; let’s work through that,” Maehara
said. “If it were me, I would say, 'This is a potential conflict of
interest, I don’t think it’s appropriate for you to solicit these
individuals; perhaps you could open the door for me to solicit.'
” members of Congress were not similarly rebuked when
The report cites “several instances,” however, where Rangel
was alongside City College officials meeting with potential
donors who were also lobbying Congress. In addition to AIG,
these prospective donors included Eugene Isenberg, CEO of
Nabors Industries.
The report notes that AIG was actively lobbying House
members on tax issues during the period of solicitation.
About three months after pledging $500,000 personally and
$500,000 through his company to the center, Isenberg met
with Rangel at the Carlyle Hotel in New York to discuss tax
issues, the report states.
City College officials also attended meetings with Rangel,
individuals and foundations that were improperly solicited
with use of official congressional letterhead in violation of
House rules, according to the investigation. These meetings
were held with Donald Trump; David Rockefeller, director
and former chairman of the Rockefeller Foundation; and
representatives of the Ford Foundation, the report states.
Should College Have Intervened?
Many universities have gift acceptance policies, and City
College's fund-raising arm is no exception. While the
foundation assures gifts will be accepted in accordance with
tax laws, nowhere in its eight-page policy is there an overt
prohibition on gifts obtained unethically. Some institutions,
however, have more far-reaching policies. Take San Diego
State University, for instance, where the stated policy is that
the university won’t accept gifts that may cause “adverse
publicity.”
While some have argued there are potential legal violations
tied to Rangel's actions – particularly as they relate to failure to
declare rental income from a villa in the Dominican Republic
– the charges related to City College are essentially concerned
with codes of conduct, as opposed to strict matters of law. So
was it incumbent upon college officials to ensure that Rangel
followed House guidelines? That depends on whom you ask.
Robert Hartsook, a fund-raising consultant who works with
colleges and other nonprofit groups, said that it’s probably
unreasonable to expect fund-raisers to be weighing the ethical
Published by: philosophyandrew
implications of every conceivable political interest a donor
may have in supporting a project like Rangel’s center.
“I just think that’s an awful lot to ask of somebody,” said
Hartsook, chairman and chief executive officer of Hartsook
Companies, Inc. “I’m a practical guy. That kind of sounds like
a good thing, but you kind of take the donor at [his word].”
But Woods Bowman, a former Chicago lawmaker who writes
an ethics column for The Nonprofit Quarterly, said college
officials should be concerned if someone working on their
behalf is running afoul of the rules – be they legal or ethical.
“It’s a delicate subject to be sure, but the president [or
whomever was in the meetings] had an obligation to say ‘You
know, this may not be the best way to do this,' ” said Bowman, a
professor of public service management in DePaul University’s
School of Public Service. “Somebody should have taken Rangel
aside and said ‘We really appreciate your help, but… .' ”
In his own defense, however, Rangel has noted that other
they raised funds for institutions bearing their names. In a
statement to the investigative committee, Rangel mentioned
Sen. Mitch McConnell’s center at the University of Louisville;
the Robert C. Byrd Center for Legislative Studies at Shepherd
University, named for the late Sen. Byrd; Sen. Trent Lott’s
National Center for Excellence in Economic Development and
Entrepreneurship at the University of Southern Mississippi
and the late Sen. Jesse Helms’s center at Wingate University.
“We provide these examples, not as part of an ‘everyone does
it’ defense, but rather to demonstrate that these activities have
never been regarded as creating an improper benefit to a
member,” Rangel’s lawyers wrote.
Photo: Elbert Garcia
Rep. Charles Rangel discusses public policy with the first class
of graduates of City College of New York's Rangel Center
Public Service Fellows May 17. The congressman's fund-
raising efforts on behalf of the center or now at the heart of
ethics charges brought against Rangel.
On Friday, the New York Times reported on several other
lawmakers who have university endowments or programs
named for them. In some instances these programs were
financially supported by corporations with business before the
members, but "none of the dozen lawmakers appear to have
linked their office to the endowments as closely as Mr. Rangel,"
The Times reported.
Despite Rangel’s defense, every passing news story places the
college’s name alongside the ethics charges the congressman
can’t seem to shake. While that’s no doubt unwelcome
publicity, there is an obvious reluctance for college officials to
appear to either embrace or distance themselves from Rangel.
2
August 10th, 2010
“We’re waiting to see the process play out,” said Mary Lou
Edmondson, a spokeswoman for the college. “Of course, we
continue to cooperate with the inquiry so that the process can
run its course. We are not going to jump to judgment before
the process runs its course.”
The college has, however, made some course corrections amid
the controversy. In December of 2008, as the House Ethics
Committee voted to expand its investigation of Rangel, the
college opted to postpone its opening reception for the Rangel
Center.
As fund-raising efforts for the center began in early 2005, City
College also prepared a 20-page glossy brochure describing
the inclusion of a "well-furnished office for Congressman
Rangel," which House investigators used as an example of the
center directly benefiting Rangel. That part of the project has
since been scrapped, Edmondson said.
"The idea of the office was a very early idea. The congressman
didn’t ask for it. It had long ago been abandoned," said
Edmondson, who didn't elaborate on the reasons.
Citing other direct benefits to Rangel, the panel noted that
storage of his papers at the center "allows him to perpetuate
his legacy."
“We’re not pulling back on the papers. This is 40 years' worth
of papers from a congressman who has a strong 40-year
record," Edmondson said.
Donations Stall
The Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service already exists
in name, and it supports students enrolled in the college’s
graduate program for public administration, but no brick
and mortar has been laid to house employees or Rangel’s
papers. With an estimated $25 million to $35 million price tag,
the Rangel Center has raised $11.5 million – none of which
has come in over the last year amid Rangel’s public woes,
university officials acknowledge.
Rangel may be an admired figure in many circles, but faculty at
City College anticipated that the congressman – who has been
a lightening rod at times in the press – had potential to bring
both negative and positive attention.
“The New York Post has been on Rangel’s case for a long time,
and in that sense people have known that the Rangel Center
was not going to be the same thing as the Colin Powell Center
[for Policy Studies] at City College, or at least wasn’t going
to have the same kind of dignity,” said Daniel DiSalvo, an
assistant professor of political science at the college.
“It would certainly be fair to say that it’s become clear that
Rangel doesn’t have the same stature as Powell. What that
means for the center in terms of its fund-raising, in terms of
its image, are obviously things other people are going to have
to address – not me.”
Brett Silverstein, the center’s director and former dean of the
Division of Social Science at the college, did not respond to
requests for comment.
Michigan Faces Similar Donor Issue
Apart from the national scope of the Rangel story, City
College’s predicament has other distinguishing features. Chief
Published by: philosophyandrew
among them is the fact that the manner in which the funds
were procured for the project is what’s under scrutiny, as
opposed to more common instances where a donor with a
named building or program on campus has an unrelated fall
from grace. In other words, the solution may not be as simple
as pulling a person’s name from a building – the funding itself
is directly tied to the controversy.
“They are much more complex [issues] because the money
has the perception of taint around it,” said Rae Goldsmith,
vice president of advancement resources at the Council for
Advancement and Support of Education.
While the cases have differences, the University of Michigan
is similarly grappling with the possibility that a significant
donation may be tainted by scandal. Sam Wyly, a Dallas-based
entrepreneur who donated $10 million to the university’s
business school in 1997, was charged late last month with
insider trading and securities fraud by the U.S. Securities
and Exchanged Commission. More potentially troubling for
Michigan is the S.E.C.’s allegation that the money given to the
university was a direct product of Wyly’s alleged crimes.
