Education Blogging

A Pew Research Study shows some interesting things about college that I think English professors might be interested in.

Are students getting worse?
First, it found that college presidents don’t think students today are as good as students of yesteryear.

A 58%-majority of college presidents say public high school students arrive at college less well prepared than students of a decade ago. Just 6% say public high schools are doing a better job at preparing students for college than a decade ago, while 36% say they are doing about the same job. Once the students are settled on campus, the outlook remains equally pessimistic. More than half of college presidents (52%) say today’s students are studying less than students did a decade ago. Only 7% say students are studying more, and 40% say students are doing about the same amount of studying as college students did 10 years ago.

What do we think the value of college is, in general and in particular?
The study also showed that:

A majority of Americans (57%) say the higher education system in the United States fails to provide students with good value for the money they and their families spend. An even larger majority (75%) says college is too expensive for most Americans to afford. At the same time, however, an overwhelming majority of college graduates (86%) say that college has been a good investment for them personally.

Monetary Payoff. Adults who graduated from a four-year college believe that, on average, they are earning $20,000 more a year as a result of having gotten that degree. Adults who did not attend college believe that, on average, they are earning $20,000 a year less as a result. These matched estimates by the public are very close to the median gap in annual earnings between a high school and college graduate as reported by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2010: $19,550.

So we like it ourselves, but think it doesn’t do a good job for other people. It’s too expensive, but way more people are going. If you go, you make more money. If you don’t, you are less likely to make money.

Perception is clearly at odds with reality.

Why go to college?

Just under half of the public (47%) says the main purpose of a college education is to teach work-related skills and knowledge, while 39% say it is to help a student grow personally and intellectually; the remainder volunteer that both missions are equally important. College graduates place more emphasis on intellectual growth; those who are not college graduates place more emphasis on career preparation.

Since finals were recent and many people are talking/writing about them (and since I hadn’t read any blogs for about a month), I am a bit late to CCDean’s party on “Final Grade Windows.”

CCDean has a point that I agree with in this particular post:

If it were up to me, the answer would be to do away with final exams as final exams, and to have classes run to the bitter end. But the folks who like to give “common” finals across sections don’t like that — they have a point — and the folks who effectively start vacation a week early would prefer not to rock the boat. Between the two groups, it’s hard to get critical mass for a change.

I think that I may be agitating for either two “common” finals for second semester freshman comp OR for identifying the exam as an “exit essay” worth 10% and NOT list it as a final exam.

Yes, I know that is rhetorically hiding the pea, but still… It would allow me as a rhetorician to focus primarily on rhetorial analysis and to do the final 10% of class on poetry analysis.

Google Analytics provides a map:

Click on the image to see the larger version.

Siobhan has a post up on the topic of whether Non-fiction Does or Does Not Have the Same Characteristics as Fiction (not her title).

It starts out in quite an engaging way. In fact, if one were speaking of a piece of literature, one might say that the author used an excellent hook.

Is non-fiction less “literary” than fiction? Someone has suggested to me that it is, and I’m so mad about it I could spit.

Read the whole thing and then come back here to see what I thought.

We’ve been having this discussion at my new college. (I say we because I know many of my new colleagues already and have engaged in discussions on the topics, even though I wasn’t at new college for the discussion.)

The issue doesn’t come in quite the way that Siobhan approaches it for New Uni, though. At New Uni the literature teachers teach literary analysis in the second half of freshman composition and the rhetoric teachers teach rhetorical analysis in the second half of freshman composition. The problem is that the common exit essay ALWAYS asks for a literary analysis, usually of a poem, since anything else would be too long. Students who have not had literary analysis for an entire semester are having their final exams on a topic they have not even studied!

The rhetoric teachers don’t want to change what they are teaching. The literature teachers don’t either. Fine. But it’s not a common exit essay if the two groups aren’t teaching the same classes.

This is true without even addressing the point that I am becoming more and more convinced that finals as finals are unnecessary.

