September 2009

FIRE writes of a professor who was dismissed for indicating that the campus sexual harassment policy was flawed.

R. H. Greene is publishing Dracula’s memoirs. He “says he expects his book, “Incarnadine: The True Memoirs of Count Dracula,” to appeal to adult fans of vampire literature.”

Hmm. It might be interesting to add this to my list of discussions of vampires.

Picture by my husband.

I definitely saw this at my college.

Admissions officers said all summer that they had little idea what they might see when students arrived for the fall semester. Hitting bull’s-eye on the projected size of a freshman class is an inexact science in the best of times. And given the volatile economy, a rash of last-minute no-shows seemed possible.

Two weeks before school, administrators were closing sections.

But then… the students showed up.

The freshmen arrived in a flood, forcing the Johns Hopkins University to reopen a defunct residence hall, lease a nearby inn and create new sections of popular math and science courses.

Those might sound like steps required in a robust economy, when a $54,500 annual price tag would be little impediment to students seeking a prestigious education. The twist is that all of it happened in the past three weeks.

Conventional wisdom held that the deep recession might push students away from expensive private schools such as Hopkins to lower-priced alternatives. Instead, the university is coping with a freshman boom.

Johns Hopkins isn’t the only one.

Community College Dean said his school had a record year.

My CC added 1000 students this year over last year.

My SLAC gained 400 or so in the freshman class over last year. And it’s $$$.

Honestly, I don’t know where they are coming from. But I’m glad they are coming to my classrooms.

Learning Curve: Is it college or bust? says:

Lerman disputed the notion that all students need to be college-ready and enrolled in the most demanding courses. Empirical evidence contradicts that statement, he argued.

When you ask employers to list the important characteristics for front-line workers, they mention such things as an applicant’s attitude, communications skills and previous work experience, according to Lerman.

An applicant’s grades fall far down the list, he said. Industry-based credentials are valued more than years of schooling. As an example, Lerman said that despite the thrust to require algebra II in high school, only .09 percent of workplaces use it.

My younger son will be pleased to hear that. And I’ve been getting a lot of feedback recently that a specific degree isn’t the point either. Maybe I should talk about that later.

The article focuses on the question of whether it is really necessary for kids to go to college. No, it isn’t. But we don’t have a good alternative. We just don’t. It’s out there. But it’s not here.

Lerman advocates duplicating the sophisticated apprentice programs in Switzerland and Germany. The programs lead to good jobs and meet the needs of students who want relevant and practical skills training alongside their academic classes, he said.

My one friend who was in this system in Switzerland went for secretarial skills. Then she went to college and became a teacher, but in the US.

I’m not sure I really want the early herding effects Swiss schools have, even if I do like the practical aspects of the education system.

Getting an Education on the Internet

Exclusive institutions offer a brand name, they offer social networking. Exclusivity never goes out of style. I think it is the – the regional institution, sort of the equivalent of the struggling regional newspaper that don’t have those big endowments, that don’t – don’t have the luxury of rejecting nine students for every one that they accept. They are the ones that are really in danger because online higher education is much less expensive than brick and mortar education. Some of the companies that are involved in this have been able to really drive costs down by only offering classes in – inexpensive introductory courses. And that’s an important distinction to make.

There is a much more developed discussion and it is interesting to read.

If you think about what a college costs right now, they’re taking freshmen and herding them 300 or 400 a time into a big lecture hall, charging them the same price that they charge for senior seminars and basically using the profits from the one to subsidize the other.

Er, not so much.

1. No profits from student tuition. Student tuition doesn’t actually pay the cost of school.
2. Most colleges don’t have 300 or 400 students in every freshman class. Purdue doesn’t. UTexas doesn’t. I know community colleges don’t. It’s a straw man.
Yes, some lecture classes have that many students. But not many.
3. Those same students in the senior seminars were once freshman. So, if there were any subsidizing, you could say they were doing it for themselves.

Still, it’s interesting.

Expertise, Who wants some? by D-Ed Reckoning:

Let’s talk about expertise and why acquiring more expertise might be a desirable goal of education.

But, rather than start with the premise that having more expertise is preferrable to having less expertise. (And, being an expert is preferrable to being a novice. And, performing more like an expert is preferrable to performing more like a novice (or non-expert)). Let’s see if the premise is generally true.

What are the advantages of having expertise or being an expert, where an expert is defined as being more knowledgable than a non-expert?

The article continues with seven advantages to being/using an expert and one big disadvantage.

Basically, experts are domain specific. I may be an expert on Shakespeare’s romances, but that doesn’t mean I am a Shakespeare expert in general or an expert in all men named William. Interesting thoughts in there.

An interesting discussion, supposedly originally by Kurt Vonnegut, on why people want drama.

The first few days I zipped through 1 and 2. After a week, plus, I’ve finished 7, 8, and 9.

1- Book review. Complete. (Now waiting on publication.)
2- Article on promotion/publishing. Complete.
3- Shakespeare friendship article. (1 page proposal/outline; collected and skimmed through sources)
4- Religion in speculative fiction paper. (10 pages of draft; read two other books for the paper and took notes)
5- OE Judith, epic. (2 page outline, 500 pages of articles collected)
6- Sookie Stackhouse as gothic. (Books read. Some articles collected. Thought about.)
7- Adjunct article. Complete. (At least, I revised as requested and sent it in.)
8- Medical health contribution. Complete. (Though I should have change the dates to ten years later on all of them.)
9- Proposal for national conference. Complete. (And I am very happy with what I did.)

In addition, I have sent out another series of poems to a journal, sent two papers as proposals to a regional conference that I adore, and graded some more papers.

Update: 9/26/09 Not only was 8 written and sent out, it has already been rejected.
10/4/09 #4 ended up with a 28-page draft that I cut to 9 pages. It went very well. Three friends of mine came to the presentation, so there were six people in the audience. (Did I mention this was a tiny conference?)
#3 I have taken notes from 23 articles and 3 primary sources on friendship. I am behind schedule for that. I had hoped to have all the articles done and four books read and notes taken on them.

Lesley.Edu says that the annotation has to be indented two additional spaces. I’ve seen that, but not always.

Western has a PowerPoint on annotated bibs. It’s a good basic intro.

An explanation of why there are differences in the expectations. (No rule for annotated bibs, but an example in the book, which is where the two other spaces of indentation come from.)

A handout which is different even from what I require.

Cornell does them how I learned them.

Maybe I need to rethink this. What do the psych professors at my school want?