Unlike City College, which hasn’t broken ground on the Rangel
Center, Michigan has long since completed the construction of
Sam Wyly Hall.
“If it is a gift that was made yesterday they might consider
taking a deep breath and putting a hold on a project,”
Goldsmith said. “If it was a gift made 10 years ago and the
project is done, that’s an entirely different conversation.”
Robert J. Dolan, who was named Michigan’s business school
dean in 2001, did not respond to an e-mail inquiry and was
not made available through the university’s press office. Kelly
Cunningham, Michigan’s director of public affairs, repeated
the only public statement the university has provided on the
Wyly charges.
"Mr. Wyly is a longtime friend and supporter of the university.
We're sorry to hear he is facing these difficult circumstances,”
the statement reads.
If there is another troublesome analogy between the
circumstances City College and Michigan are confronting, it’s
the lack of continuity between the lofty goals they had for
these projects and the stories circling the key players involved
in them. City College sought to inspire students to embark
on careers in public service, and now the face of the center
is embroiled in the kind of controversy that many credit
with engendering apathy among young people. By the same
token, the S.E.C. has charged that the physical foundation of
Michigan’s business school was built with ill-gotten gains.
“If you have, for example, a business building named after
someone who has been convicted of some sort of business
fraud, that’s a huge issue and may be more important for
the institution to address than if you had a different building
named after that person,” Goldsmith said. “Again, that goes
right to the heart of the values of the institution.”
Director of Prospect Management and ResearchThe Director
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drive forward the prospect/donor ...
3
August 10th, 2010
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Access Copyright's excessive
$45 per university student
proposed tariff - August 11,
2010 deadline
Source: http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=53080
August 10th, 2010
Access Copyright is proposing to charge Canadian
universities $45 per student, and colleges $35 per student,
a rate increase of about 1300 percent (that's not a typo)
over current rates. Access Copyright was originally founded to
collect levies for photocopying, but this newest fee represents
a tariff for digital copying. And then some. "Incredibly, the
tariff defines a 'copy' to include "posting a link or hyperlink to
Digital Copy". So, that would presumably include any website
with copyrighted material...! AC apparently expects to be paid
whenever a professor posts a link on his or her website to my
blog, or Michael Geist's blog or the Globe and Mail or eBay.
That is simply absurd." Responses need to be filed by August
11 to the Copyright Board, which "seems to have an unstated
'rocket docket' policy when it comes to AC." Via Michael Geist
. More from Techdirt . Howard Knopf, Excess Copyright,
August 9, 2010 3:46 p.m. [ Link ] [ Comment ]
Broward Corrects Record On
Relationship to Suspected
Terrorist
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/10/qt/
broward_corrects_record_on_relationship_to_suspected_terrorist
August 10th, 2010
Officials from Broward College, a two-year institution in
Florida, spent Monday dispelling erroneous media reports
that a terrorist was an instructor at the college in the
mid-1990s. Adnan Shukrijumah, who recent media reports
identify as the new “head of global operations” for al-Qaida,
attended Broward from summer 1996 to summer 1998 under
the name “Jumah A. El-Chukri.” He majored in chemistry but
did not graduate. Shukrijumah was indicted earlier this year
for plotting suicide bomb attacks on New York City’s subway
system in 2009. His current whereabouts are unknown.
Published by: philosophyandrew
Correcting recent news stories which mistakenly reported that
Shukrijumah had been a professor at the college, an official
Broward press release states, “at no time was this person
employed by Broward College.” Of the media mix-up, J. David
Armstrong, Jr., Broward president, said “Unfortunately, every
time something about this story comes up, we get dragged
back into it. To our knowledge, we have not had any contact
with him since he was a student, more than a decade ago.
It is deplorable that misinformation about his connection
to the college has been repeated in the media without any
verification. We support the FBI and other officials in their
efforts to find him, and as was reported by CNN, one of our
professors who remembered him from 14 years ago apparently
was instrumental in helping the FBI identify him through a
tape recording of him taken in class.”
A joint policy proposal for an
open Internet
Source: http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=53079
August 10th, 2010
Following concerns they were about to jettison net neutrality,
Google and Verizon have done the opposite, coming out with a
joint statement of seven principles that speaks largely in favour
of an open and neutral internet, including this: "this new
nondiscrimination principle includes a presumption against
prioritization of Internet traffic - including paid prioritization.
So, in addition to not blocking or degrading of Internet content
and applications, wireline broadband providers also could not
favor particular Internet traffic over other traffic." Awesome.
Via Jay Hathaway . More from Mashable . lan Davidson and
Tom Tauke, Google Public Policy Blog, August 9, 2010 3:28
p.m. [ Link ] [ Comment ]
Libel via YouTube
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2010/08/10/walling
August 10th, 2010
Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing reveals the ways in
which malicious and unfounded accusations can destroy lives,
friendships, families, and institutions, including academic
and military ones. During her wedding ceremony, a bride’s
fiancé falsely accused her of prior promiscuity. The fiancé and
his lord believed they had seen the evidence of the bride’s
infidelity with their own eyes, but the evidence had been
cooked by the lord’s bastard brother, who staged a misleading
scene to deceive them. Besides destroying the wedding and
humiliating the innocent bride, the slander led to dissension
within the state and the army. It took a fool who proudly
called himself an “ass“ to bring the unfounded accusation
to the attention of the authorities, the fiancé, and the lord.
They exemplified virtue by acknowledging and repenting their
overreaction to the false accusation, thus leading to a happy
ending believable only in romantic comedy. All’s well that ends
well in comedy, so in this case the false accusation was indeed
much ado about nothing.
4
August 10th, 2010
But that is not always the case. Scott Jaschik’s Inside
Higher Ed article, “YouTube and Context,” makes clear I
was falsely accused of advocating rape in a lecture I gave on
Joseph Conrad and Nicollo Machiavelli at the annual ethics
conference at the U.S. Naval War College this past May. The
accusation occurred via the Internet on YouTube. A sound
and video bite of a little over three minutes from my lecture
was posted under the headline, “Naval War College Professor
Advocates Rape.” Within a few days, over two thousand
viewers saw the clip, which soon attracted the attention of the
Pentagon and Congress.
The only problem is that I never advocated rape, which would
be crazy in any forum, especially an academic one, and most
especially a military one. When an accusation sounds too
crazy to believe, look again. Gender-related sensitivities in the
American military going at least as far back as the infamous
Navy pilots’ Tailhook groping scandal make leaders extremely
careful to avoid giving offense to anyone. And indeed, I
was not speaking in my own name. Instead, as revealed
in the full transcript of my remarks, I was revealing why
Machiavelli deserves his infamy as a “teacher of evil” because
he did indeed advocate the rape not of women, but of the
peoples and countries his ideal leader would subjugate. Hence
the title of one of the most insightful books on Machiavelli
today, Machiavelli’s Rapacious Republicanism, by an old
acquaintance of mine from graduate school, the brilliant
Austrian scholar, Markus Fischer.
Interpretation is not advocacy. I was interpreting Machiavelli,
not advocating Machiavellianism. The person who posted the
clip either did not know the difference, in which case he or she
was not prepared intellectually for the thoughtful discussions
of any academic institution, or did not care, in which case
the individual defamed not merely me, but also my institution
by deliberately taking my words out of context. As one of my
senior colleagues has remarked, the YouTube post was "an act
of cyberterrorism not merely against Karl Walling, but the War
College itself."