Having the students take an exam over something they have not been taught in the class is unfair. I have been hired as a rhetoric teacher. I would, overall, be much more comfortable teaching the second semester as a rhetoric class. However, if the exit exam is on poetry, I am going to be teaching literary analysis and the rest of the rhetoric teachers should do the same.

There has been some discussion, mostly lead by the rhetoric teachers who are the minority in the department, of changing the exit essay to a rhetorical analysis. One of the literature teachers said that was fine, as long as the rhetoric people were willing to teach the lit people both the language (since the names of the same things are called differently in the two sub-disciplines) and the subject matter. Most lit people have never had a rhetoric class. The same is NOT true of rhetoric people, since historically literature has been favored in English departments.

So why are the rhetoric people clinging to their rhetoric in second semester? Partially it is because they don’t want to lose any of “their” classes. Partially it’s because they don’t want to be a literature teacher.

Partially it is the same sort of thing Siobhan is talking about, that fiction is viewed as inherently different from non-fiction.

I don’t think so.

What do you think?

Sell Out Your Soul has “The Ultimate Guide to Finding Jobs as an English Major.”

The problem is that academia organizes the world by subjects. But the world isn’t organized by subjects. It’s organized by skills.

This is an amazing insight. And it’s hard for students to understand this point of view because they have been ensconced in academia all their lives. Their heads are organized by subjects. As a business writing professor, I know this is true, because the students have no trouble organizing a chronological résumé, but a skills résumé seems to be exceedingly difficult.

The author of the post, Michael LaRocca, used Michael Edmondson and Peter Abrams’ book How Liberal Arts Majors Can Succeed in Today’s Economy: A Workbook to get a job outside of academia making good money.

LaRocca interviewed Edmondson and there are some thoughtful and useful points in the discussion.

I remember thinking that there should have been a course in college about this. Everybody should learn how to translate their liberal arts education into the business world.

I think that the capstone class for English majors would be a really good place for us to teach that at my new university, where I will be teaching graduate students in rhetoric and composition and (hopefully eventually) the capstone class.

I want kids to major in English, Philosophy, and History. It’s really important. They are valuable degrees that can be used in business, marketing, and all types of fields.

The problem is that liberal arts degrees are not marketed at all. Universities, professors, and liberal arts departments have no idea what they are doing. Not one clue. That’s because the only people teaching these students are professors. And professors only know academia.

Something to think about, though he is wrong about the professors only knowing academia. Dr. Skallerup has a post on her pre-academic jobs. I am sure many others of us have also worked outside academia.

Dr. Davis’ short non-higher ed résumé:
waitress (2 years, one pre- and one post-graduate school)
McDonald’s front counter (after PhD coursework completed)
bookstore clerk (’cause I am a bibliophile, you know)
secretary and administrative assistant (2 years, in a foreign country, using two foreign languages)
translator
editor of two journals (one in ministry and one in higher education)
copy editing work (while always part-time, I have copy edited multiple user manuals, brochures, etc)
elementary school teacher (six years)
middle and high school teacher (nine years, including high school biology and history)

I am going to start with the negative, because one of the positives came as a direct result of the first negative response by a presenter. But I will get to the positives. Just hang around three paragraphs!

Negative Responses to Conference Blogging
Presenters have been upset about their work appearing on my blog. That particular kerfuffle included a woman I know well referring to the blogging Dr. Davis as “unprofessional.”

Presenters have asked me to take their work down, nicely and inaccurately threatening legal action.

Presenters have asked me to add things to the posts, like links to their books so “they” can make money, just as I do. (Er, no. It is a dot com, but I don’t make money off this blog. I spend money to keep this blog up and running without any monetary return.)

Positive Responses to Conference Blogging
Presenters have sent me their entire papers, to pass on to others.

Commenters have said how much they like the conference posts: Live Blogging, MLA Final Day, Material Culture in Teaching, A Tale of Two Requests, CCTE Pedagogy I: Mansfield Park.

Authors I cited during the conference blogging responded: 47WhiteBuffalo.Wordpress.com, Conceptual Blending and Beowulf.

Then there were discussions of the presentation material by those who did not attend, particularly on TCEA Breakfast: Reassessing Shakespeare.