Such libels are bound to be increasingly common in the
YouTube age and a threat to any professor in the classroom.
Any one of us could be next. How can we speak freely if
we must fear that any student might post distortions of
our remarks on the Internet? Can we allow video vigilantes
to incite mobs in the university? Can administrators be
intimidated by the vigilantes and still retain the trust and
respect of faculty? Don't forget that a significant portion
of world opinion believes that the lamentable events of 11
September 2001 were the result of a conspiracy in the Bush
administration, or Israel, or any of a number of the usual
scapegoats on libelous Internet websites, not the work of Al
Qaeda. This despite the fact that Al Qaeda has claimed credit
for the attack! How can we prevent the cyberterrorists from
winning?
Because this is the first time my institution has had to deal
with this rising threat to any academic institution, it made
several rookie mistakes in handling it, but it should be those
mistakes, not the individuals who made them or the institution
itself, that are the issue now. My institution may be the most
intellectually happening place in the American military, but
we are all rookies with Internet libel. We have a common
Published by: philosophyandrew
enemy in those who would attack the academy with the
Internet equivalent of scribblings on bathroom walls. What
can academic institutions do to prevent such mistakes in the
future?
Both common sense and common courtesy would dictate
informing a professor about a potentially scandalous Internet
clip from his or her lecture, seminar, or other professional
work, and asking for an explanation before demanding an
apology or taking disciplinary action. Especially in light
of the Shirley Sherrod incident, in which a conservative
blogger defamed a member of the Obama administration by
deliberately posting a clip from her remarks that made her
seem to say the opposite of what she intended and actually
said, prudence would dictate a careful investigation of the
facts, including a transcript when it is available, before making
hasty judgments.
Much against my own judgment, under heavy pressure, and
before I saw the YouTube clip, I did issue a tepid apology,
the gist of which was blame Machiavelli, not me. He after
all was the one who used rape as a metaphor for leadership.
Discerning members of the audience understood this, but this
sensationalist farce acquired an unstoppable momentum of its
own. That YouTube, since the publication of Scott Jaschik’s
article, but also perhaps through requests from my institution,
has withdrawn the libelous video from its site is no great
consolation. The post generated at least a dozen other articles
and two television stories. The effects of this false accusation
will endure as long as they remain on the Internet and are
unrefuted. Hence, when the facts are finally known, when they
reveal the accuser has distorted a professor’s words to make
him or her appear to say exactly the opposite of what the
professor intended, and actually said, make the facts known
widely and publicly. Just do the right thing, as the Obama
administration did when it acknowledged Shirley Sherrod had
been defamed.
Shirley Sherrod knows the name of her accuser, whom she
reportedly intends to sue. My accuser used an anonymous
e-mail address. My institution apparently has no conclusive
evidence to identity him or her yet, and may never acquire
it, so some thought needs to be given to how to deter
libel when anonymous e-mail addresses may make posters
unaccountable.
As often happens in moments of hysteria, it is sometimes
tempting to blame the victim. I used the word “bitch” twice
in my remarks: once in depicting the mindset of a rapist; the
other time in portraying the victim’s likely attitude toward
her rapist. So I was reprimanded for using offensive language,
though it is not my words, but Machiavelli’s view of leadership
that is truly offensive. Rape is a common metaphor for
conquest and tyranny. As revealed in Chapter 25 of The
Prince, in one of the most famous passages in Renaissance
literature and philosophy, Machiavelli used the metaphor of
the rape of poor Fortuna to reduce politics to war and war
to crime. The word hubris, often translated as overweening
pride, that is a common theme not merely of tragedy, but
also of strategy, stems from a Greek word for rape, with
hubristic characters depicted as having lost all sense of
limits. Machiavelli challenged the philosophy and religion of
his time by questioning whether there can be any ethical
5
August 10th, 2010
limits to strategic thought and action. Unless conferences on
professional military ethics are to be mere Sunday school
exercises, that question deserves serious attention from those
engaged in unconventional wars, in which the customary
limits of war come frequently into dispute. What better way
to reveal what is most shocking in Machiavelli than to use
language that approaches the limit of what is considered
acceptable in our time?
It would take the comic genius of Tom Wolfe to explain how
my critique of Machiavelli was twisted into the advocacy of the
very crime for which I was indicting him. Not merely feminists
(who can easily find at least a hundred articles on Machiavelli
and feminism with a quick web search), but all decent
minds should turn their anger on Machiavelli, not me, while
recognizing that he was also a political and military genius,
the sort both insurgents and counterinsurgents, terrorists and
counterterrorists have much to learn from today. With the
United States bogged down in two counterinsurgencies in Iraq
and Afghanistan, understanding Machiavelli could prove very
useful, if only for learning to think like our worst enemies.
How can we learn from evil geniuses without becoming like
our own worst enemies? That was one of the big questions of
my lecture. That it was obscured by a reckless vigilante is a
terrible, terrible pity.
It will take careful thought to save academics from this sort
of outrage in the future. It will require a mix of technological,
ethical, and institutional fixes. I do not believe it is possible
any longer for individuals at my institution to post clips of
lectures from its video archives without permission. So there is
now a gatekeeper, though perhaps at the regrettable price that
recordings of important lectures will be less freely available in
the future. Whether gatekeepers are worth this price needs to
be examined carefully. It may depend on circumstances.
Since anyone with a cell phone could commit the same offense,
technological fixes of institutionally-controlled Internet
systems will certainly not be enough. The most unsung heroes
of colleges and universities are those who teach English
composition. Just as they do (or should) teach rules of
evidence for written citations, so too ought they teach students
to apply those same rules to video citations, with students
warned that plagiarism, deliberate distortions, misleading
quotations, and the like are not merely unethical, but may
also put them in serious legal jeopardy. My institution does
not have a faculty senate, but it surely needed one in this
instance to slow down the rush to judgment. Institutions that
already have faculty senates might assign Internet libel cases
to committees within them, which would serve both the dignity
of those institutions and the rights of the accused by providing
some form of due process.
And one other thing. Professors teaching Shakespeare might
use Much Ado About Nothing to get students to think
about why libel is a serious problem, which will help them
understand why the thoughtfulness induced by careful reading
of old books is relevant to our so-called information age,
and perhaps our only salvation from the snap judgments that
age frequently induces. Such thoughtfulness is the aim of my
teaching, which, with a little drama now and then, has helped
me turn on more than a few light bulbs. It would be a crime to
let the cyberterrorists turn out the lights of the academy.
Published by: philosophyandrew
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Ideagora
Source: http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=53078
August 10th, 2010
Well here's one way to respond to the Ning paywall.
The former Ideagora Ning group has moved to grou.ps .
"Ideagora is growing and adapting as a professional network
of individuals, organizations and professional groups engaged
in knowledge and resource sharing, research, social policy,
political strategy, technology issues, and business policies."
Various Authors, grou.ps, August 9, 2010 3:11 p.m. [ Link ] [
Comment ]
Colleges Dip Into 'Underwater'
Endowments
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/10/qt/
colleges_dip_into_underwater_endowments
August 10th, 2010
As more states lift strict legal restrictions on the expenditure
of college endowment funds, an increasing number of
institutions are spending money from "underwater" funds,
according to a survey conducted by the Association of
Governing Boards and Commonfund Institute. Under a
refined law now adopted across most of the U.S., colleges
have the prerogative to spend from funds that have fallen
below their historic market value. The Uniform Prudent
Management of Institutional Funds Act (UPMIFA), now
adopted in 46 states and the District of Columbia and
U.S. Virgin Islands, removes legal constraints that have
historically limited colleges from spending from underwater
funds. Of 207 surveyed colleges, just 25 percent said they'd
discontinued distributing money from underwater funds --
a 16.4 percentage point decrease from pre-UPMIFA levels.
Indeed, 47 percent are distributing at normal spending rule
rates -- up 9 percent from before UPMIFA was enacted.
Shared Decisions and
Abolishing Awards
Source: http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=53077
6
August 10th, 2010
August 10th, 2010
Interesting: if your goal is "for each student in our school to
recognize and develop his/her unique talents and interests..."
then you may have a non-mainstream view on awards. "The
key words in this are 'each student'. We do not want to
just recognize those that excel in specific areas, we want to
recognize EACH student for the areas in which he/she excels.
As a school, we need to continue to move away from the
traditional educational hierarchy that says those students who
excel in language arts and maths are more important than
those who excel in fine art." And, presumably, the one that says
that students who excel in sports are better than any of them.
Awards collectivize. They force people into pursuing the same
achievement rather than their individual achievements. It is
ironic to see people who celebrate individuality also celebrate
awards. Via The Innovative Educator . Chris Wejr, Connected
Principals, August 9, 2010 6:31 a.m. [ Link ] [ Comment ]
After Senate and GAO Step
In, Westwood Announces
Changes
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/10/qt/
after_senate_and_gao_step_in_westwood_announces_changes
August 10th, 2010
Westwood College said on Monday that it has begun a series
of reforms aimed at cleaning up questionable, misleading and
allegedly fraudulent recruitment practices made public last
week in the findings of a Government Accountability Office
investigation and in the testimony of a former Westwood
recruiter before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and
Pensions Committee. At a Texas campus of the for-profit
institution, an undercover GAO investigator was encouraged
to falsify information on his financial aid form to become
eligible for Pell Grants.
The college, based in Denver, said it will implement a new
recruiter pay structure on Aug. 21 that will no longer reward
employees for reaching enrollment targets and will instead
pay them a fixed salary. The college said it has begun an
internal investigation into admissions and financial aid at all
17 of its campuses and plans to step up its "mystery shopping"
efforts and other self-policing mechanisms. Westwood will
also implement more stringent admissions standards.
Power laws
Source: http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=53076
August 10th, 2010
Nice post on types of inference and in particular about
abduction. Abduction is also known as 'inference to the
best explanation'. It's what we have to do with respect
Published by: philosophyandrew
to complex phenomena; it is most tentative of the three
inferential strategies and gives us, as Dave Snowden says,
anticipation rather than prediction. That doesn't mean it is
without evaluative standards; I discuss those here , in my
discussion of the logical fallacies. I like the presentation of
the coherence requirement in this post. "He rightly headed
the slide Complements, not alternatives. Abductive techniques
are in effect means of generating coherent hypotheses under
conditions of uncertainty. The coherence word is key here, just
because we don't know everything it doesn't mean that all ideas
have equal value." Dave Snowden, Cognitive Edge, August 9,
2010 6:14 a.m. [ Link ] [ Comment ]
United Front
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/10/nacubo
August 10th, 2010
WASHINGTON: Call it couples therapy for higher education
administrators.
Gathered here Monday, about 30 provosts and chief financial
officers began a two-day seminar devoted to the important,
fragile and sometimes strained relationship that often exists
between their two positions. Co-sponsored by the American
Council on Education (ACE) and the National Association
of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO), the
conference proved an opportunity for two of the key decision
makers at most institutions to discuss the pressures and
pleasures of jobs that are increasingly defined by diminishing
resources in a troubling economic climate.
A key theme emerging during the daylong sessions was the
tension between a tradition-bound world of higher education
and an emerging realization – particularly among CFOs –
that the business model for colleges and universities needs
changing.
Rick Staisloff, vice president for finance and administration
at the College of Notre Dame of Maryland, said he learned
early on that many in academe are sensitive to any rhetoric
that appears to have emerged from the business world. When
Staisloff would speak of education as a “product" even a
few years ago, “people just freaked out completely,” he said.
Staisloff said he’s seen that sort of knee-jerk response diminish
considerably in the last year, however, and credited the
economic crisis with an increased acknowledgment that the
business of higher education cannot remain a taboo subject.
To garner support from groups and individuals who may be
skeptical about decisions that appear overly driven by an
institution's financial bottom, it's incumbent upon financial
officers and provosts to publicly support each other, a panel
of college presidents told the group. Faculty and staff need to
be assured that the academic side of the house is working in
lockstep with the business side – even though some may “look
for wedges to drive between them,” said Carol Cartwright,
president of Bowling Green State University. That said,
Cartwright was insistent that it’s both natural and beneficial
for provosts and CFOs to bring different – even conflicting –
viewpoints to an internal discussion.
“One of the most difficult challenges of a president is to get
people to challenge each other,” she said.
7
August 10th, 2010
Steven Poskanzer, who took over as president of Carleton
College just a few days ago, agreed that CFOs and provosts
should challenge each other – in private. After a decision has
been made, however, their responsibility is to rally around a
shared agenda, he said.
“These two individuals must present a united front to the rest
of the world,” said Poskanzer, who was previously president of
the State University of New York at New Paltz.
In some instances, presenting that united front means
physically appearing alongside one another, said Sheri Noren-
Everts, vice president and provost at Illinois State University.
Indeed, it’s incumbent upon a provost to demonstrate that
she works well with the CFO and understands the college’s
financial position as well as its academic mission, she said.
“We make a point of being seen [together] in public,” Noren-
Everts said of she and her CFO.
A key aim of Monday’s sessions was to encourage candid
discussion about what can be a challenging relationship, and
for that reason NACUBO and ACE set conditions for Inside
Higher Ed’s coverage of the event. While all but one of
the sessions was open, the two organizations stipulated that
participants’ comments be considered off the record unless
explicit permission was given by the participant.
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David Horowitz's New
Classroom Campaign
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/10/qt/
david_horowitz_s_new_classroom_campaign
August 10th, 2010
David Horowitz is getting ready for the publication this month
of his latest book, Reforming Our Universities, a history
of his campaign for the "Academic Bill of Rights" (much
derided by faculty groups as an attack on academic freedom)
with a new campaign. Horowitz is calling his new effort the
"Adopt a Dissenting Book Campaign." He is asking students
to approach faculty members who endorse one side of a
particular issue in their courses and to ask them to add a
Published by: philosophyandrew
"dissenting" book that they recommend for the syllabus. If
faculty members refuse, the plan is to go to deans, presidents
and trustees to demand the inclusion of the new books.
Horowitz is distributing a guide (presumably in a note of
irony, it's a little red book) for students on how to make these
suggestions and what they might suggest. For instance, for a
course on Vietnam, the students are told they might request
Norman Podhoretz's Why We Were in Vietnam. For a course
on history, one suggestion is Burton Folsom's The Myth of the
Robber Barons.
Cary Nelson, national president of the American Association
of University Professors, said that "students are free to make
any suggestions they wish to a faculty member," but "any
responsible administrator would tell a student that it is the
faculty member's responsibility to decide what goes on a
syllabus and take no other action on such a request." He said
Horowitz was engaged in "nothing more than a publicity stunt,
destined for Fox News and the circular file."
Anybody's Guess
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/10/guess
August 10th, 2010
The College Board is about to announce a change in the
Advanced Placement program that will end the penalty for
wrong answers.