The point, I think, of blogging is to get the best information as widely disseminated as possible. Am I wrong?

The short answer is no. Yes, originally, .com = commercial. But this site, my personal blog, and my teaching blog are all .com, yet none of them has a single ad and none of them generate any kind of revenue.

However, because it is a .com a conference presenter insisted that I delete a link to a book she referred to and insert a link to her book.

Due to a misunderstanding of what a blog is and who actually has any rights to dictate its content (by my mentor, not me), I did end up linking to her book.

I did not change the blog post in the way she dictated. She insisted I take out a link to the book she used to frame her presentation and replace it at the beginning of the blog post with a link to her book. Financial renumeration was her main argument. “Why should he make money from my conference presentation?” Perhaps because she used his book to frame her conference presentation?

She was not happy with the fact that I mentioned she received an award and noted the book, with a link, there. She did not say thank you for that (which was done at the time of the conference). That was inadequate, in her opinion.

So I added the link to her book at the end of the post she was upset about and deleted all reference to her in the award notifications. When she wrote to thank me for adding the link to her conference presentation post, she noted that it had disappeared from the awards post.

Yes. That’s what happens when you do an end-run around me, requesting that others change my blog and manage to put me in a position where the integrity of someone else is at risk. That’s what happens when you don’t appreciate the publicity I voluntarily gave you and insist on a different kind of publicity.

I am on the Executive Council for the small, but incredibly supportive Conference of College Teachers of English here in Texas. We have just instituted a blog roll. (We need one. Many of us don’t know what a blog is.)

These are some of the blogs I suggested be included:

College Ready Writing
Blogging Pedagogy
Red Lips and Academics: The Bumpy Transition from Student to Teacher
Reassigned Time
Classroom as Microcosm
Prof Hacker
Sample Reality

Why is this important?
The question of how to establish the appropriate digital presence, particularly for graduate students, has been coming up in my experience more and more. It’s showing up on the Chronicle of Higher Education’s fora and in discussions with colleagues.

What does it mean?
What If Your CV is Not Enough? is a good beginning point for thinking and writing.

Problems with digital presence
As my regular readers know I have experienced a few issues with the conference posts I have published, which are certainly part of my digital presence.

I even tweeted, for those of you who follow me on Twitter, that I may give up blogging, because of the expectation/understanding that my blog can be molded by others to their desires. (DrDavisTCE: May 20: I am considering giving up blogging. My blog is MY space. What I blog about should be up to ME. Not whoever I blogged about.)

I have actually rewritten a post due to the misunderstanding of a beloved mentor who believed I would have no objection to changing a post to match the conference presenter’s preferences. I am, unfortunately, less than impressed with my old mentor’s understanding of the concept of freedom of speech as it applies to blogs.

Necessity for digital presence
You will be googled. You will be googled by the search committee, employers, deans, and future students.

I know senior faculty who google every applicant they are considering. Their premise is that if the people put information on the web, it’s in the public domain. We should all remember that everything we put online will be there for all to see, maybe even in many years. This is important for job searches, whether they be in academia or elsewhere. I am amazed at what people write on their webpages, even their professional ones.

from So you Googled me… on the CHE fora

Think about it
What comes up when they google you is something you need to think about. It is something I think that our graduate students need to think about particularly, as they are far more likely to have embarrassing posts up than the digital immigrants. It is something I think many academics do not consider.

Have you googled yourself lately?
Don’t just look up your name, but look at iterations of your name. If your name is unusual, look at more common spellings.

You may learn, as I did, that an award that I thought I won (and I did) was actually given to two people, since the two tied. Didn’t know that till I googled a misspelling of my name. The things you learn!

What should be done?

Before I went on the market, I bought my name as a domain name and created a pretty extensive website of research projects, events I was attending, a blog about my field, etc., not so much because I had something to say but because I really needed to control my Google presence. It seems to have worked, because several SC members commented on my website….

This is what I am going to recommend to friends and students trying to get full-time positions.

Related CHE fora threads
Perils of “the google”
The thread of search committee despair
Will search committee do an online search?