So after decades in which test takers were warned against
random guessing, they may now do so without fear of hurting
their scores. The shift is notable because the SAT continues to
penalize wrong answers, such that those who cannot eliminate
any of the answers are discouraged from guessing. The ACT,
which has gained market share against the SAT in recent years,
does not have such a penalty. At this point, the College Board
is changing its policy only for the AP exams.
Under College Board policy to date, AP scores have been based
on the total number of correct answers minus a fraction for
every incorrect answer -- one-fourth of a point for questions
with five possible answers and one-third of a point for
questions with four possible answers. The idea is that no one
should engage in "random guessing." The odds shift, of course,
if a test taker can eliminate one or more possible answers, and
the College Board's advice to test takers acknowledges this,
saying that "if you have SOME knowledge of the question,
and can eliminate one or more answer choices, informed
guessing from among the remaining choices is usually to your
advantage."
A spokeswoman said that the decision to end the guessing
penalty relates to broader changes in the AP program. The
College Board has announced plans to redesign a number of
courses, and that process will start to produce results in the
2011-12 academic year. The redesigned courses will feature
"an increased emphasis on conceptual understanding and
discipline-specific skills, resulting in fewer and more complex
multiple-choice questions," the spokeswoman said.
And for those questions, the College Board believes that the
best way to score is simply based on the total number of correct
answers (without a penalty). While the shift in courses and
question types will be slow -- only a few courses at a time -- the
8
August 10th, 2010
College Board decided that it wanted to provide all students
with the same test instructions, so the guessing penalty would
be eliminated across the board.
Trevor Packer, director of the AP program, also noted that
the College Board will soon be offering distinct versions of
the multiple choice questions overseas. Since those questions
count for half of total AP scores, and there will be different
versions abroad, "it will be simpler, cleaner, psychometrically,
not to have to account for the deductions for wrong answers,"
he said.
The change will be effective for the AP exams given in May
2011.
Packer said that the change will not make the exams easier,
but he said that some AP test readers who have been briefed
"are thrilled that students won't have to think about this when
they take the test."
As for the SAT, the College Board spokeswoman indicated
that the change is being announced only for AP. "The SAT
Program has no immediate plans to change scoring processes,
and will keep the public informed if that position changes," she
said. (The SAT awards one point for each correct question and
subtracts one-fourth of a point for each incorrect answer.)
The ACT not only doesn't deduct anything for incorrect
answers, but doesn't appear worried about guessing. ACT's
tips for test takers say: "Answer every question. Your scores on
the multiple-choice tests are based on the number of questions
you answer correctly. There is no penalty for guessing."
Robert Schaeffer, public education director of the National
Center for Fair and Open Testing, said he viewed it as
significant that the College Board was changing any policy
related to guessing, since the organization has argued since the
1950s that a penalty was needed. He said he looked forward to
seeing how the College Board would justify having one policy
for AP and another for the SAT.
Schaeffer also said that the guessing penalty is "a major
competitive disadvantage for the SAT" vs. the ACT. "While the
ACT is not a better test in any psychometric sense, the lack
of a guessing penalty is one of the ways it is more consumer-
friendly," he said.
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'Gaps Are Not Inevitable'
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/10/gaps
August 10th, 2010
It's well-established by now that African American and Latino
students graduate college at lower rates than do their white
and Asian peers, so it follows pretty naturally that many
Published by: philosophyandrew
individual colleges would have lower graduation rates for
those groups than for white students, too.
But in two new reports that the Education Trust released
Monday, the advocacy group tries to hammer home the idea
that big gaps in the academic performance of minority and
white students are not an inevitability. It does so, starkly,
by using its College Results Online database to compare
the graduation rates of black and Latino students with
their white peers at individual institutions, showing widely
varying outcomes at colleges and universities with comparably
prepared and composed student bodies.
The University of California at Riverside has about 14,700
students, about 25 percent of whom are Hispanic, and an
average SAT score of 1040; about 12 percent of California
State University at Chico's 14,600 students are Latino, and
the institution's average SAT is 1025. Yet Latino students who
entered Riverside from 2000 to 2002 graduated at a rate of
63.4 percent over six years, 1 percentage point better than its
white students, while 41.5 percent of Chico's Hispanic students
do, compared to 57.5 percent of white students there.
Similar gaps exist at more selective public institutions (the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's 2 percentage
point graduation rate gap between its Hispanic and white
students, compared to the University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign's 16 percent, for example) and all manner of
private institutions, too (Rice University's black and white
students both graduate at a rate of about 92 percent, while
black students at Lehigh University graduate at a six-year rate
of 64.5 percent, compared to 86.3 percent for white students).
While some college officials complain that Education Trust
appears to relish pointing out flaws in American higher
education, officials at the group said these reports, like their
others, are designed not to embarrass (or at least not only
to embarrass) but to make the point that no institution is
predestined to have different success for different groups.
"We did uncover some large gaps in student success rates and
low graduation rates for students of color. But it would be
wrong to assume that these gaps are inevitable or immutable,”
Mamie Lynch, a policy analyst at the Education Trust and co-
author of the report, said in a news release. “For many of the
‘big gap’ schools, we can point to an institution working with a
similar student body that graduates students of color at rates
similar to those of white students.”
That is certainly true, and many of the colleges and universities
with small or no gaps have instituted policies, programs and
other practices specifically to strengthen the academic success
of underrepresented students.
But many of the top-performing institutions cited by
Education Trust have also been at it a long time: Cynthia
Wolf Johnson, associate provost for academic services at
the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, said in an
interview Monday that her institution's summer bridge
program just celebrated its 25th anniversary, and that its
Student Advising for Freshman Excellence program, which
provides intensive advising and support for between a third
and half of first-year students, has been around for nearly
two decades. That "longstanding commitment to retention
and graduation of minority students" has resulted in a black
9
August 10th, 2010
student graduation that mirrors white students' six-year rate
of 50.1 percent. (Rates are significantly higher for participants
in the university's bridge and advising programs.)
Salvadore A. Liberto, vice president for enrollment
management and associate provost at Loyola University
New Orleans, said his institution, too, has all the programs
and "best practices" that admissions and retention experts
agree greatly increase students' chances of academic success:
transition programs for at-risk students, "early warning"
systems that alert officials to struggling students, and the like.
But while Loyola certainly works hard to ensure the academic
success of its students, it benefits enormously from the fact
that, given its regional orientation and history as a Jesuit
institution, "we take diversity for granted in the very best way
that you can," said Liberto. Without purposefully aggressive
recruiting, about a third of its students are members of
underrepresented minority groups, and because the university
has over time "provided a great deal of support for students
who fall into any kind of at-risk categories," it has produced
many successful students of all races, Liberto said.
As a result, "when students get to campus, there isn't this
culture shock" that minority students at many colleges with
smaller cohorts of such students face, he said. Black (65.2
percent) and Latino students (66.0 percent) alike at Loyola
graduate at slightly higher rates than do white students (63.2
percent).
The story is similar at George Mason University, which has
"many of the interventions and support systems that have
proven to be most effective at institutions nationwide" --
learning communities, intensive tutoring, etc., said Andrew
Flagel, dean of admissions and enrollment development there.
But what most distinguishes the Virginia public university --
but is "virtually impossible to replicate" -- is that it is "intensely
globally diverse," such that "nearly every student who comes is
going to find a cohort of students that they can see themselves
fitting into."
The fact that minority students feel such comfort at Mason, he
said, contributes mightily to the statistics showing that black
students graduate at a rate 6 percentage points higher than do
white students (62.6 percent to 56.8 percent); 58.5 percent of
Hispanic students graduate within six years, too.
"I have enormous luxury in my role compared to most of my
peers nationwide," Flagel said.
Officials at many of the colleges that show up on Education
Trust's list of institutions with big gaps in minority graduation
rates know that lacking the historical advantages of colleges
like George Mason and Loyola doesn't earn them a pass. It'd
be easy for Wayne State University to try to blame the Detroit
public schools for the poor academic preparation of so many
of its students, and in turn for the 34 percent gap between
its graduation rates for white (43.5 percent) and black (9.5
percent) students in 2008, said Howard N. Shapiro, associate
vice president for student services and undergraduate affairs
and a professor of mechanical engineering there.
"But I don't want to whine about that and say it's not our
problem. This is the hand we're dealt, and something we need
to change," he said.
Published by: philosophyandrew
Two years ago, Wayne State implemented the kind of learning
community approach that many colleges have embraced, and
strengthened its need-based aid program to try to eliminate
the financial reasons that might lead many academically
undeprepared students to drop out, Shapiro said. The first-
to-second-year retention rate for black students rose to 69.6
percent from 56.8 percent from 2007 to 2008, and when the
figures for 2009 become available in a month, Shapiro hopes
they will show additional progress.
While it will take time for that momentum to affect the six-
year graduation rate, the retention rates at the five- and six-
semester marks have also turned up, he said.
California State University at Chico also shows up on
Education Trust's list of institutions with large graduation
rate gaps for black and Latino students as compared to white
students -- but those figures fail to capture the progress
the university has already made, said Meredith Kelley, vice
provost for enrollment management there. The Education
Trust report shows the university's six-year graduation rate for
the three classes that entered in 2000-2 to be 30.8 percent
for African-American students and 41.5 percent for Latino
students, compared to 57.5 percent for white students.
Several years after it expanded a minority student success
center in its business school to the entire campus and created
a Cross-Cultural Leadership Center, Chico has pushed its six-
year graduation rate for Hispanic students to 49 percent in
2008 from 39 percent in 2006, and for black students to 51
percent from 31 percent, Kelley said.
More changes are on the way. Like other institutions in
the California State University System, which has joined the
Access to Success effort sponsored by Education Trust and the
National Association of System Heads, Chico has committed to
halving its graduation rate gaps for minority and low-income
students. As part of that effort, Kelley said, the university is
putting in place the sort of academic early warning system that
Loyola and many of the other colleges on Education Trust's
"small gap" list use.
"We obviously still have a lot of work to do," she said, "but
we're showing that we can make progress if we focus intensely
on this."
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Divisions Over Peace Studies
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/10/peace
August 10th, 2010
At a time when student interest is growing in
nongovernmental organizations and conflict resolution,
faculty members in peace studies master's programs and
10
August 10th, 2010
those who employ their graduates appear to have split on the
direction these programs should take.
“In a nutshell, academics have a certain perception of what
their graduates need, and employers have a specific need that
is not being matched,” said David Smith, national education
outreach officer for the United States Institute of Peace and co-
author of a new institute report.
The study examined 13 relevant academic programs,
interviewing students, alumni and faculty members -- as wall
as the organizations that employ graduates. Nearly 90 percent
of surveyed faculty members agreed with the statement that
students are adequately prepared for international conflict
careers, but more than 50 percent of employers disagreed.
One of the biggest shortcomings of the academic programs
(to employers) is their inclination toward theory rather than
practice, the study found.
Professors ranked the most important areas of knowledge,
skills, and abilities in the graduate programs as: theory of
conflict analysis, theories of conflict resolution, country- or
region-specific skills, political issues, and applied knowledge
and skills coming from internships or practicums. On the other
hand, the five most emphasized skills from the employers’
perspective are: field experience, program management,
country- or region-specific skills such as language abilities,
applied conflict analysis and resolution skills, and sector-
specific, practical expertise.
In addition, the study found that many academic programs
only teach their students basic skills, and don’t offer enough
opportunities for “advanced” or “specialized” training in
areas like impact assessment, policy formulation, or foreign
language.
Smith said this is the first time this gap is being examined in
the field’s 25 years of existence, and not working to close it
could prove dangerous for the field itself. If employers wish
to hire someone who can go overseas and write up reports,
hire employees, and manage a budget, Smith said they might
end up looking for employees from different fields if the
international peace and conflict students are ill-equipped.
There may be several factors contributing to these
discrepancies. Smith said that there has been an explosion of
programs in recent years, not all of which have the resources
to be sustainable. “At the onset, it doesn’t necessarily need a
lot of funding, a lot of connections overseas. But eventually,
it needs to be able to take its master’s degree students and
deploy them to Sudan working on peace-building processes as
an internship – a lot of programs get into this, but they fall
flat in developing the experiential part of the program because
they haven’t thought it through,” he said.
Other reasons for the gap include the lack of a comprehensive
definition for international conflict role, an ambiguously
defined role for the academic programs, institutional limits
on the number of classes students can take, and limited
opportunities for overseas experiences, according to the
report.
Employers are not the only ones with complaints, however.
The research also points to faculty and alumni dissatisfaction
with the employers, whose approaches to conflict seem
Published by: philosophyandrew
outdated and who are not aware of what is currently being
taught.
Randall Amster, executive director of the Peace and Justice
Studies Association, agreed with the findings and lauded
the report’s recommendations for bringing more field-based
education to the classroom and for employers adjusting the
way in which they engage the programs' graduates.
“The [PJSA] would encourage a synergistic approach in
which the perspectives of graduates in the field are invited
straightforwardly into the policy-making and organizational
frameworks developed by peace-related employers,” he wrote
in an e-mail. “I would further urge that the field develop with
due regard not only to needs of organizations and employers,
but also to those of the graduates themselves and the academic
institutions.”
Though only 13 programs were included in the study, many of
them are leading institutions and the data is "very indicative"
of the entire field, said Craig Zelizer, co-author of the report
and associate director of the conflict resolution master's
program at Georgetown University. He said there are about 30
master's and five Ph.D. programs in the United States.
But Leigh Morris Sloane, executive director of the Association
of Professional Schools of International Affairs, said the
findings of the report do not seem in line with the way such
programs function at the 33 institutions in her association
(where conflict resolution is one of a range of subjects studied).
“They touch on things that need to exist in a program, but
APSIA member schools -- they do all these things,” she said.
“It struck me as making rather sweeping generalizations…. I
could easily see getting a completely different picture and story
if you’d talked to a different set of actors.” She also added
that the report seems to place too large an emphasis on the
institutions and the instruction, and discount the variety of
backgrounds and prior experiences students have coming into
these programs that can greatly affect outcomes.
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What Harkin Wants
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/10/forprofit
11
August 10th, 2010
August 10th, 2010
WASHINGTON -- If it wasn't already clear that the U.S.
Senate was putting plenty of pressure on for-profit colleges,
the detailed information the body's leading voice on education
is seeking from 30 companies and institutions makes it pretty
obvious.
At the end of last week's hearing on for-profit higher
education's recruitment practices, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa),
chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions
Committee, said he wanted to "get to the bottom of this."
The this, of course, was everything about the for-profit sector
-- from how many students each of the 15 publicly-traded
companies enrolls to how institutions train and compensate
recruitment, admissions and financial aid employees.
On Thursday, Harkin's staff directed the publicly traded
companies and 15 privately held for-profit institutions to
submit two dossiers in the next few weeks. The first, due Aug.
26, primarily consists of information related to management
structures, revenue sources and enrollment totals. The second,
due Sept. 16, includes several requests for all documents and e-
mail messages related to recruiter performance, financial aid
procedures and tuition hikes. The full request is available here.
What follows is a sampling of requests.
• A spreadsheet with detailed school-by-school data on
revenue from sources including Pell Grants, all federal
student loan programs, Department of Defense tuition
assistance benefits, vocational rehabilitation funds,
private loans, institutional loans, state loans, state
grants, student-paid tuition, employer-paid tuition, and
any and all other sources.
• For the period July 1, 2007 to June 30, 2010, the number
of students enrolled in online, in-person and hybrid
programs; the number of new students enrolled each
month by program, campus and mode of instruction; the
total number of program completers each year; the total
number who left by formally withdrawing or by stopping
class attendance.
• Detailed information, with randomized identification
numbers, for each student who entered the college
between July 1, 2007 and June 30, 2009, including
enrollment date and completion or graduation status.
• A spreadsheet with detailed school-by-school
annual expenditures since the start of fiscal
2006. The committee specifically asks for totals
spent on various kinds of advertising, direct
mail, telemarketing, compensation for admissions
representatives and managers, faculty compensation,
executive compensation, financial aid administration,
educational facilities, equipment including computers
and furniture, curriculum development, litigation
expenses, corporate debt interest payments, private
distributions to shareholders.
• Documents related to complaints from students
and former students on admissions and enrollment,
teaching, equipment, cost, financial aid, loans and debt,
job placement, school administration.
Published by: philosophyandrew
• All documents related to the possibility that a company
or school is approaching or exceeding 90 percent of its
revenue coming from the federal student aid program.
• All documents concerning tuition increases, including
increases in credit hour costs and increases in the
number of credits required to complete a degree.
• For the period Jan. 1, 2009 to the present, all
documents about lead generators including agreements
and documents listing how many contacts were
generated.
• Manuals, presentations, scripts and handouts used for
training and supervising recruitment and admissions
employees. Also, all materials used for training and
supervising financial aid employees.
• All documents related to performance and compensation
of all employees involved in recruiting, enrolling or
admitting new students.
• All documents concerning recruiting in or near
Department of Defense or Veterans Affairs rehabilitation
facilities, wounded warrior transition units, homeless
shelters, welfare and unemployment offices, or
substance abuse and treatment facilities.
• Details of any use of a debt management or default
consultant employed to help former students manage
debt, including providing advice on loan forbearance,
deferment and income-based repayment plans
• All documents about the U.S. Department of Education's
shift from monitoring two-year cohort default rates to
three-year cohort default rates.
• All documents related to repayment of Title IV loans
by the college to be replaced by institutional or private
loans.
• Details of any institutional lending program.
• A document listing the name, address and phone number
of all current and former presidents, deans or campus
heads. The same information for the people in charge
of recruiting, financial aid, student debt management,
curriculum development, job placement, academics and
marketing.
• For the period Jan. 1, 2008 to the present, one copy
of all written materials and disclosures provided to
prospective students.
• Details of all policies, plans, practices and procedures for
tracking and recording job placement, employment rates
and salaries of former students.
Campus Description: Stony Brook University, home to many
highly ranked graduate research programs, is located 60 miles
from New York City on Long ...
The Shock of Exclusion
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/library_babel_fish/
the_shock_of_exclusion
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August 10th, 2010
August 10th, 2010
By Barbara Fister August 9, 2010 9:00 pm
Ever since I read an essay, "The Shock of Inclusion" by Clay
Shirky in Edge, I've been pondering the implications of one of
the stickiest concepts in the essay: he argues that publishing is
the new literacy. He doesn't mean that we need to add yet one
more "literacy" to the list of things we're supposed to teach,
but rather that the internet's ability to lower the boundaries
between the published and the unpublished, between the
mediated and the impulsive, between the specialized and the
everyday, has makes publishing a very different cultural event.
In a pre-literate Europe, scribes made a living putting the
words of others into writing and books were for the few who
could read. Today, anyone can publish anything, and in venues
like this, the writer who kicks things off is not the only author. I
pull things in from other writers (thanks, Clay!) and those who
comment add to what I have started. (This, of course, happens
whenever one reads or writes, but now it's much more visible
and immediate.)
But now I am also thinking about this new idea of literacy in
light of the news that Camden, New Jersey, which opened its
public library in 1905 with a grant from that old scoundrel
Andrew Carnegie, faced closure last week in the wake of a 70%
budget cut and now may be rescued by being adopted by the
county system. Not long ago, it was Philadelphia's libraries
that were in the cross hairs and in Jackson County, Oregon 15
libraries had their doors locked for six months in 2007 when
the county manager said there was no money to keep them
open and voters rejected a tax increase. (They reopened with
reduced service and their management outsourced to a for-
profit company based in Maryland.)
Earlier this summer, Fox News in several cities, including
Chicago, ran exposes on how much libraries cost tax payers.
"They eat up millions of your hard earned tax dollars. It's
money that could be used to keep your child's school running.
So with the internet and e-books, do we really need millions
for libraries?" A camera crew entered the Harold Washington
Center downtown and filmed books that were not being read
to illustrate the appalling waste.
Commissioner Mary Dempsey's letter in response is a model
of evidence-based reasoning. Not only are Chicagoans using
the libraries (and their books) quite heavily, but citizens who
can't afford monthly bills for Internet service or computers
rely on public libraries so they can apply for jobs and fill
out government forms that can only be submitted online.
A map Tim Spalding created using LibraryThing Venues
demonstrates, too, that libraries are distributed throughout
the city regardless of income levels; bookstores don't do that.
As for libraries and ebooks, there's an important synergy there
not well understood by publishers who think sharing is a bug,
not a feature; even so, public libraries are finding ways (at a
significant cost and without violating copyright laws) to loan
ebooks, and in large numbers.
Public libraries tend to have a lot of local support, emotional
if not always financial - far more than one might expect of an
institution that might be viewed warily as an elitist institution
that competes with the private sector, run by professionals
whose knee-jerk devotion to in privacy led one unnamed FBI
agent to call them "radical militants." What if the public library
Published by: philosophyandrew
movement were launched today? I'm afraid it would be a
political non-starter. Though Dennis Baron once joked that
nobody complains about "socialized literacy," using public
funds to offer free public access to books and the Internet
would be a tough sell today.
When Al Franken recently made claims that net neutrality was
critical for free speech, a number of comments claimed net
neutrality was, in fact, an attempted government takeover of
the Internet.One commenter speculated that this was an effort
to "socialize free speech." I don't think he was joking.
The more the Internet enables sharing across borders, both
geographic and ideological, the more there seems to be an
impulse to throw up barriers with digital rights management,
copyright extensions, and the substitution of licensing for
ownership. Traditional library values and functions - to serve
all people regardless of their ability to pay, to preserve culture,
to provide information on multiple points of view, to resist
censorship, to defend all people's right to inquire and to
read in privacy without fear of being judged by association
with what we read - that's all up for grabs. Now that texts
can be altered at the flick of a switch and what we read is
monitored for money (just read this alarming series in the
Wall Street Journal for the details of how that's done) we
need the values embodied in libraries more than ever. When
inclusion and mass participation is matched with behind-the-
scenes profiteering and tiered or tethered access, it's hard to
know how inclusive this brave new world will really prove to
be.
Build Your Own Orientation
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/
confessions_of_a_community_college_dean/build_your_own_orientation
August 10th, 2010
An unknown error occured formatting this story.
Highlights of President
Obama's Speech on Higher
Education
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology_and_learning/
highlights_of_president_obama_s_speech_on_higher_education
August 10th, 2010
By Joshua Kim August 9, 2010 8:30 pm
When our President gives a major speech devoted to higher
education it is important that all of us take some time to listen
and discuss what he has to say. If you have time, please go
check out the full text of his speech in Austin.
For those of you who do not have the time, I tried to pull out
the quotes that I thought were most relevant and would lend
themselves to discussion and debate.
"I want us to produce 8 million more college graduates by
2020, because -- America has to have the highest share of
graduates compared to every other nation."
"In a single generation, we've fallen from first place to 12th
place in college graduation rates for young adults. Think about
13
August 10th, 2010
that. In one generation we went from number one to number
12."
"Education is the economic issue of our time. "
"Even as family incomes have been essentially flat over the
past 30 years, college costs have grown higher and higher and
higher and higher. They have gone up faster than housing,
gone up faster than transportation. They've even gone up
faster than health care costs, and that's saying something. "
"So it's no wonder that the amount student borrowers owe
has risen almost 25 percent just over the last five years. Think
about that. Just in the last five years, the debt of students has
done up 25 percent. "
"I want to challenge every university and college president to
get a handle on spiraling costs."
"Over a third of America's college students and over half of
our minority students don't earn a degree, even after six years.
So we don't just need to open the doors of college to more
Americans; we need to make sure they stick with it through
graduation. That is critical."
"I want everybody here to remember, at each and every
juncture throughout our history we've always recognized that
essential truth that the way to move forward, in our own lives
and as a nation, is to put education first."
Tomorrow I will share some ideas about what role technology
can and should play in reaching the goals that President
Obama sets out in his speech. For today, I'm just happy that we
have a President who understands, and backs up with policies
and leadership, that "education is the economic issue of our
time."
Mothering at Mid-Career:
Getting what you didn’t ask for
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/mama_phd/
mothering_at_mid_career_getting_what_you_didn_t_ask_for
August 10th, 2010
By Libby Gruner August 9, 2010 8:24 pm
This summer for the first time my family joined a CSA
(Community-Supported Agriculture). We signed up to receive
a weekly supply of vegetables from a local farm family, paying
in advance to minimize their risk and ensure that we’d get an
ample supply of fresh vegetables every week.
It was a little bit of a leap of faith. Friends have done it in the
past, but this was our first time, and we weren’t quite sure what
we’d get. We weren’t sure we’d like it, or that we’d be able to
use it all up before the next week. We weren’t sure it would be
worth the price.
We’ve now been members for just over two months. We
initially signed up for a half share, which is supposed to be
the amount two people can consume in a week. Though we
are a family of four, we thought it would be better to have too
little than too much, especially if we got unfamiliar vegetables,
or didn’t care for what we got. Three weeks in, we upped our
commitment to a full share, because I found I was picking up
the produce on Saturday and then supplementing it with a
Published by: philosophyandrew
farmer’s market trip by the middle of the following week; now,
I hardly ever shop for vegetables.
We’re swimming in tomatoes, lately, and cucumbers; melons,
basil, garlic, and onions have also been staples. Some weeks
we’ve had potatoes or carrots; early in the season, we got a lot
of beets and chard, both of which became family favorites in
no time. Seriously. We roasted the beets and ate them cold, or
at room temperature, in salads or on sandwiches; the chard
ended up in a variety of pastas and stir-frys. I’m not a big melon
fan, but both my husband and son are, and I’ve enjoyed my
share of the watermelons that we’ve gotten. I’ve put more pesto
into the freezer than I’ve probably ever made in a summer,
and I’m profligate with the fresh tomatoes, eating them two or
three times a day in as many different guises as I can come up
with.
Yesterday we got a tour of the farm. It was hot and bright
when we started out, and I envied the folks who’d been smart
enough to wear straw hats. Ali, who with his wife Lisa owns
the farm, showed us the four fields they’ve cultivated, the
cold room, the greenhouse. We saw the weeds that threaten
our (our!) crops, the eggplant that isn’t thriving, the labor-
intensive stake-and-weave support system for the tomatoes.
We heard how he plans the crops to ensure a continuous
supply of fresh vegetables for us and all the other farm share
families over the course of almost 6 months.
Ali and Lisa have to guess a lot in their job: what we’ll
want to eat, when will be the best time to plant, how many
pounds of tomatoes to give us each this week and still have
enough for next. These are educated guesses, of course, but
there’s still a lot of the process that’s out of their control.
Lisa mentioned that the year they got married they went into
business together, bought a farm, and bought 400 laying hens.
“After that, having a baby didn’t seem like all that big a deal,”
she said, jiggling her 9-month-old son on her hip. When you
farm, you have to be willing to give up a good deal of control
in your life.
We gave up some control ourselves, of course, in agreeing to
buy into the CSA. Rather than pick out our own vegetables
weekly — or more often — we take what we’re offered. If
Ali doesn’t have zucchini for us, then we either buy it from
another farmer or, more often, eat tomatoes instead. (The one
zucchini plant in our backyard isn’t doing too well, either.)
When the beets started coming in thick and fast in June, we
learned quickly what to do with them. I found a recipe for
quick cucumber pickles when we got more cucumbers than
we thought we could handle. My daughter, a vegetarian home
from college for the summer, has learned lots more kitchen
skills this year than ever before, and looks forward to each new
share as an opportunity to come up with another new thing.
(We won’t talk about my son right now, the self-confessed
“meatatarian” who prefers his vegetables raw, preferably as
garnishes.) This is, of course, how farm families have always
lived, eating in season and making do (or doing without)
depending on what’s available. We’re getting what we haven’t
asked for, rather than choosing for ourselves, but it feels good.
It requires some improvisation, and some flexibility — the
same qualities, in fact, that both good parenting and good
teaching require.
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August 10th, 2010 Published by: philosophyandrew
The CSA keeps going into the fall, and I’m looking forward to
continuing to improvise as the fall crops come in. Fall semester
will bring its own challenges — I’m teaching a new course, in
a new program — and I’m hoping the lessons of flexibility and
improvisation will hold.

Bread crumb the sixth - on the

canal
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/getting_to_green/
bread_crumb_the_sixth_on_the_canal
August 10th, 2010

By G. Rendell August 9, 2010 7:45 pm

In the course of my wanderings, I found a lock. Not a padlock
-- a canal lock. At a place called the Narrows.
Now, I've seen locks on canals before. I've watched some
modern ones operate, lifting great big freighters up what
looked like a couple of stories. Impressive, to say the least.
But this lock -- while far smaller -- was impressive, as well.
Maximum length was maybe 75 feet, and the rise only about
a yard. But what impressed me was that the thing was built
in 1830-something, and was still operating with the original
technology. (OK, not entirely. The lockmaster used a modern-
ish bullhorn to speak to the boat captains, but that was the only
upgrade I noticed.)
The lock gates had long levers on them; they could be
opened or closed by cranking a chain around a couple of
pulleys (mechanical advantage of the lever arm multiplied
by mechanical advantage of the crank arm). The small doors
which allowed water to flow into (or out of) the lock area
were lifted by similar chain/crank arrangements. The bridge
across which I drove (single lane, admittedly) swung out of the
way -- it was mounted at its center on some sort of planetary
gearing, powered from above by hand. The whole operation
was handled (and I do mean handled) by three people, one of
whom seemed not in the best of health.
In the half-hour or so that I watched, the lock passed seven
boats in one direction and four in the other, while allowing
road traffic to cross the bridge for at least 20 minutes. That's
a pretty good level of efficiency, given no major upgrades
(technical refurbishment, I'm sure) in about 175 years.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

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